All I Need Is Jesus and a Good Pair of Jeans: The Tired Supergirl's Search for Grace (12 page)

We are designed for relationships, pure and simple. There are many lonely shaped holes that dot our superhearts. We are always searching for that kindred spirit. The one who knows us. The one who loves us best.

Loner Chick is totally against us figuring out how to fill up the lonely pit. She gives helpful tips like: “So you know that you will always be lonely, right? No one is ever going to love you the way you need to be loved. Just give it up.”

Or, “We’ve been down this road before. People are always a disappointment. You are never going to get what you need from him. He’s great and all, but he’s not
the one
.”

Or, “You thought she was your best friend, but obviously she feels differently than you do. You’re better off protecting yourself. She will only let you down.”

Now the crazy thing about depressing Loner Chick is that part of what she says is true. We hear the rightness of what she says, and we tired supergirls believe it wholeheartedly.

We really will be alone. We will be disappointed by people over and over again. They are just so human. So broken. Just like we are. So this half-truth makes us think that we will never be full. We will never truly feel that we are known and loved. We will never banish the loneliness. And the thing is, we tired supergirls can’t. We haven’t the ability to fill ourselves up. We are so used to being self-sufficient, to meeting our own needs, that we feel desperate that we don’t have the power to fill that chasm on our own. What Loner Chick neglects to tell us is that there is One who can fill us. There is One who, in fact, longs to fill us up. He would like to fill in the chinks and nooks and crannies and pits of loneliness found in our hearts and souls. This is the whole reason that Jesus came to earth. To reestablish a right relationship with God the Father. Ever since Eve, this relationship had been broken, off-kilter, spoiled. Sin had destroyed that perfect, filling relationship between God and his creation.

As Jesus talks to his disciples about his purpose here on earth, about all that they have done together, he tells them soon they will not be together. This seems so strange to the disciples. They have been together for three years. They love this man. They would follow him to the ends of the earth.

What can he possibly mean?

But the time is coming—in fact, it is already here—when you will be scattered, each one going his own way, leaving me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me.

John 16:32

And then as he finishes telling them these things, he says this amazing prayer over them. The Son of God is praying on their behalf. Because he wants these men to have the same kind of relationship with his Father that he has. The kind they were created for. The intimate garden relationship God intended for all of us way back in Eden before everything went so terribly wrong. Jesus wants them to know they are not alone. They don’t ever have to be alone again.

My prayer is not for the world, but for those you have given me, because they belong to you. And all of them, since they are mine, belong to you; and you have given them back to me, so they are my glory! Now I am departing the world; I am leaving them behind and coming to you. Holy Father, keep them and care for them—all those you have given me—so that they will be united just as we are. During my time here, I have kept them safe. I guarded them so that not one was lost, except the one headed for destruction, as the Scriptures foretold.

And now I am coming to you. I have told them many things while I was with them so they would be filled with my joy. I have given them your word. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not. I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. They are not part of this world any more than I am. Make them pure and holy by teaching them your words of truth. As you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world. And I give myself entirely to you so they also might be entirely yours.

John 17:9–19

Now the thing that is missing in us, that intimacy, that love, that need to be full, can only be fulfilled by Christ. But these disciples do not know this. They don’t know they cannot have full access to God the Father until Jesus takes on the punishment of their sins. They do not realize that Jesus is saying, “I love these people so much I want them to have what I have. Communion with you, Father. Fellowship with you. Full relationship with you.” And Jesus is telling his Father that he is willing to do whatever it takes so that this can happen. He is giving himself entirely over to God’s plan of salvation so that his disciples can be entirely God’s. He is willing to die so they don’t have to be lonely anymore. Even though Jesus is going back to heaven, he is making a way for his disciples to be full. To know love. To have a relationship with the Creator of their souls. He did that for them.

We tired supergirls will never find all we are looking for in the relationships we have here on earth. We aren’t meant to.

He did that for us.

We weren’t made to. We will only find what our souls hanker for in the presence of our heavenly Father. And what was once impossible is now possible because of Jesus. Because we belong to Jesus, we belong to the Father.
Belong
is just about the most opposite word to
lonely
that there is. Loner Chick has no clue what it feels like to belong. She skims the outskirts of real living and is empty and afraid to step into a real relationship. She is desperate to keep you from realizing there is a solution to the emptiness. She would really like to keep you on the sidelines of love.

The only way a tired supergirl can get rid of the lonely is to sink into the knowledge that she belongs to God. Wholly. Fully. Forever. Because Jesus loves us, because he died for us, we get to belong to God. Body and soul. The one who crafted us inside our mother’s bellies, the one who designed our personalities and formed our souls, is waiting to fill us to running over with himself. And even better, he promises to never leave us or forsake us. And that is something that could, quite possibly, fill a tired supergirl’s heart to overflowing.

15

I WISH LIFE WAS EASY

I
dream about having easy days. I dream that I will wake up in the morning and everything will go exactly as I planned it in my head. I dream about days when the children obey, my husband and I communicate well, and someone is handing out free chocolate. I have visions of all my housework getting done, all my writing getting done, and all the laundry magically folding itself into neat little piles and floating to the appropriate drawers. This last dream may come from watching too much Mary Poppins as a child. And I dream that there are no hard things like people dying, war, disease, arguments, tragedy, or differences of opinion. Differences of opinion make me sweaty. In an easy world, there would definitely be no bills. Bills are the worst. They come at inconvenient times, they get bigger each month, and, worst of all, I have to pay them. I just don’t like life when it gets hard.

