Pressing On: Expendable Me

Saturday, November 10, 2018

Expendable Me

Expendable me. And you too.

George Washington's uniform as seen at the Smithsonian last year

I did not appreciate how expendable I really was until my diagnosis. We are all completely expendable - or else the world would stop turning when we leave it. Life is designed that way. No matter how important we appear to be/are told we are/think we are, life will go on without us. And if we are very lucky, we will leave behind a little ripple that stirs the surface of the water as it ebbs away.

I'm not trying to be morbid here, but the fallout from this idea has been stealing my zest for the last four years to varying degrees. I've found it very difficult to push on and care much at all about my responsibilities. It's very difficult to describe, but to jump straight to the low point, it was imagining how people would be talking about my husband's First Wife.... (meaning me):

"Kelly, she was lovely, but we are so happy Big D (hubby) has found Mrs. Big D2 to spend the rest of his life with - they are SO happy together. Oh, and the children LOVE her!"

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You can see how that is not a good place to be.

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How to combat this feeling of being utterly replaceable? Well, I guess, to "press on and count it all joy". Set my mind on things that are above (Col. 3:2) and love Him with all my heart, soul, mind and strength (Matt. 12:30). Easy to say.

"Pressing on" to me, looks like taking care of my responsibilities to the best of my ability. Setting my mind on things above means to remember that I am but dust. Loving Him with all that I am means that despite how things look, I trust that He is in control, and I live that way.

Ah, but theology in the everyday -what does that look like?

I'm a do-er. I like to do things, accomplish things, check things off my list! I just do. God built that deeply within me somewhere. But if I think someone is going to just come along and do all the things like I wasn't even there to begin with (like be my husband's wife!), then what is the value of doing anything? I am nothing if not practical. So, I'm trusting God and investing in things I've had a hard time with: school, food, finances, projects, sheer enjoyment...

Choosing to ignore the fact that I could very well be a Stage 4 cancer patient any day - completely ignoring it - and just doing what I enjoy doing, which is getting stuff done. It's easier to ignore when Dr.'s appointments are few and far between. I have to trust that when the time comes I'll handle it, but that time is not today.

I am expendable -you are expendable, but it is not our defining characteristic.

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My Testimony

Well not really "my" testimony. It is a testimony to the saving power and grace of Jesus Christ, so it's His testimony.

SHORT VERSION:

Growing up in the Catholic Church, I became a born-again believer in 1993, at the age of 24.

MUCH LONGER VERSION:

Searching for Truth has been a part of my makeup since before my dad passed away 40+ years ago. I was almost eight, then, and not a day has gone by since that I haven't been on the hunt for what is True, worthy of pursuing, and worthy of living and dying for. I guess I've always been "deep" that way :)

I was attending the Catholic Church back when I was eight, and I sold out. Completely. If God was God, and He was as important as they were telling me, then I was going to learn every prayer, make the most ardent confessions, take communion with the purest soul, and be a nun. I even had a catechism teacher convinced I would be a saint one day.

When I look back I see what a strange creature I must have been! But I was absolutely sincere, and it boggled my mind as to why not everyone (grownups included) would not serve our Lord and His Church first and foremost--if that's what they claimed to believe. (Actually it still boggles.) So devout was I, that I won the award for being top of my seventh grade catechism class--a Bible.

The problems began when I started reading that Bible. And then I went to college. I was just finishing up the Old Testament and, being no less interested in the Truth, I pursued college courses in Philosophy, Anthropology, and Psychology (as well as Statistics and Algebra, but we won't go there). Things were not at all as I had expected.

I was shocked and disturbed to hear in my new classes that there were people, thinking people, who seemed to desire Truth as much as I, who did not hold a Catholic, Biblical, or even remotely Christian worldview. How could this be? Anybody who was sincerely after Truth would certainly discover that The Church held it. Wouldn't they?

Then I became even more shocked and disturbed. As I finished reading through the book of Revelation, (the last book of the Bible) I had to recognize that I had found no evidence for, and from what I could see, actually some direct contradiction to, most of the practices of the Catholic Church to which I'd been so devoted.

None of the these are found in the Bible:

Devotion to Mary.

Any mediator other than Jesus between man and God--including a priest.

Penance for reparation of sin.

Repeating prayers over and over (eg. the Rosary).

Calling another man "Father", as in spiritual father.

Confessing sins to another in hopes of absolution.

Any man being head of the Church.

and many more . . .

What?!?!??? I thought I must have missed it, I re-read. My mind became suspect. Hmmm. No wonder there was no emphasis in 15 years of church-going on having or reading a personal copy of the Bible.

It wasn't just the Church about which I became suspect; everything fell under my scrutiny. NO WAY was I going to believe grass was green just because it looked that way, and certainly not just because somebody told me it was. (In fact it's not green is it? It just reflects green, it's actually soaking in every other colour but green.) I entered a five-year period of chaos.

God was extremely merciful to me during this time. I did things which could have killed me, and things that could have affected me with besetting sin, or consequences that would have altered my life. I investigated other religions, I lived without God for a while (as much as one can) which was initially very liberating, but eventually confined me to what felt like insane circular thinking. God has used that time to continually convict me that the grass is not greener without Him, even if it looks that way. It's a mess of jumbled, muddy colours that cannot make sense or beauty.

Graciously, through odd and timely circumstances, God led me to a handful of select, sincere people from different walks of life who were all avidly seeking to walk the words of the Bible. After these years of seeking, and dead ends, and mistrust, and study, I had come to a reasonably firm conclusion that a) there was a powerful Creator responsible for the world (not profound, even Dawkins agrees with that! lol) and b) sheer evidence probably supported the God of the Jews if the idea of a "God" (versus merely some sort of "force") were to be entertained. I had done a lot of my homework but leery of committing to anything.

It took a long time -- over five years -- but on my 24th birthday in 1993, I took a terrifying leap-of-faith and turned it all over to the God of the Bible and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. For over 25 years I have actively put this Truth to the test and It has not failed me. I have failed It, but It, He, my Creator, stands steadfast, fulfilling His promises day-by-day to make me a new creature, a testimony, to His grace and power.