Thirty

Reflections on the Eve of Thirty

"Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:12-13).

I stood a mendicant of God before His royal throne
And begged him for one priceless gift, which I could call my own.
I took the gift from out His hand, but as I would depart
I cried, “But Lord this is a thorn and it has pierced my heart.
This is a strange, a hurtful gift, which Thou hast given me.”
He said, “My child, I give good gifts and gave My best to thee.”
I took it home and though at first the cruel thorn hurt sore,
As long years passed I learned at last to love it more and more.
I learned He never gives a thorn without this added grace,
He takes the thorn to pin aside the veil which hides His face.
- Martha Snell Nicholson

My pastor shared this poem with us today as he guided us through the text of Hebrews 12. Somehow the dialogue between the text and the poem and the nearly unconscious discourse of my heart, mind, and senses converged in a fleeting moment of tranquility, such as I have not known in a century of days.

“For the believer in Jesus Christ, time and truth are on our side,” writes C.J. Mahaney. I am keenly aware of each of these integers today, and I see that this text offers the sum. “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Time, in its momentary discipline, and the truth of righteousness, are on my side. Thanks be to God.

Though numbers are bare facts, they still carry with them attributed (almost superstitious) meanings. Some people are emotional when they turn 22; some don’t blink at 50. Tomorrow is my thirtieth birthday.

I am fearful as 30 approaches. The twenties are a grace period, in many ways—a time in which allowances are made for spiritual, intellectual, moral, financial, or emotional flights of fancy. I made such allowances for myself, insisting that I would “one day” be different. I got in the habit of making excuses and pushing the boundaries of "one day" out a little farther. It’s been like feeling your way through a dark room and somehow finding that all the walls have been removed.

I shrink back from superlatives, realizing how often I have invoked them in relation to various trials and sins and circumstances over the years. I will say only that this has been a difficult year, as I’ve begun to realize the consequences of my growing spiritual inattention in the face of the sustained health challenges. It is now clear to me that those trials were expertly fashioned in order to disabuse me of some illusions and particular strains of self-righteousness. This is a strange and hurtful gift which Thou hast given me…

I’ve used the word “despair” to describe what I’m fighting with right now. I know no other word to express the crushing hopelessness that tempts me constantly. As Kierkegaard says in Sickness Unto Death:

I think I am in despair over something earthly and constantly talk about what I am in despair over, and yet I am in despair about the eternal; for the fact that I ascribe such great value to the earthly or, to carry the thought further, that I ascribe to something earthly such great value or that I first transform something earthly into everything earthly, and then ascribe to the earthly such great value, is precisely to despair about the eternal.

What is this thing to which I ascribe such value, which keeps me constantly on the threshold of despair? It has a face and a form, yet it is an essence. It is immanent, and yet it is really a question of eternal consequence. In a word, and simply—it is sin. And it provokes me to despair simply because it reminds me, moment by moment, that I did not and cannot save myself.

The onset of the sickness last year was a unique kind of suffering; it did test the genuineness of my faith and result in praise to God (thanks be to God!). And yet the root of bitterness set in, or sprang up, as I grew inattentive. I learned very quickly that I had sowed the seeds of my hope in several different fields—independence, physical appearance, self-discipline, and the respect and admiration of others, just to name a few (How obvious and yet insidious these things are as they stare back at me from the computer screen!).

After I got sick, many of the trees that had borne good fruit--now deprived of some furtive water source--began to languish. Were my roots this shallow; could an axe or a worm or a fire obliterate them? I felt an unearthly stillness setting into the corners where life and hope (however false) had been before. This new and unfamiliar deadness terrified me; I was not eager to sow new seed, but only to reclaim what was previously mine. I ran, almost blindly, back to the wasteland of my youth. Almost blindly.

The eating disorder first began to whisper in my ear about a dozen years ago, saying, “Thou shalt not surely die”. I came to acknowledge its lies in my twenties and had recently come to believe—in my pride and zeal—that I was no longer susceptible to it. How little did I regard the weakness of my flesh or the haunting beauty of the siren song. That song echoes in my mind all day long now, relentless and sickening and yet nearly irresistible. It haunts me into the night, every night, until the night chases the day. Food and people and circumstances and control seem so enmeshed; the film of panic around me is as thick as a parched tongue or the silence after an alarm. I am so tired.

I let myself fall back into counting calories and was quickly engulfed by the shining blackness. That was nearly a year ago. Oh, how I wish I'd heeded the exhortation of I Peter 5: "Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour."