I spend a lot of time trying to make my life easy. I organize myself. I avoid conflict in relationships. I try to control my circumstances as best I can, lest I be stretched in any way. I have a great aversion to discomfort. I cling to the familiar and reject change. I don’t like pain. Maybe it’s just me. Or maybe it’s our culture. We have coined phrases like “living on easy street” or “living large.” It is something we aspire to. Having everything come to us without putting anything into it is what we really want. Our culture used to value a good work ethic, but now it seems that people would rather just play hard instead of work hard. We want all the perks without the struggle.

When I was in high school, my dad was the president of a Bible college.

I visited the college for an on-campus event and cut to the front of the line. The lady who was in charge of registration looked at me a little funny.

“I’d like to register for Campus Day,” I told her.

She smiled and said, “Great. Just go to the back of the line, and when it’s your turn, we will register you.”

“Don’t you know who I am?” I asked. I was the president’s daughter, after all. My dad ran the show, people.

And she smiled again and said, “Yep, I do, and you can go to the back of the line. I’m sure your dad would say the same.” Ouch.

It’s not that I was a huge snob. I just thought I deserved privileges. My dad was pouring his life into this place, for goodness’ sake. Shouldn’t I get to go to the front of the line?

I wanted the perks that my dad deserved without actually having to work for them.

If I must be honest, that is how I would prefer to live my life. Moving to the front of the line. Being served by others.

Getting what I want when I want it. Not having to struggle or grow or do anything that goes against my nature. This is largely due to Lack-of-Reality Man. I love this guy. I listen to what he says all the time. He is so nice. Lack-of-Reality Man encourages a rich imagination, saying things like, “God wants you to be happy. You should have whatever makes you happy. With a little whipped cream and chocolate sauce on top.”

Or, “You shouldn’t have to work on your marriage. If you just say that you love your husband, you don’t really have to show him you love him or serve him. Go ahead and put yourself first. It will all work out.”

Or, “You shouldn’t have to struggle so much. Everything should be easy for you. You deserve a break after what you’ve been through. If something is bogging you down, just get out of it. Life is not supposed to be hard.”

And that is the clincher for us tired supergirls. We don’t want to believe that life is supposed to be difficult. We know that Jesus promised us trials of many kinds, but we would prefer to think he has limited those trials to the persecuted believers in communist countries. We somehow think that since we know Jesus and we love Jesus, only good things should come our way. That hardship will flee from us. We want to believe there is some miraculous way to live our lives that won’t press in on us or wear us down or hurt us. Lack-of-Reality Man encourages this view, and then we easily become disenchanted with Jesus and journeying with him through life when things get rocky and painful. Because we want it to be easy. All of us tired supergirls have hard things in our lives. We have all been wounded by life and are wondering how we can get out from under the hard stuff. We would like the benefits of knowing Jesus without the fellowship of his suffering. But the two go hand in hand.

As the day of Jesus’s crucifixion draws near, he begins to prepare his disciples for the coming week. There is no real way to spin this news in a friendly way or make it easy to digest. He has already shared what lies ahead for him when they get to Jerusalem, but they can’t quite wrap their minds around it. He tells them that he will be betrayed, mocked, spit on, beat with whips, and killed. But then he will rise again. They don’t get it. This is the Messiah. The king. Their savior. They have other things on their minds.

Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came over and spoke to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do us a favor.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“In your glorious Kingdom, we want to sit in places of honor next to you,” they said, “one at your right and the other on your left.”

But Jesus answered, “You don’t know what you are asking! Are you able to drink from the bitter cup of sorrow I am about to drink? Are you able to be baptized with the baptism of suffering I must be baptized with?” suffering I must be baptized with?”

“Oh yes,” they said, “we are able!”

And Jesus said, “You will indeed drink from my cup and be baptized with my baptism, but I have no right to say who will sit on the thrones next to mine. God has prepared those places for the ones he has chosen.”

When the ten other disciples discovered what James and John had asked, they were indignant. So Jesus called them together and said, “You know that in this world kings are tyrants, and officials lord it over the people beneath them. But among you it should be quite different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all. For even I, the Son of Man, came here not to be served but to serve others, and to give my life as a ransom for many.”

Mark 10:35–45

James and John are so very real. Here is Jesus telling them that soon he will be tortured and crucified, and they ask him for a favor. Will he save them a seat? Will he honor them when they get to heaven? They have struggled. I’m sure being a disciple was not easy. They traveled long distances with Jesus. Sometimes they had no place to stay. They left their families and the comforts of home to follow their master. They want to know if there will be any perks. They feel they deserve some perks.

Jesus lays it out for the disciples again. It is amazing that Jesus doesn’t just throw up his arms in exasperation. He has lived with these men for three years, and still they don’t get it. He calls the disciples together and tries to explain. He says (tired supergirl paraphrase),