The New Eve (19 page)

Blandina was repeatedly beaten and slashed in the following days, and yet she stubbornly survived until the last day of the spectacle. By now she was famous. No one had ever seen such bravery in a woman. But how would she finish? Would she live with the end in mind even when one simple word, one bare moment of living for now, could save her life?

One last time Blandina was thrown into the arena. This time she was with the only other publicly known Christian left alive in Gaul—a fifteen-year-old boy named Ponticus. The boy kept the faith and died quickly, but his courage emboldened Blandina. She was bound in a net and then tossed before an enraged bull that hurled her around like a sack of straw. When the bull grew bored, the soldiers dumped Blandina's limp form from the net. She was still alive, and no, she did not wish to renounce Christ!

By now the judge had seen enough. He rose from his seat and shouted down his judgment: “Kill her immediately!” A soldier grimly obeyed. Blandina's remains were fed into a bonfire and then unceremoniously dumped into the Rhone River.
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Blandina's life was hers to save. All she had to do was renounce Christ and swear by the idols of Rome. Dozens of others had done exactly that. They forsook the end to live for the now. Blandina, a young girl with her whole life before her, could have joined them, but she made a better choice—a hard choice we're still talking about nearly two thousand years later. Why did Blandina give her life away? She gave it away because she knew God had given her life meaning and purpose, and she believed that in the end her courageous choice of faithfulness would be
rewarded. It was this kind of bold faith that fueled the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire and that ultimately came to you and me. One can only imagine Blandina's celebration at the judgment seat of Christ. Great is the reward for living with the end in mind!

I mentioned earlier that Stephen Covey said the happiest, most effective people have goals that purposefully direct the course of their lives. It's important to note that these aren't merely goals that float in and out of their heads when they have a spare moment to reflect. No, these are
written
goals that powerfully pull their lives forward.

You can benefit from the same practice. By recording on paper your end goals, you bind yourself to a contract with the future you. With God's help you commit to take every day whatever steps are necessary to get you where you want to be before your life is over. This is true end-in-mind living.

What's more, Covey found that people who write down their goals almost always end up overachieving. I've seen this principle at work in my own life. When I look back on the goals I set down on paper years ago—goals I hoped to achieve before my death—I find that I achieved most of them before age fifty. I would never have believed that was possible when I first wrote them in my twenties. Living with the end in mind helps to make good things happen—often sooner and better than you dreamed possible.

So, where do you want to be by the end of life? A New Eve will ask this question with utmost seriousness, knowing that her proactive engagement with these vital, ultimate issues will be one of the wisest moves she can ever make. Indeed, it
is foundational to a happy and purpose-filled life. So pretend for a moment that tomorrow is your last day. Looking back, what do you see? What did you make of your life? What did you do? What did you become? What were you known for? What impact did you leave? It's in asking these kinds of questions that you give yourself—and the God who lives in you through His Holy Spirit—the opportunity to unlock the doors of purpose to your life.

Bobb Biehl can help you here. Bobb is a world-class business consultant and personal friend whose wisdom and insight have helped me through many tough spots. Each time we're together, Bobb offers me helpful exercises that enable me to keep my life focused and on track. I still carry one of those exercises (the chart on the next page) in my wallet.
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I offer it here as a practical tool to help you begin consciously envisioning the end goals of your life and put them into print. Want to give it a shot?

Take a moment and see what comes to mind as you take a pencil and fill out the diagram on the next page. Don't try to fill out the whole diagram at this time. One or two simple answers under each column will suffice for now. For example, you might say I want to
be
a writer, I want to
help
orphans in my city, I want to
enjoy
traveling the world, I want to
have
healthy, well-adjusted children who know Jesus Christ, I want to
be
financially generous to others, especially in kingdom work. When you're finished, reflect for a moment on what you've recorded. Does it reflect what you
really
want in life? Does it reflect what you believe as a Christian? If it doesn't, what's missing? If it does, are the choices you are making right now moving you toward your goals? If not, why? As I said, this exercise is a simple way for you to begin formulating your life's end goals. So give it a try.

To make the most of this exercise, make a copy of this diagram and put it in your Bible. Periodically review and refine your end goals. Always use a pencil so you can make changes. In time, this should become your life compass.

The apostle Paul stated this advice best. To paraphrase him in Ephesians 5:15–17, be careful how you live your life, not as an unwise woman, but as one who is wise, making the most of your
life, because the days are evil. Don't be foolish but understand the will of the Lord.

