the rambling missionary

by erika haveman

I wrote this in early 2015, but at the time was feeling so vulnerable I couldn’t make it public.  I share it now in the hopes that someone out there who is feeling like this can know that they are not alone and it is really, truly possible to push through and find the grace necessary to believe that Jesus is good.  It’s a year later and I have a good idea.  I would not have thought that a year ago, as is evidenced in the following (lengthy) piece of writing.  If you feel alone and don’t know where to turn, don’t hesitate to reach out!  You can always email ofthisgirlsheart@gmail.com for help, prayer, a listening ear & heart and the love is always free..

I had a friend in SBS who was always honest where she was at.  One phrase that she would often use to describe the present state of her heart was to say she “was feeling pretty fragile at the moment.”  I responded to that with countless hugs, snuggles, cuddles – love language = physical touch.  Rarely did I use words when I responded to her.  She didn’t need words.  But I never quite knew what it felt like to be “fragile” in the same sense she was talking about.

Until now.

The past month has been an incredibly fragile time for me.  And I don’t write this out to ask for help or validation or justification or words of love (though don’t get me wrong, I will still receive them).  I’m simply writing because what do I do when there’s too many thoughts in my head?  I write.

I once shared about one of my co-workers who challenged me by saying, “if you believe that I’m going to burn in hell and you aren’t sharing your faith with me that will save me from that, then that’s just mean.”  This has been something that has been on the forefront of my mind since then.  It got harder when I started developing feelings for a friend.  This friend is genuinely wonderful.  I could list off all of the reasons why, but it hurts enough as it is – so I won’t remind myself.  The hard thing was – he isn’t walking with Jesus.

Now does the fact he’s not walking with Jesus stop me from caring for him and wanting to be with him?  Nope.  Not at all.  The feelings and the desire to text him and ask [force?] him to hang out with me are all still very real and sometimes very [all] consuming.  I feel like some crazy girl in a movie who says, “I can’t live without you” – when I’ve always responded to that line with copious amounts of disdain and said (arrogantly) “I will never say or think that about someone.”

Well I’m eating those words, aren’t I.

However there have been a few things that have helped (maybe?  There are really great moments and then what feel like hours of absolute misery) the past few weeks.

First of all, I recognized early on with this guy that he was amazingly encouraging of my faith and relationship with Jesus; I went through a month of speaking nearly every other weekend at retreats and rallies and even in my own church.  Speaking can be really exhausting.  But for the final weekend of speaking, right after him and I started hanging out, he was so faithful to text me and ask how the weekend was going, how my talks went, making jokes and continuously making me smile.  He made the weekend easier.  And never once did he belittle for me for what I was doing.

Side note: I have always had an assumption that guys who aren’t active Christians are guys who won’t treat me right, who won’t respect me properly, who always party and sleep around and are not going to support what I feel called to do.  This guy wasn’t like that.  He blew up all of my ideas of what someone who doesn’t know Jesus is supposed to be like.

Which made it all the more difficult to have to say we couldn’t be together.

For the past year and half (at least) God has been breaking down all of my ideals of what a relationship “should” look like.  We all grow up with our lists of non-compromises, things we say we’ll never think or do – but reality hits and we realize that relationships are a lot harder on our hearts than that.  Last year God tore down walls of all these things that I thought I needed in a man, the biggest one being that I used to think I needed a guy who knew what he was doing with his life (before we started dating).  What I’m learning is this: nobody ever knows what they’re doing with their life.  I was totally humbled in this last year when I was venting to my roommate about how guys never know what they’re doing with their lives to which she promptly responded, “yeah but Erika, you don’t know what you’re doing with your life.”

I probably told her to shut up.

She may never remember when she’s got class, but she’s got an uncanny and impeccable ability to call me out and throw truth in my face when I need it.  I can’t stand her for it.  Roommates.

Anyways, after all of that I got back home in December and had little left on my “list” – the final and only thing was that he needed to be seeking the Lord and love God with his whole heart.

…And then this guy shows up.  A guy who has all the little things I would love and appreciate in a man (the things I was willing to never have and had removed from the “list”) and I could really only respond with, “what the deal, Jesus!?”

I am still asking this question.

Though I haven’t gotten a direct answer on that one yet, God has spoken some things.

1. Sexuality is something that doesn’t just happen when you get married.
This was the first thing God spoke – which I felt didn’t really make sense with where I was at (except that I did want to just take this guy and make up for the past 26 years of not having a man’s attention).  It started to dawn on me that there’s such a lack of talking about how you deal with your sex drive as a single woman.  I think it’s so hushed up and we pretend like as soon as the wedding night hits then you flip the sex switch on and then you want to have sex.  This just isn’t true.  God created us as sexual beings – so really how do we deal with this as single women?  It’s something I’m still working on an articulate answer to, but it was a huge revelation and relief to know that God recognized and saw my sexual desires, validating them by telling me it didn’t make me a huge sinner to know that I’m a sexual being, but that he created me this way.

