Amy Boucher Pye

Category: Christian life

When life changes in a moment… why?

A couple of weeks ago I posted about my family’s near accident, giving thanks that they walked away unscathed. The post has been in the back of my mind as I think about mothers losing children through car accidents or disease; about sisters living life without their brothers; about families disrupted from a cycle of seemingly neverending surgeries. Just last night I heard about a friend who seems to be following Job’s journey rather too closely lately. Battles at his church left him bruised but not broken; disease left him scarred but not out for the count; now there’s another ghastly wrinkle I don’t even want to hint at it. Why, God?

It just doesn’t seem fair. Sometimes we witness what appears to be a miracle of saving grace, but at other times the split second matters and life changes in an instant, ushering in tears, anguish, questions, and pain. Does God intervene in the one instant yet hold back his hand at the other? If we say that he’s involved in those miracles, does that mean he’s also involved in the accidents and disease and personal losses?

I saw a friend over the summer whose sibling died a few months ago, in the prime of her life. When I questioned him whether he asks the “why” questions, he said he didn’t. He believes in the fall of the world, and so why are we surprised when bad stuff happens? The world is not as God made it; sin entered in and so people die and governments are corrupt and people fail each other and lie, cheat, and steal.

I believe that, but if it was my sister dying, I’m guessing I would ask why. Yet I think of another friend whose spouse and child died in the space of a decade, and who faced/faces physical challenges with another child. When talking about her journey and God, she said, “Where else do I have to go but to him?”

That comment made me stop and ponder.

One who thought about the why’s and why nots died a decade ago, Rob Lacey. I still miss him. I called him my “dream author,” for he delivered great content on time that sold. And he was just such fun to work with (on The Word on the Street and The Liberator). We talked about his next book as “the health story.” But we didn’t know then that his wife Sandra and friend Steve would be writing it after he went to perform in glory.

Rob with his lovely colleague Elin Kelly, signing books at Spring Harvest, 2004

Rob’s poem “Why Me?” comes on page 196 of their book, People Like Us, and I include it here with Sandra Harnisch-Lacey’s gracious permission. He wrote it after he had an all-clear of no cancer in October 2002. (None of us knew that the cancer would come back three years later.)

Why Me?

Thanks, Emmanuel. Thank God with us. I’m well!

But why me? Not him? Why me? Not them?

It’s not ’cos I memorised the whole of Job.

O wore an anointed prayer shawl.

Or a special hospital robe.

It’s not ’cos we cried ‘Mercy’! a million times.

It’s not ’cos I wrote a hundred prayers with rhymes.

It’s not ’cos my wife deserves me.

Puts the sign ‘reserved’ on me.

It’s not ’cos my son needs me.

Twin tower workers were parents too.

It’s not ’cos we’ve hung on.

It’s just that God pulled us through.

So is it ‘because I’m worth it’?

Well, I am, I’m worth everything to God.

But so was Jacqueline du Pré,

So was Eva Cassidy.

So why? And when?

Was it already planned right back then?

Or did God shuffle and shift?

And watch all our prayers lift up past his eyes?

And did he hear our cries?

And did they all add up to Abraham- or Moses-size?

When they dared to do diplomacy with God?

Did we, together, negotiate with God?

We’ll never see the subplots,

The alternative scenes,

Until we get to heaven, read the script

And work out what it means.

There’s no recipe for what God gives free.

There’s no ace to play for grace.

It’s not that I toughed it out with cameras up my nether regions,

Tubes pushed through my back,

Needles in my failing veins,

Platinum pumped through every track.

It’s none of that.

It’s not that I kept a certain attitude,

When interviewed.

I’m no more clued than you.

I could’ve interceded for the lion with my name on it,

Been compliant with my giant.

I could’ve driven into Jerusalem on a clapped-out Robin Reliant.

And still, it might have been,

That I would die.

And we might have no idea why.

Would that have been God’s will?

Or is it God’s plan never to fill an empty grave?

Or does He save each one of us?

So how come some still die?

And why this?

Why that?

And with answers so shy

What’s the point in asking ‘why’?

So I won’t try to work out why.

I won’t sweat to work it through.

For now, Rob, just face it,

God’s mercy is focused down on you.

