Neva Knows the Score, part 2

3. A Revolutionary Christian Woman is able to GIVE HER HEART AWAY TO OTHERS and then, someday, BLESS AND RELEASE those very same people that she has invested so much into.

This is how we accomplish the great commission.

“Partir c’est de mourir un peu.”
To part is to die a little.

Isaiah 49: 15, 16
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are ever before me.

This point was especially poignant, as I am still trying to process how to engage and interact with my former roommates.

I love those women more than I love life. I would give anything they ever asked of me. Except that I haven’t been giving them very much of my time, and they haven’t been asking for much of it either.

I will admit that I felt a level of bitterness, and at times still do, as they moved into new homes of their chocie -- without me. But then, I started to notice that their lives weren’t precisely what I wanted. I doubt any of them missed a beat in their relationships with God, but in some ways they seemed to disconnect from the church, while my life was being consumed more and more by new activities and new people with whom to connect. I didn’t know how to balance the two, and I chose nearly full involvement with a new group of people, establishing a new group of core friends.

My old roommates hold a place in my heart that can never be filled by another set of people; they in fact are my very heart. By a "core group of friends," I mean people with whom I spend the majority of my time. I felt that God was leading me to be more involved in the campus ministry of our church, a group of people my old roommates have nothing in common with and would therefore never choose thehang out with them.

So in the new year, I fond myself in a new household with four women, all but one of whom I’d known less than a year. I knew that this situation would require a lot of trust in God on my part, because in a lot of ways I felt very exposed to the world. As soon as I moved in with these women, they would see me for who I really am, and I was sure they wouldn’t like me very much. My other fear – one even more selfish – is that I wouldn’t like them very much. Then, I thought, I would really be alone.

But God surprised me. I love my new roommates, and they love me. Yes, my life is drastically different now than it was six months ago, but if my life had remained the same, I would not have grown in the ways I have. I miss my old roommates, a lot, but I definitely see how God was working to make me more like Him. It’s one hard thing to live in a house with five other women. It’s another hard thing to be a leader of a house of five other women.

A side note: This time last year, although I knew I was no where near being ready to marry, I wanted so very much to be married. Now, even after three short months of “leading a household” I understand a lot more a (or at least I think I do) about what being a wife might entail, which is mostly always putting others before yourself (just like Neva says, she really does know the score), but God has completely removed my desire to be married -- anytime soon.

I really want to keep living this life that God has laid out for me. This life of partnering with my roommates to rescue those women who are staggering towards death. Something that I wouldn’t have event the faintest idea of how to do with out the years that my previous roommates built into my life.

I like that little French saying, that to part is to die a little. The day we moved out of our old house, a part of each of our hearts died a little, but the day I moved into my new house, I felt like a new part of my heart came alive.

If there is one lesson I continue to learn about the Christian life, it’s the act of dying to oneself. Christ died so the others may live, the ultimate mark that He is the one who is revolutionizing my life are the parts of that I let die so that he can give me new life. Usually I think of those as very personal private areas, but I think this time around he did it in a much more public way, so that he could receive the glory.