The Sacrifice of Thanksgiving

"I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the LORD." Psalm 116:17

I thought my nights were unbearable. My 9 month-old was waking several times a night, so my sleep was constantly interrupted. This had been going on for weeks. I was a grumpy, complaining mess.

Then we all got sick with a cold. Nothing too debilitating, but just enough gunk to disrupt my baby's sleep so much that she would not let me put her down at all for one night, and barely the night after that. One night she screamed so much that for hours she was inconsolable and I slept very little.

What all of this showed me was that I need to be thankful for my circumstances, no matter what they are. Who can say whether they will deteriorate into something worse very soon? I tend to take it for granted that I deserve a certain standard of comfort (such as a full night's sleep), and I complain when I don't get it. Complaining shows that I see myself higher than I ought to.

In reality, I don't deserve anything good in my life. Every good gift comes from God (James 1:17), and He sustains all things by giving us life (Acts 17:28). If I have food and clothing, I should be content (1 Timothy 6:8). Many don't even have these.

I think God has given us many strategies for overcoming the complaining attitude and embracing an attitude of thanksgiving. He tells us to be thankful in all things, so we have a command to obey (1 Thessalonians 5:18). He gives us memories so that we can recall from our own lives times of trial and times of refreshing. Therefore, we can learn that seasons come and go, and if we are in a difficult time, a time of healing may be fast approaching. We can also remember how God sustained us through the past time of difficulty. For example, my first daughter didn't sleep through the night until she was almost two and a half years old. Now she sleeps like a champion!

God also allows us to learn about other people who deal with various circumstances that are different from ours, whether good or bad. We can see our own blessings by comparison and reach out to help those who materially have less or who may have more materially but need spiritual and emotional encouragement that we can offer.

There are so many ways to practice being thankful, and any time I give thanks, I feel blessed. Complaining only makes things seem worse. Being thankful may be a sacrifice, especially being thankful for difficult things, but it's an offering to God because it recognizes His sovereignty and goodness and it reveals that we ultimately trust Him rather than ourselves to know what is best for us.

My two (at times sleepless) daughters.

Obedience: True Freedom

January seems an appropriate month to write about change; the expectation of welcoming a new baby to the family within the next few weeks makes it even more so. In The Young Unicorns, Madeleine L'Engle has some challenging thoughts about change and acceptance of our roles in life. She argues that "only obedience . . . is perfect freedom." At times it seems counter-intuitive, but perhaps accepting our roles and what is demanded of us does provide a sense of freedom in our lives.

One of L'Engle's main teenage characters, Vicky, struggling with change, complains to her father that she wished they had never moved from the country to a big city. Her father responds that "we aren't free to remain static, to refuse to change. That isn't freedom. That's death." L'Engle is not arguing for change merely for the sake of change; rather, she suggests that when requirements are placed on us, we must respond appropriately, which sometimes requires great change. A wise and trusted Rabbi in the novel states that "to be demanded of gives us dignity." Refusing to respond is not freedom, but "apathy," a loss of one's humanity.

Sometimes the demands made on us seem trivial or less prestigious than what we could be doing otherwise. I can relate somewhat to Mrs. Austin, a mother in the novel, who gave up a singing career on stage when she married and had children, choosing instead to work in her home and be present with her family. She herself does not view the change as a lessening of her potential or a waste of her talents, though others think so. Instead, she sees it as one of those necessary changes placed upon her by the demands of life. From L'Engle's perspective, these demands come from a sovereign God who ordains the plans for our lives and requires us to respond humbly with obedience.

Staying home with small children, changing diapers, sitting still and nursing a newborn for the better part of the day, interacting with a two-year-old and her baby doll as though that baby doll were alive, cooking, grocery shopping, folding laundry, and taking naps may all seem like small and insignificant tasks when compared to the types of work that are generally lauded in our society. We value intelligence, creativity, ambition, hard work, and making a "mark" on history or leaving a great legacy. These are fine things. A quiet and simple life is also a fine thing (1 Thessalonians 4:11). I struggle with change, like Vicky, when new chapters begin in my life. Having a new baby gives me trepidation (to put it mildly). I need others to remind me, and I need to remind myself, that the demands of life can bring dignity and freedom when I accept them obediently, setting aside my own agenda and routines.

Since a loving and good God sees fit to place on me the demands of new motherhood, I should accept the changes brought by the newborn with as much flexibility and energy as I can muster, rather than stubbornly kicking at the goads, as it were. Whatever the yoke He places on me, He's taking part in pulling with it as well (Matthew 11:28-30); what a wonderful promise! What restful and dignified freedom, to do my work actively with Him rather than struggling in vain against it.

One Thing at a Time

"Stressed" defined my days. Sure, partly tiredness was creeping in and adding tension, but it was more than that. While I was taking care of the laundry and meals and such, I also had all of these projects in my head that I couldn't stop planning. I lamented my mere forty minutes a day (the length my daughter will sleep without me for her nap) in which I could sit down and knit, read, write, sew, etc., because I had so much more I wanted to do!

Then I read something in Jerry Bridges' Trusting God, the book my small group is going through this semester, about the stress we feel when we have two conflicting agendas (ours and God's) instead of one (God's). The passage seemed to fit what I was experiencing. I thought, I need to get rid of the extra agenda in my life and just focus on God's agenda for me.

But what does that look like? What is God's agenda?