So leave your questions lying there

You might pick them up again.

Leave your lopsided, left heavy, rational, rigorous brain

Just give God his fame.

The always different, ever the same.

Live up your voice and yell…

Thank Emmanuel, thank God with us. I’m well.

Rob Lacey, October 2002

With Rob, I’ll put the “why’s” aside and focus on God’s great mercy, which he pours out on our lives, day by day. Sometimes he allows bad stuff to happen, but he never stops loving us or rooting for us.

With Rob, I’ll give God his fame, the One who is always different but ever the same.

How about you?

September 4, 2013
When life changes in a moment – or not

A second can change everything.

Yesterday my husband and kids were meeting me at my parents’ home for dinner. They arrived in a jumble, the story spilling out of my children in fragments before Nicholas was able to park the car and come into the house:

PyelotSon: “An idiot/jerk almost hit us!” he said with a nervous giggle. (Sidenote: Yes, he’s picked up those derogatory terms from a couple of my times at the wheel.)

CutiePyeGirl: “We almost crashed!”

The chatter continued, and it took us some unraveling to figure out the chain of events when Nicholas walked in a moment later, shaking with adrenaline. He filled in the details in rapid succession: They were driving along the straight stretch before turning into my parents’ driveway when an oncoming car drifted into their lane. Nicholas honked (UK: hooted) the horn and the probable-young-person-who-was-texting reacted quickly, because he or she drove around my family – he/she moved onto the sidewalk/grass on the passenger’s side of my family’s borrowed van – to avert a head-on collision.

In this instance, we were saved. We were mercifully and miraculously saved from what could have been a life-taking or life-altering crash. I have my family intact, and the thought has kept me from sleeping as I recount the what-if’s, thinking about hospitals or funeral homes and write-offs of borrowed vehicles.

But we aren’t always kept from harm in this fallen world, for every day some form of sin, disease, or injustice seeps into our lives. I don’t know why God cushioned my family yesterday when other families lose sons and daughters, wives and husbands, mothers and fathers to accidents or cancer or abuse. But I’m grateful. I give thanks, mindful of the fragility of life, when a second can change everything.

Today I return thanks to God for saving me and mine. I want to be like the leper who returned to thank Jesus for healing him. The gift of the present moment feels all the more precious, the morning after the night before that didn’t change our lives forever.

August 9, 2013
Twentysomething choices

My niece is turning 20 soon, that wonderful decade of exploring identity, building relationships, entering into the world of independence and adulthood. It can be a time of searching and experimentation; a time of solidifying who we are. My smart and hard-working niece has known since she was 10 that she wanted to pursue a career in medicine, but when I was in college, I was a bit lost about what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I like words and writing. And I had enjoyed my dad’s computing, when as kids he would bring home a console and plug it into the phone for it to speak to the mainframe at Pillsbury, where he worked.

Which way to turn? The way ahead, or that little cobbled trail to the right?

So when I was wondering what to pursue at college, he encouraged me to be a technical writer. I signed up for some computer courses – Basic, Pascal, Fortran, and Cobol. I did okay at first, but when I got to Fortran I started to struggle. I went to see my professor when I was flailing around with the latest assignment. His words brought instant clarity: “You know Amy, I don’t think that writing code is something you really want to be doing in your free time.”

He was right, and I felt relief in dropping the computer-science minor. But I don’t regret the classes in Cobol or even my political-science major that I later embraced. I find it funny that I studied poli sci, for I’m not a news junky or a politico (as my husband, who has these proclivities, will fully attest). But God used and redeemed my choices of studies at college – my political-science major meant that I went to Washington, DC, for a semester, which turned into ten years of amazing, challenging, eye-opening experiences. My internship including working for a fabulous British Christian writer. Who knew I would later live in Britain, writing and working in Christian publishing?

So to those such as my niece who are moving into the next stage of life, I offer you blessings from a fellow pilgrim. Whether you have your path charted out or whether you aren’t sure which way to turn, may you feel freedom in taking the next step. May you feel the Father’s hand in yours, never constricting but always encouraging. May you experience joy in the journey.

If you’re well past your twenties, let me ask you this: How did your experiences of that decade shape your life?