A New Eve takes this admonition very seriously. She doesn't want her life to be wasted. She wants it to be purposeful before God. She wants it to count. Therefore, she does whatever she can to make sure her life is pointed at those things that she knows count most. She works and prays to discern what the will of the Lord uniquely is for her and then lives in its light. This effort is the fourth bold move of every New Eve for navigating life successfully. Here it is:

Live with the end in mind.

Engaging a Man

T
hey were on their way to a wedding.

It would be a lavish affair, so Carolyn had to have exactly the right dress. Something high-end, of course, but modest in appearance. Carolyn knew from experience that the photographers—there would be at least a dozen—would be as apt to shoot her as the bride, but the last thing she wanted to do was steal the show. After hours of searching the racks at Saks Fifth Avenue, she found what she wanted. As she left the store, Carolyn was surprised to see that the sun had already ducked well below the western edge of the cityscape. It was getting late. She’d better hurry.

Across town, John Kennedy Jr. noticed the time too. He picked up his sister-in-law, Lauren, and headed for the municipal airport as quickly as he could. But traffic was bad. So were the gawkers. Pedestrians, street vendors, and other drivers—they all craned their necks to get a look at John in his shiny white convertible. Traffic crawled.

By the time John and Lauren met Carolyn at the hangar, night was beginning to fall. John scrambled to get his small plane ready for takeoff. As a new pilot, he was not yet instrument-rated. He
was licensed to pilot a plane only when visual conditions were good. He checked the darkening sky several times and listened to the FAA weather report.

All clear. John could handle this.

At twelve minutes after sundown, John roared down the runway in his Piper Saratoga. Carolyn and her sister chatted behind him. Moments after being airborne, a thick haze developed, veiling the sky. John struggled to see his way. He aimed his plane out over the ocean toward Martha's Vineyard. But as time went on, he began to doubt himself. He glanced down at his instrument panel, but it was no use. Too complex. The dials and numbers meant nothing to him.

As conditions worsened, John lost all his bearings. Up and down, water and sky—they looked the same. “You can be upside down and turning to the left and your body is telling you you're right side up and turning right,” pilot Edward Francis later said of such conditions.
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As Carolyn huddled with her sister, hoping for the best, John made a decision. Supposing that he was dangerously close to the water, he yanked the yoke toward his lap to gain altitude. His instruments told him not to do that—that his wings weren't level—but John didn't notice. Suddenly the Piper plunged seaward, caught in the grip of a violent corkscrew dive it never escaped.

John Kennedy Jr. lost his way and then his life because he had nothing to go on but his instincts. Unfortunately, those instincts failed him. And today instincts are failing many contemporary women who, like Kennedy, guess their way through life. Now more than ever, it's difficult for a woman to “read the skies.” The view is clouded by new choices, new opportunities, and new conflicts.

In former times choice was the privilege of an elite few. Careers and social status for the less privileged were decided the day they were born. For the masses, life was narrowly defined. They did what was expected of them. For women, that almost certainly meant they learned the domestic trades as a girl and married before their twentieth birthday. That was the given of the times.

But the given of our era is that there are no givens. The playing field is wide open. Women can essentially do anything they want. As I've said, that's mostly a good thing. A freeing thing. But it also demands that today's woman be instrument-rated. She can't afford to fly blind in the twenty-first century when looking for satisfying womanhood. It's deadly when she does.

Instrument-rated womanhood means managing yourself by bold faith in God and His Word. It means refusing to trust your senses, especially when life gets dizzy and you're disoriented by worldly pressures and options. Instead, as a New Eve, you must trust your instrument panel. Respond to the dial that reminds you to always
live from the inside out
and stay with God's priorities even when a tempting opportunity tells you to abandon them. Another dial on your panel will steady you by helping you
keep a big-picture perspective
on life; another will point to
a biblical vision of womanhood;
still another, to
living with the end in mind.
Instrument-rated womanhood requires trusting the dials, not your instincts or the latest worldly visions.

Instrument-rated womanhood also means you must check the dials when engaging and choosing a man. Instinct alone in this area can be especially deadly. Love can be deceiving. You've seen the pain in the faces of close friends, business associates, and family members who've flown blind in this area. When it comes to men, a New Eve places her faith in something beyond intense and intoxicating emotions. She's much more savvy than
that! Instead, she employs a fifth bold move to keep her steady with the men who come into her life. Here it is: