Recently I was counseling a young lady who by external standards had everything in life figured out. On her way to getting her Master’s degree, she has been sought out by a prestigious company offering her a nice bonus for signing on with them. She was dating a star athlete at her college. And she had enough cash and friends to keep her evenings and weekends full and exciting. She had everything in place. The world was her playground. Life was hers for the taking.
Except that she didn’t feel very much alive. In fact, she discovered that all of the focus on these externals kept her spinning and dizzy with busy activity, but left her weary and full of anxiety whenever it stopped for just a brief moment. It was like a marry-go-round for her. As long as it was spinning fast, she had a blast. But the bell had rung, recess was over. She looked up to see a lot of the people she really cared about going on toward better things. And her? She only felt abandoned and seasick.
As you can guess by the neglected state of her internal life, her relationship with God was practically nill. In fact, she wasn’t even sure that he was real. After all, she’d never really felt him. It was easier, she decided, to hope that God didn’t exist than to deal with a God who existed and yet she didn’t feel Him near her. That would mean either He’s not interested or she’s doing something wrong. Either scenario would be more painful to deal with than if He didn’t exist at all. Agnosticism was a safer choice than facing the pain of the alternative.
Several silent minutes went by while she processed some of this reality and slowly gave herself over to this truth. With her head in her hands, stated simply, “I’ve always lived my life like it were a formula. Everything was a problem that could be solved with the right steps and procedures. The right method. The right answer. But this totally breaks down with God, doesn’t it?”
And so the unknown beckons. It is a safe life that demands to be formulaic. It is only the bold and adventerous ones that have had to, at some point and with some things, throw caution to the wind.
We prayed together, and she invited Jesus to move and speak into places in her that had been left cold and desolate by the demands she’d placed on herself. Her heart, you see, could not follow suit with her life lived only in the mind. Somewhere along the way, she had bound it up and dragged it along behind her, kicking and screaming. Now it’s snagged, and refuses to go along any longer. It must be addressed.
To enter into the kind of life worthy of our living means that we will enter into the deep mystery of the human delimma. There is simply no way around it. The questions of our existence will surface, and so will the question of God’s involvement — or seeming lack of it — in our lives. Where is He? Where was He? Where is He now? There are no formulas for these questions. No quick answers. The only thing we have to go on is the hope that He’ll meet us in the asking, and give us His heart for the taking as we slowly open ours to Him along the way.
There was a subtle change in this lady’s life on this day. Not dramatic, perhaps, nothing anyone else could identify. But some quiet notion that life is to be had, and it is not easily won. How much does she want it?
And that is where we must begin. How much do any of us really want it?