August 7, 2013
Becoming ourselves – Agnes Sanford

I love hearing about heroes of the faith, especially those who might be overlooked today. One is Agnes Sanford, a pioneer in the healing-prayer movement in the twentieth century. Before she died at the age of eighty-four in 1982, Newsweek magazine hailed her as one of six people who shaped religious thought in the twentieth century. But before God used her so powerfully, she had to work through a painful journey of self-discovery and acceptance.

Agnes grew up in China, the daughter of missionaries. Her struggle to release her true self came when she was living in the States, married to a pastor. Her husband Ted had been raised in a clergy household, and Agnes loved his parents, especially his mother. At first, Agnes modeled the role of minister’s wife on her mother-in-law, but doing so brought forth a crisis of identity:

I had determined to make myself exactly like Ted’s mother, whom I adored. I would then be, I felt, the kind of wife that he liked. Therefore, I completely denied my original nature and devoted every moment to fruitless endeavor. And so I reached the depths because I was doing violence to my own soul. (Sealed Orders, p. 106).

She thought she should be the perfect host and companion to Ted in his ministry. But in doing so, she was denying the deeply creative part of herself that wanted to give birth to new life, whether through writing, prayer, painting, or other artistic ventures. The false self was keeping her true self from thriving:

My wounds were too deep to be healed so easily. And what were those wounds? If anyone had asked me at the time, I would have said, first of all, that the real part of me was simply not living, the creative one who longed, not only for children, but also for the children of the mind to be brought forth.

The basic trouble was that I had forgotten whence I came, and I did not know the sealed orders with which I had been sent to this earth. I sensed my thwarted creativity. I wanted to be a writer, and I could not, for all of my time and thought and attention was upon being a wife and mother.

… At this time I came very near to the deepest depths and could easily have drowned in them…. I could no longer see beauty. And when one can no longer see beauty, one can no longer see God. (pp. 101-102)

After a long struggle, Agnes sought counsel with a neighboring minister, knowing she needed to find a way out of the strangling depression. He brought clarity where she had been covered by a suffocating cloud:

“Don’t you see you have been trying to be a square peg in a round hole? To make yourself into something you are not?”

… “But nobody will like me if I am myself!” I cried. “Not Ted nor his family nor the parish nor anybody!”

“They won’t have you, unless you let yourself be yourself,” said Hollis. (p. 111)

With this, Agnes began to throw off the cloak of the ill-fitting clothes. Ted’s mother may have been created to fulfill the role of the “perfect minister’s wife,” but that garment didn’t fit Agnes. She would only be the best wife for Ted – and his parish – when she was living out of her redeemed self, that creative person whom God had called her to be.

God sent his healing, but he wanted her to be involved as well: “I find that God will heal us up to the point of our being able to think and to pray and to reason, and from then on, while He still helps us, we must nevertheless fight the battles of life ourselves. I was becoming a new person: the original person whom I was born to be. And this was the exact opposite of the person whom I had tried for some six years to make myself – a perfect minister’s wife.” (p. 118)

As Agnes stepped into her new clothes, she became that person. A writer, a painter, a woman devoted to prayer for people and the earth. And the world will never be the same because she flung off her rags and put on her royal robe, tailored just for her.

Do you have a new set of clothes just waiting for you to don?

July 31, 2013
Just say no

“Uncle John” in his study. I got to meet him there once, when we were talking about the third edition of “Issues Facing Christians Today” (when I worked at Zondervan).

Two years ago the world-famous theologian, pastor, author, and visionary, John RW Stott, died on 27 July 2011. I remember joining nearly two thousand others in St Paul’s Cathedral at his memorial service: archbishops and bishops were there; former churchwardens and vicars galore; scholars and publishers and laypeople. But missing were his wife, children and grandchildren – for he never married. Rather throughout his life he focused on fulfilling his calling with a laser-like focus. He said no to becoming a bishop; he said no to marriage; he said no to many good and worthy projects – articles, books, organizations – that would have distracted him from what he believed God was calling him to do. (And such was his personal discipline that he also always said no to seconds on food. Hmm; I could learn from that one!)

