Jo March: The world will forget that you’ve ever even lived.
Friedrich Bhaer: I’m sure they will.
Jo March: But I… No one will forget Jo March.
Friedrich Bhaer: I can believe it.
Before you ask: yes, this is another devotion (or soul-search, I’m not quite sure what this will evolve into) based off the 2019 adaptation of Little Women. Because it is, hands down, one of the best movies that I have ever seen and resonates with me on so many levels, and if you still haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and go watch it.
Done yet?
Good.
Now, onward we go.
This is, essentially, a “Part 2” of my “Big Things” devotion (see: If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking). This is where I will divulge something that I loathe to say out loud, which cuts to my core, but I’ll speak it in honesty.
I relate to Jo’s line to a scary degree.
Somewhere, something deep inside of me, craves to be remembered by the world. I’m not sure if this desire has always been there and I have ignored it, or if it’s something that’s come about lately. Looking back, as I probe my soul, I feel like it has always been there, but I’m hyper-aware of it now, and it terrifies me.
Why?
Because I know it’s pride.
I desire to do big things because I refuse to be ordinary. I refuse to be mundane or forgotten. And, if I’m being honest, sometimes it terrifies me that I might be. That I may waste my life and accomplish nothing. I want to strive for all my dreams, strive for what I desire, and for so long, I thought that it would be God’s will.
Not that I would be remembered—like I said, I haven’t consciously acknowledged that thought much before—but that God’s will would line up with mine. I wanted to serve Him with my writing. I wanted to have an audience, have a platform, publish my books and devotions. But after so many rejections, I begin to wonder: is this not God’s will? Should I give up writing? But what then? I have no other talents to pursue. Nothing that will help me get a “real job” or flourish in the real world. No, if I give up on writing, then the future I foresee is what has always been: I will always be the same, stuck in the rut, at my same job, in my same house, all by my single self, for as long as I alone shall live. I have no other dreams, save one…
And that, of course, is to eventually have a place and a husband of my own. But I also don’t foresee that changing, either. Everyone in my small town is either married already or not a Christian it seems like. All my opportunities have fizzled out by my own hand, though I can’t say I regret them. In more ways than one, I’m like Jo and her mixed desire for freedom but also the loneliness it brings. I worry that the idea of love I have in my head isn’t what true love really is. I’m not expecting a fairy tale, but I am expecting something more than what I’ve experienced so far.
But what if that’s completely off the mark, and I’m self-sabotaging myself?
This is my dilemma, explained in the most basic of means. My desires vs. reality vs. my sin vs. God’s will. And how does this all work together?
In essence, it makes me wonder what I have to do to get God to give me what I want.
And that, as we all know, isn’t a healthy attitude to have. God does not have to give me anything I want. Which is why this is also a “Part 2” of my devotion on “Good Things.” In that devotion, I expressed my thoughts (or questions) about how much we actually should ask God for. How many of our own desires do we have to surrender? How do we accept the fact that God will (and does) say no—a counter that view with the knowledge that He is also a God that cares?
Take, for example, my dream of writing. My only dream. Since I was a kid, there is nothing else that I have wanted to be, except for that brief time that I thought about being a massage therapist, until I realized that some people have gross backs. I have tried repeatedly to get published, to get an agent, to get sales or an audience, but none of the doors are easy or seem to be opening. No one, it feels like, is stepping up to help me or moving the mountains that I want to be moved. (Yes, you probably are thinking of this Lauren Daigle song.)
(And, to those who have helped me out, I am extremely grateful. This is in no way meant as a lashing out at people that have encouraged me, read my writings, commented, etc. These are my darkest thoughts; I am exceedingly grateful and blessed beyond words for everyone’s help, so don’t take that as personal attack. I do see what you’re doing and I appreciate it more than you can even fathom.)
Yet, God is demolishing these obstacles for other people. So, they must be better than me. They must have their acts together in a way that I haven’t been able to yet. They must not have this pride inside them, this desire to be remembered. I thought I wanted to serve God, but what if He knew all along that what I wanted were fame and fortune? What if He is trying to weed these impurities out me before He opens these doors?
But I don’t know how to get these desires out of me. I don’t know how to stop these thoughts from intruding, although I try not to linger on them. But the desire is there and I can’t deny it. So, how do these other people become so perfect, weed out their imperfections?
On to the second conundrum: in “This is Your Promised Land,” I touted how God wants us to be happy in the season that we are in. And, though I have struggled with singleness from time to time, I had come to a reasonably healthy view of it (I thought). I was content to wait, to be single, knowing that God had good things for me. But, as I mentioned before, my word for this year was “growth.” So perhaps I set myself off down a rabbit trail, but I began to wonder: am I only content because I have hope that this will happen? That God will somehow bow to my whims? Am I putting too much emphasis on getting married, on finding this love? Am I making it an idol before God?
So I tried to strip this desire away. I tried to cleanse myself from it, but I only seemed to lose hope...and grow desperate to be out of this phase. I had slipped from a place of reasonable maturity to a place where I was now craving something, anything to happen, so that I could move ahead on this dream, because I’m not getting any younger.
So now, because I am in this unhealthy place, will God not answer my prayers until I’m back in a healthy place? But He hadn’t answered them before, either—so does that mean that there was always this hidden, sinful piece in me? That there was always something that I had to do to change to get my prayers answered?
But trying to be perfect is so hard, even when I’m trying to lean on God’s power. I don’t want to have to work for my rewards. I don’t want to have to continually get up and battle and fight. I want God to assure me that it’s okay to be imperfect, that He’s not waiting on me to get my act together before he rewards me.
But what if He is, because He wants to teach me a lesson?
How much, exactly, of myself does He want me to sacrifice in my pursuit to follow Him?
I know we’re supposed to be emptied of ourselves and filled with God, but then, how much of me will be left? What will make me any different, what will make me special at all, if I lose all the parts of my personality—or, even, what makes up my personality? What if all the things I have been calling my personality are actually false idols that I have put my identity in instead of hinging my identity upon God? What if God calls me to sacrifice everything because I have wrapped my identity in these things: like being a writer, being a wife, etc.? Does that mean that he is waiting for me to un-strip my identity from these things, focus solely and utterly on Him, before He’ll give me anything? (And, yes, I do know Matthew 9:13, where Jesus says that He desires mercy, not sacrifice, but I also know that the very first Commandment of the 10 Commandments says that we aren’t to put other things before God. So we do need to sacrifice some things, if they’re becoming an idol to us.)
Or will He change my desires and make me not want these things?
And how do I do such a thing? Trying to lose my personality, psychoanalyzing everything, has left me exhausted, depressed, and on the verge of tears as of late. I feel worn down, completely overwhelmed by my own sin and worthlessness.
How do we balance this, living life between God’s lessons and God’s grace?
So, please. Pull up a chair and come and chat. Have you ever been in a similar situation, or can you relate? If you’ve moved past this, please feel free to share your wisdom. Because, as I’ve said before, these devotions aren’t a place for me to preach down to people. They’re a place for us to have honest discussions and for all of us to be honest and help bolster each other.
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