I don't know exact details of God's plan for my life down to the minute, obviously, and I don't think we are even supposed to try to figure out "God's will" and wait around until He gives us some kind of grand sign telling us exactly what the next step is. No; I must take care of daily needs of myself and family, do the best I can to prayerfully thank God for what He provides, and cultivate a gracious attitude towards myself and the people around me.

While I may not know God's "agenda" for my life in a specific sense, here's one thing I know: I can only do one thing at a time. God made me a finite human being, capable of truly focusing well on any one given task. When I spend my energy imagining a multitude of tasks I can't reasonably accomplish in my allotted time, I'm being wasteful, and I'm not helping my attitude or my family. If instead I focus on enjoying the one thing that's been given me to do in the moment (read with my daughter) or that I choose to do in my free time (knit a soft grey hat), I feel happier, and I feel more of a sense of fulfillment in whatever I'm doing.

For the past week or so, I've been hearing "one thing at a time" running through my mind, and the simplified approach has helped my attitude and emotional state, even though my circumstances have not changed. I've felt more productive, even though I'm probably not actually doing any more than I would have had my attitude not shifted.

Praise God that He asks us for simple (though not always easy!) things:

"Mankind, He has told you what is good
and what it is the Lord requires of you:
to act justly,
to love faithfulness,
and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

Micah 6:8 describes God's agenda for me and for everyone. How the agenda works itself out in the day-to-day, well, I hope I'll answer that question one thing at a time.

Killing Love

On my commute today I listened to an audio book borrowed from one of my kind colleagues: The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis, read by Lewis himself (a recording of a radio presentation he did once of a sort of condensed version of the book, as far as I could tell). First of all, if you get a chance to listen to C. S. Lewis' voice sometime, do it! He sounds wonderful. Secondly, listening brought to mind a challenging concept that I encountered a few years ago when I read The Four Loves, Till We Have Faces (a novel by Lewis), and A Severe Mercy, a memoir by Sheldon Vanauken, in close succession. All three books explore the idea of natural loves and divine love (God's love) and how these loves may come in conflict with each other.

The main challenging concept that Lewis presents is this:

Even for their own sakes the loves must submit to be second things if they are to remain the things they want to be. In this yoke lies their true freedom; they are "taller when they bow." For when God rules in a human heart, though He may sometimes have to remove certain of its native authorities altogether, He often continues others in their offices and, by subjecting their authority to His, gives it for the first time a firm basis. (The Four Loves)

Essentially, Lewis argues that all natural loves must be submitted to the higher love of God, that they must in a sense be killed, if they are to be preserved at all and made into something holy.

This subjection of love has to happen in Till We Have Faces as well (warning: spoilers!). The narrator and main character, Orual, suffers the loss of her beloved sister, Psyche, who is "offered" to a god whose existence Orual refuses to accept (the novel's a retelling of the classic myth of Cupid and Psyche). Orual, faced even with strong evidence that the god is there and is good, rather than joining her sister in worship, becomes distant and violently jealous. She fails to submit a natural love of her sister to the ultimate divine love.

In Vanauken's memoir, A Severe Mercy, he tells of his own journey through refusal to submit natural love to God's love and into submission in the end (warning: more spoilers!). When his wife, Davy, becomes a Christian, she begins to devote herself fully to Christ, and Sheldon, much like Orual at first, becomes jealous and cannot find his way to join her in this full devotion and obedience. His love for his wife takes first place in his life, stealing that "throne" in his heart, so to speak, from its rightful owner, Christ.

Both books tell of their main characters' coming to an understanding, as the result of extremely difficult circumstances involving suffering (and even death) of their earthly beloveds, that they must subject their natural loves to the highest love. Orual finally recognizes that through full obedience to the god, her sister has been made "a thousand times more her very self than she had been before the Offering" (Till We Have Faces). Yet still, the ultimate purpose and highest devotion, Orual learns, is to be for the god himself: "if [Psyche] counted (and oh, gloriously she did) it was for another's sake." In Vanauken's case, the literal death of his wife becomes the representation to him of the figurative death that any earthly love must undergo in order to be sanctified, or put in its proper place and thus ultimately exalted, under the authority of God's love. He proclaims near the end of the memoir: "If God saved our love - and, indeed, transformed it into its real and eternal self - in the only way possible, her death, it was for me, despite grief and aloneness, worth it."

And that's the key and the hopeful part of this challenging idea: Even though earthly loves must be subjected (in Luke 14:26 Jesus says we must even "hate" our families and very lives for His sake), ultimately by subjecting them God can transform them into their true selves. The earthly loves can be made even better, fuller, richer, when they are put in their proper places in submission to God.

What does this mean for me? My tendencies lead me to devote much of my attention and affection to my family, my husband, my earthly loves. In and of itself, such devotion is not bad, and God of course commands us to love one another. But my devotion to earthly loves can easily take the place of my devotion and obedience to Christ as the ultimate priority. For instance, when I'm feeling overwhelmed or depressed, I can lean on my husband for support, but ultimately shouldn't I rely fully on Christ for every need? Shouldn't I pray first rather than as an afterthought? Instead of fearing with great dread any time I perceive an earthly good might change or be taken away, shouldn't I acknowledge always that all earthly relationships are gifts from His hand, able to be removed from me? And shouldn't I be willing to accept any such removal without resentment or fear?

This submission is hard (to put it mildly), but I need to remember to cling to Christ alone, who will never fail or change, and to hold openly every earthly love. Hopefully then those earthly loves will be freed to blossom into holy and beautiful loves resting properly in my heart as second things.