That morning before I went to the memorial service, I received an invitation to write a book for a respected American Christian publisher – a publisher with whom I would love to work. In an economic climate where publishing contracts can be like hidden treasure, I was thrilled to be considered. The project would be fun but the deadline a killer – just eight weeks hence. I dreamed and thought and pondered and prayed. But sitting in St Paul’s Cathedral, taking in the throngs of people changed through the witness of one man’s commitment and focus, I realized that I had to Just Say No. I was torn, for in saying yes I would finally be a published author. But what would be the cost?

A frazzled life in the coming days and weeks. A husband and children wondering where their wife and mother disappeared. Less sleep. Less prayer. Less fun with girlfriends. Less exercise and more eating of the wrong things.

Created by Nicki, www.keepcalmstudio.com.

The hidden but bigger cost, however, would come from not doing what I know I need to tackle. Namely finishing of the draft of my book – the memoir of how I looked for love and acceptance in men, and finally found my identity in God. Of how I’ve learned to turn off the talk fuelled by self-hatred and to listen instead to the One who created me and loves me.

What’s your calling? Who has God made you to be? Perhaps you’ve already sussed what drains or energizes you. If not, or if you get muddled and sometimes say yes to things you shouldn’t – as I do – join me in slowing down and listening to God’s whisper. Saying no might mean that later, for something better, you can Just Say Yes.

Is God asking you to say no – or yes? Is he inviting you to a new adventure that he’d love for you to embark on with him? Does he want you just to slow down? What are you sensing?

July 26, 2013
Review of the best book on unanswered prayer

God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer

Pete Greig (Survivor/Kingsway, ISBN 9781842913178)

Some years ago, my faith was seriously rocked when I thought God was telling me to move from one city to another, and then everything fell through with the move. I didn’t know what to believe. Was God out there? Did he care? Was he speaking to me? What was I hearing?

I would have loved to have been able to read God on Mute back then. Through God’s grace I was able to mature in my faith, but it was a long and lonely road to travel, filled with hurt, questions, doubts. Perhaps Pete’s book will shorten the path of others. I hope so; because of God’s seeming silence, many Christians lose their faith or allow it to be it watered down to an insipid state.

Pete Greig is a co-founder of the 24-7 Prayer movement, which has touched people around the world. He’s written about this prayer movement in another book, but this one is a profoundly personal yet deeply biblical exploration of unanswered prayer.

Just weeks after the birth of their second son, Pete’s wife Samie suffered a horrible seizure. After rushing her to the hospital, they learned that she had a tumor in her head the size of an orange. As Pete says, “Why, I wondered darkly, hadn’t my prayers made any notable difference when Samie and I needed God’s help more than ever before?” And, “Here I am, one of the leaders within a prayer movement … and (dare I admit it?) my deepest prayers are impotent…” (p. 38-39)

Pete searched for answers to the profound question of unanswered prayer, and determined that the book needed to be written that would fit between his wife’s “Reader’s Digest and a cappuccino.” God on Mute is the result of their years of prayers, searching, and reflection.

It’s been a few years since I read this book, and I’d love to read it again, slowly. First time round I was propelled by the story of Pete’s wife, Samie, as she discovered the brain tumor and her subsequent epilepsy. I was gripped by this human drama, especially as my brother has struggled with epilepsy nearly his whole life.

A book I will give to others and reread. It’s a treasure trove of wisdom which also poses the questions some are too afraid to raise.

This book has been out a few years; have you read it? What stories do you have of unanswered prayer?

July 12, 2013
Kindred spirits

“Heaven will be a grand reunion with people who might have become dear friends, had circumstances/geography/time not limited us.”

So said I to a woman I had only ever met once by email when interviewing her for the Woman Alive Book Club that I run. I had read her spiritual memoir and resonated deeply with her story, and when we exchanged emails I felt that instant knowing of someone who just gets you. Someone with whom you share similar loves and interests (God, books, culture…). Lest you fear I’m some strange stalker, she felt the connection too.

Have you had that experience of an instant soul friendship? Sometimes I’ve thought I should feel this almost inexplicable link with other people who are in similar life circumstances – whether we both work with words or are married to a clergyman or live as an ex-pat. But that’s not always the case. There’s that extra “something” with some other friendships that seems to bind our hearts and minds at a deeper level.