That insatiable appetite, the human desire for control, consumed the neat lessons I’d learned and turned a ravenous and indiscriminate eye on my faith, hope, and love. I could see myself in an iron cage like the man in Pilgrim’s Progress who mourns, “I am now a man of Despair, and am shut up in it, as in this Iron Cage. I cannot get out; O now I cannot.”

But I am not there.

I’m training myself to be suspicious whenever the word “can” is followed by the word “not.” How often do we wrap up possibility and duty with this neat little phase, as if it had the last word—as if invoking the “can not” settled the matter definitively? How presumptuous are we to assume that we know the limits, either the end or the beginning, of our strength or our faith or our endurance? Are these not fixed by God, whose ways are higher than ours and often inscrutable to us? Has the Scripture not plainly said that we have been given all that we need for life and godliness?

To my disgrace and in my blind despair, I have charged God with unfaithfulness so many times in recent months. I’ve reminded him of my prayers, my study of his word, my faithfulness in seeking and submitting to accountability and in generally positioning myself to receive grace—in short, parading about in my filthy rags. I have believed in my heart that he has not been true to his word or, alternately, that I am not among those whom he has called. Oh, that swelling self-righteousness that distorts and obscures the truth that is brought to bear upon a situation; oh, the Gospel that restores reality and hope in the face of despair.

This depression speaks with an authority that it does not righty possess, claiming to be both defining and determinate. But as Anne Shirley said in Anne of Green Gables, “The sun will go on rising and setting, whether I fail in geometry or not (how absurd and telling it is that this quotation has lived in my head since childhood!). Or, as C.S. Lewis wrote in his auto-biography, “Life is as habit-forming as cocaine.”

Many have spoken truth into my life during these days, offering me the "fig leaf of the Word with which to cover my nakedness." I thank God for this and for them; it reminds me again that he has not abandoned me to my own devices, that his Holy Spirit has sealed me for the day of redemption, that he will complete the work that he began in me. For if while I was an enemy, I was reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that I am reconciled, shall I be saved by his life (Rom 5:10).

In the face of this blessed security, I confess my loathsome and burdensome sin. I have so often shared my struggle with others, simultaneously admitting and denying it, creating a space in which they could make allowances and offer sympathies but never suspect the truth of my defiant fragility. I have confessed it, saying in my heart (Kierkegaard again):

I understand obscurely that it is required of me to let this torment go, that is, to humble myself under it in faith and to accept it as belonging to me—for I would hold it aloof from me, and thereby precisely I hold it fast, although I think that this must mean separating myself from it as far as possible, letting it go as far as is possible for man to do so. But to accept it in faith, that I cannot do, or rather in the last resort I will not do, or here is where my self ends in obscurity.

I want to accept the truth of my unworthiness in faith—not in resignation to my sin, but in simple faith that my sanctification will one day consume that which now consumes me. I am the greatest of sinners with the greatest of Saviors, in whom is found all the righteousness that I seek and more. I want to accept in my trials what Spurgeon learned to accept:

It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity.

How much time have I wasted in convincing myself—and others—that my sin struggles are somehow worse that what others face? One of the first things that our trials will tell us is that they are unique and disproportionate. They offer to us a million ways to deduce that I Corinthians 10:13 does not apply to the situation when it says, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” Or, if it admits that the temptation is measured, it will simply decry the means of escape as unacceptable.

I’m not certain what the means of escape is for me, so I’m leaning on the counsel of my brothers and sisters heavily during these days. Though I believe that the Lord could heal me instantaneously or remove the temptation from me entirely, I know that this is not usually the way he works. Perhaps a foreshortened trial would not have its full effect. Most likely, the means of escape for me will simply be the cumulative effects of deliberate and honest life in fellowship with God and in community with his people. It will involve keeping short accounts with God and others and resisting my flesh in ways I have not yet imagined. It probably looks more like the almost imperceptible movement that starts with rejoicing in suffering and ends in a hope that does not disappoint.

Proverbs 14:1 says, “The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.” I have awakened recently to find myself engaged in the latter activities—distancing myself from the body of Christ, from the compassion of friends, and from my responsibilities to others. My guilt has been a sort of wild card that I could use either to deny myself the benefits of fellowship or to evade the duties of serving through love. You were called to freedom, Michele. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve others.

I want to, with all diligence, hasten to rebuild; the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do. That will be work enough for my thirtieth year; I will need daily—no, moment-by-moment—infusions of grace to do this. But time and truth and God Almighty through the sacrifice of his son, Jesus Christ, are on my side. This one thing I know: God is for me. And that changes everything else.

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (I Peter 1:13-15).

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (II Peter 1:3-8).