Gimme My Pit!!

Jonah, Jonah, Jody…. Errr, ummm… Yeah, actually, that’s exactly right! Somewhere in its frightfully deep, dark recesses, my mind has been pondering Jonah for the last few weeks. Tonight the story of his character really hit home – most specifically, his pleasure in wallowing in a pit of contentment. Yes, Jonah wallowed in contentment. Grant me some liberty as I egocentrically digress to my own life for a few paragraphs.

Be the psychoanalysis what it may, I spent the first 30 years of my life living as a very shy person, fearful of everything, and bemoaning the lack of things I always wanted but Mr. Big Shorts Upstairs withheld from me. (He & I are pretty tight now, so I think He’ll accept my pertness with a little chuckle….) In the tradition of Adam & Eve, I often pointed to a list of people whose decisions determined my life circumstances: God, parents, siblings, teachers, bad guys in dark alleys, the makers of Doritos, the Taliban. I even added myself to the list, devolving into a self-castigation that explained how I was responsible – yet remained powerless. I could give you a list of at least 5 reasons to be afraid of almost anything in life. I’m great at justifying reasons not to do something, not to try something, not to venture into the unknown.

Since this blog was intended as a way to empathize (a nice word for commiserate) with single women, hopefully encouraging them somehow along the way, I’m going to bring this post back around to the original intent more than the last couple posts. I used to want to get married – far too desperately. I say “used to” because when I turned 30, I no longer felt desperate. I realized how great it is to be single. I love autonomy. I enjoy controlling the remote. I don’t like being bossed around. I prefer not to have to compromise if I can just have my way from the inception.

I’m selfish.

That’s the short of it, really. As much as I wailed over my single travails, the truth was…I was comfortable in my pit of despair. I understood its walls. I was never surprised by the emotions it created. I could justify singleness by blaming God. (Essentially, that’s what we do when we shrug and say, “Well, God must want me to be this way because He’s the only one with any real control. He does declare Himself to be sovereign, after all.”)

Being single is comfortable. I think anyone who knows me well knows that I can be quite…steadfast in my purposes. Maybe I’ve already used this line? I like to consider myself steadfast – something my family may have interpreted as obstinate or stubborn over the years. I wanted God to conform everything around me, including Mr. Right Now, into exactly what I wanted. I specified to God: eye color, interests, travel plans, food tastes. I mean, I had a plan. I had my t’s crossed, i’s dotted, p’s fully looped, z’s zedded. There-was-a-plan. In high school I even wrote a poem about Mr. Right.

God said, “....”

It’s not so much what He has said as what He has done. Or not done. I simply don’t have a clue why He does what He does, but – and I mean this sincerely – He is God, and He is sovereign, and He does have a plan for my life, but it’s His plan. The dreams in my heart are His dreams – and they’re His to change or fulfill. He’s not obligated to explain Himself, yet from a heart of love and to the purpose of comforting, leading, and reassuring us, He devoted thousands of words in a book we too often take for granted.

O Juxtaposition!

I wasn’t sure why God brought Jonah to my mind a few weeks ago, and why the story popped into my mind again tonight, until I started thinking about how entirely out of my comfort zone I’ve been living lately. In September I took a huge step of faith. I quit a job that paid me more than I make now and provided me a social outlet, and I went back to work from home. I was very concerned about the decision. How in the world could it be the right thing? I worked from home for several years, part time, while going to school. When I graduated with my BA, I worked from home for a little over a year. That was one of the loneliest periods I’ve ever experienced! Why would I risk that pit again?

But something changed in me in the last year and a half. I didn’t just enter my 30s. I didn’t just accept (albeit, resignedly at times) that being single may be God’s plan for me. I sometimes feel like my mind snapped. I’m so desperately bent on enjoying life – on living now instead of waiting for some fairytale future – that I tend to run away from my comfort zone. I used to joke that if I had a crystal ball, I’d know what decisions to make ‘right now.’ The problem is, ‘right now’ was my crystal ball! Exactly what I was doing is exactly what I would be doing in the future if I didn’t make a change.