I’m finding it hard to write about these soul connections, because I don’t want to devalue the friendships I have with people who are different from me, who challenge me in ways that someone cut out of more similar cloth might not. Friendship is a gift in whatever its form or depth. Nor do we have time for endless numbers of friends either; we live within boundaries and limitations.

Which takes me back to my opening line about heaven. In heaven I reckon we’ll all have soul connections with each other. We won’t be limited by space or geography or time. We’ll know and be fully known. We’ll look into the eyes of our sisters and brothers and see all that is good and true and beautiful about them. How they are made in the image of God and how they reflect that beauty. And as we feast together – never over-indulging nor worrying about excess calories – we’ll rejoice in unity and communion and that mysterious one-with-God-and-each-otherness.

What about you? Have you had this experience of instantly knowing, at some sort of deep level, someone else?

July 10, 2013
Dual citizenship

When I first moved to the UK, I felt so self-consciously American. Hyper aware of my accent, which immediately labeled me as foreign. Fifteen years later, I usually forget my “other” status, but sometimes – often when I’m out of London – someone will look at me with curiosity and ask me where I’m from.

“North London,” I’ll say somewhat cheekily, fully knowing that’s not what they mean. “But from the States originally.”

And again I’ll be jolted into an awareness of otherness. That sense of being a foreigner in a strange land. The longing for home, which God embedded into each of us, whether we live in an adopted country or not.

A few months ago I wrote a poem expressing some of these feelings of heavenly citizenship, and to Whom we ultimately belong.

We belong

Attached

To you

To others

We belong.

The yoke

It’s a light burden

Making us free

Releasing us to bolt

Out from our pens

The gates flung open

Running to the Father.

We belong

Peace resides with us

A home is ours

With arms and legs

Hearts and hands

We belong.

Freedom and joy

Usher in light and peace

Rooted in the earth

Grounded we are.

Foreigners and aliens

Away from our home

Longing for a country

For a city and the throne.

We belong to each other

Needed for love

Learning to see Jesus

His presence among us

We belong.

© 2013 Amy Boucher Pye

What makes you yearn for home?

July 3, 2013
Sleeping with the vicar
Nicholas’s priesting, which happens a year after being ordained a deacon (who knew it was so complicated?). I know, the hat; what was I thinking? Nice photobomb too.

Today my husband has been ordained a minister in the Church of England for 15 years. I remember the occasion so clearly as I sat in the cavernous Guildford Cathedral with his family and witnessed him making his promises to love, hono(u)r, and serve God and God’s people. As we drove back to Cambridge, I was keenly aware of him wearing his dog collar for the first time when we stopped at a rest stop – I felt like he was broadcasting, “Hey, I’m one of those crazy Christians!”

While Nicholas went on the pre-ordination retreat, I had stayed with some of his friends in Guildford and prepared for the post-ordination meal. This was my first experience of putting on a party for his friends and the church. I remember making salads; this lovely broccoli one was probably quite foreign to Brits then (at that time salads hadn’t reached the level of acceptance as they have now on these shores). A woman from his church, surveying the heaping buffet table, said what a good vicar’s wife I would make. Oh, how I cringed at that. I had hosted the party as a gift of love for my new husband, not out of duty or expectation. Couldn’t she see that?

I’ve learned many a thing through the years of sleeping with the vicar (or curate). Like gently elbow him if he’s snoring and he’ll turn over. Here are two things I offer from my experience as a VW (vicar’s wife) to other clergy spouses. If you’re part of a church, perhaps these points will help you see the minister and spouse (if applicable) in a new light.

Our first home in Surrey.

Be yourself

One of the first people I ever met in Britain was a lovely American who was married to a Brit who was also a vicar. She was originally from Wisconsin (I come from the next-door state, Minnesota). Ah the wealth of advice and love she showered me with. We shared great laughter too.

She told me how on her husband’s induction to his first church as vicar, she wore a T-shirt under her coat emblazoned with the slogan, “I don’t bake cakes!” She had a strong sense of self and was cheerfully and playfully taking on any hidden assumptions from her husband’s new flock.

Now I do bake cakes, and in particular I’m happy to whip up a batch of my famous brownies for church events. In typical convenience-oriented American style, I serve up the amazing Ghirardelli brownies. Yes, from a mix. One of my friends at church was rather crushed to realize I hadn’t made them from scratch!