2. I am more afraid of the vulnerability and risk that comes with being in a relationship with a guy than I am afraid of that guy not knowing Jesus.
Because the truth is – I trust that Jesus has this guy.  I know God loves him and cares for him and wants him more than I ever could (which seems impossible because if I’m still being honest, I still want him beyond I could explain, really).  It terrifies me that somebody would be willing to accept me – all of me.  Not just the nice, pretty, wonderful things about me, but also the impatient, frustrating, just drive-you-crazy things about me.  Confidence is generally not a problem for me – but this sometimes leads to arrogance, which is so incredibly ugly.  To think that somebody would be okay with both sides of me?  Unheard of.  I hardly believe it’s possible – but this guy sparked something inside of me that said, “it is possible!”  And for the first time in my life I had a real, legitimate hope that someone would want to care for me – and he was real.  Like he actually was a real person.  When I told one of my girl friends ( who also knew this guy wasn’t actively seeking Jesus) about the need to work out my vulnerability issues, her response was, “Good! you need someone safe to work this out with.”  My response? “Well who is safe!?”  Because in my mind – this guy I like is safe.  She reminded me (while staring at my furrowed brow and clenched teeth) that a safe person is someone who knows Jesus intimately.  That was hard to hear – because I didn’t want to hear it.

3. He needs Jesus.  I need to have more fun.
I have also recognized that these past couple months haven’t included a lot of fun.  I’ve lost a lot of energy by simply not fully engaging in the things that I love doing and not spending time with the people I love spending time with (I have also worked a lot of weekends, which is when people generally don’t work, so I recognize I got myself into my own tough situation).  It’s also harder now, of course, because a LOT of my close, single friends kind of live very, very far away – and as much as I love a good FaceTime, it’s not the same as just getting out together for drinks or shopping or coffee.  Maybe God put this guy into my life to be my friend because God knew he was fun – and I need fun.  And maybe God put him into my life because God needed to use me to be an example of someone who knows that following Jesus isn’t about following a set of rules.  I had emailed one of my mentors about my situation, and she totally affirmed this for me.  She also encouraged me that (if I could handle it) to develop a “friendship” (for lack of better term) with him.  She suggested, “What God may be showing you is your future.  However that guy is not your present.  Mismated alliances are not God’s best when it comes to friendships and especially marriage.”  Sometimes God will put people into our lives for a short time for a very specific reason that we may never fully understand.  I wish this season had been longer with this guy is all…

4. Finally, expectations can hurt.  A lot.
I am sure the expectation I have of my future spouse to love Jesus is a hard one to swallow for someone who doesn’t love Jesus – and I am sure it hurts.  It hurt me to say it.  I have lost sleep about it.  It kills me that I had to use Jesus as my excuse for not being with someone – even just dating someone.  It makes me feel like a snooty Christian girl – and it scares me to think that this might turn him off Jesus forever.  I’ve come to see that sometimes the best things in life demand an honesty that hurts.  I am hurting through this and I wish God would just fix it all overnight and let me and this guy be together.  I want this guy to know Jesus in a way that brings him life and excitement and a feeling of worth that equates to a joy to live by.  I hurt because I don’t know how to make that happen anymore, nor do I know how to stop wanting to be with him.  No matter how often I cry out to God (which is more times in a day than I can count right now) God isn’t “taking this cup from me.”  I use this phrase because it struck me when listening to sermon at a church I “ended up at” on Sunday morning.  The pastor was preaching from the text in Matthew when Jesus was in Gethsemane right before He went to the cross.  Jesus cried out to God the night before He died – He asked God to take the trial, the suffering, the pain from him.  Jesus in all of His humanity needed God.  God responded by allowing what needed to be done because there was a greater good being fought for.  Maybe – just maybe – this “trial” of “pain and suffering” I am going through has something greater going on, something that I’m fighting for despite having no clue what the outcome is actually going to be.  I wish I could explain to this guy that it’s not that he’s not “good enough” because goodness sakes, he’s more than good enough.  He’s great.  He’s wonderful.  He’s incredible.  But as much as I know this I want him to know that God believes this about him.  I don’t know how to make him believe this, though.  I can’t force anybody to believe anything – I learned this early on in youth ministry.  I couldn’t change anybody’s hearts – I just had to be there and attempt to convey the implications of real love.

But all of this is hard.  Even when God speaks we find hope for the moment – maybe the day.  But soon that hope seems to go and we’re left feeling empty, broken, confused and frustrated again.

And so I’m still there.  Although God has been speaking, I’m still there.  I know God is still here.  I know I’ll get through this.  I trust God has this guy – and as much as I want to control what’s happening I need to surrender all of my control of this and just let it go.  Which feels punishing.

When all of the good experiences fade to memories we’re left with what the reality of today is; it’s therein we need to push to find the hope that looking back seemed too easy to come by and remember that those previous experiences were also times when we fought (and sometimes didn’t fight) to see a future, to see a hope, to see what good was possibly going to birth itself into our lives.  It’s then we realize that we never did anything to move our own lives forward – but that there was always some One bigger than our little lives who was always behind us saying, “this is the way, walk in it.”

I have no idea.  I have no idea where my life is right now.  I have no idea where it’s going.  I have no idea if I’ll make any money this month.  I have no idea if I’ll ever actually be able to release all the built up sexual tension that exists in my body.  I have no idea when spiritually I’ll be stable again.  I have no idea why sleeping in doesn’t take away the physical exhaustion I seem to be experiencing.  I have no idea what it’s like to breathe in and out with clarity of mind that doesn’t consist of thinking of this guy.  I have no idea if my emotions will regulate so I won’t burst into tears while eating breakfast when while making it I was totally fine.  I have no idea.

But something tells me the big guy upstairs does.  Somehow I need to continue to trust that.  I will continue crying out to Him.  Sometimes I have no idea why.  But my life til now shows me that He has been faithful – and someone that faithful doesn’t just stop being who they are.  Especially not God.  He’s got well over 4,000 years of proving Himself faithful.  He won’t [can’t] stop now.  Even when I have no idea.