Back to Jonah – that boy! Wow, he really had a selfish attitude. He argued with God – didn’t want to leave his comfort zone. He was content to cost a merchant a ship full of profit and to nearly cost the sailors their lives in a storm - and he actually slept through it all! The captain had to go “down into the lowest parts of the ship” (1:5) to awaken the prodigal prophet. (I wonder as I read this story, how many times has my own ambivalence toward others’ needs caused them some sort of trauma?) Next, Jonah forces his shipmates to go against their consciences and throw him overboard. Though Jonah cried out to God in prayer from the fish’s belly, and he did eventually go to Nineveh, his heart remained opposed to God’s. (How often do I outwardly conform to God’s direction, yet internally argue with the Spirit?)

At the end, Nineveh repents. What’s Jonah’s response? Check out this verse: “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry” (4:1). God’s purpose being fulfilled made Jonah angry! The word “displeased” refers me back to Genesis 1 wherein God consistently surveys His creation and ‘sees that it is good.’ By God’s original design, mankind walking in intimacy with Him was good. Jonah’s audacity continues as he prays, “I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm” (4:2). Jonah asks God to take his life rather than allow him to survey the repentance of Nineveh. I’ll grant a reader that Nineveh had some bad mo-jo. Terrible jujubes. Scary things that went boom-slash-flay in the night. But to be angry at God for mercy? For Lovingkindness? For relenting from harm?

Jonah proceeded to construct a shelter for himself on a vantage point that would allow him to witness God’s action against the city. Interestingly, Jonah constructs this shelter after he acknowledges God’s character and predicts God’s mercy on Nineveh. Was he that brazen that he considered God might actually zap the city to appease one mere man? Whatever else may be true of Jonah, he was certainly a self-centered man. His comfort zone was in being a prophet of God who warned people about God’s wrath, and then he watched people suffer the consequences of non-repentance. Maybe he had some egoism about being part of “God’s chosen people” as opposed to being a heathen. I don’t really know.

The Worm of It

I may not know Jonah’s motives entirely, yet I’ve lived with some of his same character for years. My comfort zone has been different, but the root is the same: selfishness. I had constructed a mental and emotional shelter, and I wanted to observe God bending His sovereignty to my will. And times occurred when God provided a nice, shady, leafy tree to add a sense of justification. Then, as did Jonah, when God caused a little worm to chomp down my leafy plant, my negative attitude doubled.

Most of us will never be asked to enter a city renowned for flaying people alive in order to preach to them. Most of us, I’m almost certain, will never spend 3 days in a great fish’s belly only to be vomited back onto land. Most of us won’t even be prophets. But what we will be is challenged to allow God to conform our comfort zone into unity with His heart and mind.

I rejoice over the changes that I’ve observed in my own life recently. I keep telling people that I don’t understand why I’m so motivated to challenge myself, but I have made it a mission to try new things lately. I took guitar lessons, signed up for an Italian cooking class (that had some real challenges!), picked a church and became a social nut, and continue to look for new opportunities to say “yes!” instead of “umm, heck no.” I hope and pray that God grants me further grace and perseverance to keep this up.

At the same time, I began to wonder tonight if my yearning to renege my comfort zone could simply open the door to another comfort zone. I’m keenly aware at this moment that God’s preference is that I not rely on what’s comfortable, but that I rely on Him. For example, my pleasure in singleness. It’s something I truly enjoy. But what if God asks me to exchange autonomy for submission? This, my friends, is my single greatest fear right now. Do I run like Jonah (not that there’s a line of dudes in Corvallis trying to bop me on the head with cupid’s wand), or do I run to Christ’s arms whatever the course He may point toward? The question is not merely, “Have you stepped out of your comfort zone?” The question is, “Has God alone become your comfort zone?”