But there are lots of ministries at the church I don’t feel called to. I believe that if I step into those roles out of sheer duty, I’ll deprive someone else of fulfilling their calling to serve (and I’ll probably have a stonking attitude). Of course there’s a balance here, and we need to pitch in at times when we don’t feel called when the need is great. And sometimes God calls us into areas we might previously have eschewed. For me, children’s ministry is one of those. I find the prospect daunting and deenergizing, as much as I love my kids. But our church needed leaders so I agreed and now find the times I lead the pre-teen group to be filled with joy and good discussion and fulfillment. I’m a better discipler than teacher-of-the-young, which illustrates my heading for this section, “Be yourself.”

Embrace your instant community

When a publishing colleague heard I was marrying Nicholas, he said from his previous experience as a pastor, “You’ll always have community.” Now that that can be a good thing but sometimes a harmful thing too. Yet his comment brought light and clarity to me as I approached the quick succession of churches that Nicholas had roles with in the first half-dozen years of his ordained life (two curacies and then his first vicarship, where we remain nine years later). My friend’s advice echoed the words from the book of Ruth that reverberated through my mind as we drove to Surrey for Nicholas’s first curacy: “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16, NIV). These were now my people – warts and all. And I was their people too – warts and all.

In my years as a VW I’ve witnessed episodes of the downside of community: backbiting, gossip, slander… It hasn’t been pretty at times and it can be excruciating to watch from the sidelines, feeling that all I can do is pray (which yes, I know is actually the biggest thing). Or having to gently disappoint people if they have expectations of me (which doesn’t happen often in our multicultural church in London). In Surrey during Nicholas’s first curacy I was working at HarperCollins. I was puzzled when one of the older ladies said to me during the refreshments after church, “I’m so looking forward to seeing you on Thursday!”

“I’m sorry; what do you mean?” I asked, trying to cover up my confusion.

“Nicholas is coming to our over-50s group.”

“Oh, I didn’t know,” I replied. “I work in London during the week so I’m not able to come.”

This photo of a church in the Costwolds illustrates how the church community can be at times. Sometimes with dark clouds; sometimes with fluffy ones; sometimes both at the same time.

Although there can be negatives, community has its upside too, such as my friend’s comment about the instant nature of the potential for relationships in a church. In each of the three churches where my husband has served, I’ve asked God to give me some friends. In Surrey my closest friends were of non-English nationality (not that I sought this out): Scottish, South African, and Irish. In Harrow, Nicholas and I were blessed to have friendships blossom with the two clergy couples and another couple in the church who are now mission partners in Moldova. Here in north London I enjoy a wealth of friends, especially with my female peers. These are the true riches that God bestows on his people.

Unsolicited advice

If you’re part of a church, here’s a bit of advice of how to love your clergy/clergy family (as applies).
- Love them as individuals. They will fail at times and soar at others. Love makes it all better and easier.
- Hold your criticism of the preacher’s sermon until during the week, and not right after the service when comments can feel more bruising.
- If your minister is married, don’t assume the spouse knows everything going on in the church. If the minister is doing the job in the right way, the spouse won’t know the confidences.
- Celebrate your church leader when appropriate. They need praise too.
- Pray for them. As Alfred, Lord Tennyson, said, “More things are wrought by prayer than the world dreams of.”
And how about you? What advice would you give if you’re part of a clergy setup? If not, what have you observed if you’re part of a church?
June 28, 2013
What I’d tell my 20-year-old self
“There’s a new company that’s selling books on the Internet. It’s one to watch,” said the man who would become the Motley Fool.

The year was 1993, and I was sitting in his living room, having enjoyed a bountiful feast made by his wife, with whom I was working on a project on the Classics. Being in my twenties and not thinking I should actually invest any of the disposable income that I had (which was more than I realized, of course), I let the advice roll by. Yep, you can guess the name of that company.

What would you tell your 20-year-old self, if you’re in your forties or higher? I posed the question on my Facebook wall yesterday, and got a mixture of funny and poignant responses.

Stripes on top and on the bottom?

Chose your life partner carefully

One of my friends wrote, “Don’t marry that guy. God gave you good instincts for a reason” and my heart went out to her. In my twenties I was saved from such a union, which surely would have ended in divorce – as much as I would strive to avoid divorce. I knew deep down that things weren’t right with us, but it took strong advice from my parents and my work colleagues for me to end the engagement. It seems once a couple is engaged, they are swept along in a current of planning and living, perhaps, on a realm of unreality. Well-meaning acquaintances ask, “When’s the wedding?” The woman in particular looks into tulle, beads, canapés, and flowers. That’s why my husband and I, when we help couples who are preparing to marry, counsel them to do the hard work of marriage preparation before the engagement. Then ending the relationship, if it isn’t right, isn’t such a public announcement. And the couple isn’t distracted by wedding planning.

I remember so clearly the advice given to me by one of my colleagues when I was engaged to the wrong man. He held his hands out, palms facing each other and about six inches apart. “Two people are like this,” he said. “When they marry, just by the sheer force of becoming married, they become like this,” he said, moving his hands about 12 inches apart. I was beginning to see that marriage wasn’t going to solve the core issues that my fiancé and I had, but would only exacerbate them. It took me several more months, but finally I ended the engagement. And several years later (thank you God) met the right guy.

God will redeem your brokenness

Another friend wrote, “Sometimes the hardest adjustments you will have to make will be the ones that end up giving you the most compassion for others – so try not to resent them so much. ” Again, wonderful advice. I’ve seen this so often in my life, how the things that feel so hard and excruciating and painful can be used by God in surprising ways.

Kara’s cabin. Epic.

Not to say that I welcomed, for instance, my close friend dying in a car crash when we were 19. But now I can see how all these years later, that core group of high-school friends has remained much closer than we probably would have had Sue not died. We go on trips together and those who live in the Twin Cities in Minnesota see each other regularly. Of course we’re not perfect and sometimes we have hurts to forgive and feelings to mend. But I would be a much poorer person without them in my life.

My parents just recounted how the day after their 50^th wedding anniversary, they were called to comfort a grieving mother who had just lost her 20-year-old son to suicide. She said, “I wish I would have had parents like you growing up!” Their compassion has blossomed and multiplied over the years of challenges they faced (as I wrote in my blog). God redeems.

You are not fat!

One of my Facebook friends said this, and I totally agree. Ah, to have been able to love my body in my twenties and earlier, when I may not have been stick thin like some of my friends but wasn’t nearly the size I thought in my head. And to have that wonderful skin – now I would tell my 20-year-old self for sure to slather on the sunscreen and ban baby oil while tanning. Or better yet, stay out of the sun all together!

Yes, it’s Pac-Man, and yes, it was the 80s. See advice, “Don’t take yourself so seriously.”

The deeper issue is accepting how we’ve been made – our body shape, size, and features. I’m not sure if my positive reinforcement of my daughter’s beautiful body can speak over the din of society and her peers as she grows up (she’s six), but I’m going to try. We are beautifully and wonderfully made, something I think about when I read Melanie Reid’s moving Spinal Column, in which she tells about her life following breaking her neck and back when she fell from a horse. My thighs might be bigger than I would like, but they are strong and I can run and jump and walk. As Liz Curtis Higgs said when I heard her speak last week, we should wake up each morning and to the mirror say, “Ta-da!” For we are created in God’s image and are therefore gorgeous.

You can do it!

What else would I tell my younger self? A few random remarks:
- Don’t take yourself so seriously.
- Your worth is not allied to what you accomplish.
- Write! You can do it!
- Your sister will become one of your closest friends.
- Would you please stop fretting over guys?
- Lose the shoulder pads. It’s really not a good look for you.
- Adventures await.
So what would you tell your 20-year-old self? Here’s a selection from my friends:
- What are you so afraid of? Don’t be. What are you so proud of? Don’t be.
- God wants you to rest, shrug off your mistakes, forgive yourself, and laugh a lot.
- Don’t worry so much about the future or about what others think of you. Listen to God. The only thing certain is that things will not turn out how you expect!
- You are not really busy until you have kids. So enjoy your adulthood pre-kids and do lots of late-night activities and fun travel.
- Buy Apple stock.
And you? What would you add?
June 26, 2013