In Better Than My Dreams, Paula Rinehart declares "I secretly believe that I'm the queen of second-quessing, though I know many women who would vie for the title."
Me! I'm in that pageant.
One of my favorite movies is "Sliding Doors," with Gwyneth Paltrow. It tells the double sided story of a woman who meets a tangent in the road. One side of the story shows her returning home to discover her unfaithful, leech of a boyfriend with another woman. However, in a second version, the simple act of missing her train catapults a whole different direction to her life. I'm definitely a frequent flyer on What If? Airlines!
Rinehart goes on to explain, "Hidden behind most of our regrets is the myth of the guaranteed right choice - as though if we'd only done it right, the path would have been smooth."
Of course, one of the most tempting "what ifs" for me revolves around my marital decision. Having been raised in The Salvation Army (a church with such strong cultural identity that I could merely meet another Salvationist and feel like long-lost kin), I too often wonder how my life might have been different if I had met and married a Salvationist. My children have a completely alien life from the one I experienced while growing up in that particular denomination.
The reactions of other Salvationists certainly played some role in priming the pump of regret. One officer, a close friend of our family for years, called and urged me not to "buy trouble," as his own daughter had done in her marriage to someone outside the Army. Another Salvationist, married to a non-Salvationist, questioned me over and over again as to whether God changes His mind (introducing seeds of doubt). My own corps officer at the time, treated my future husband quite poorly and pulled me aside to ask, "how could you possibly turn your back on the Army after all they have done for you and invested in you?"
Initially, I was incensed! How dare these individuals, who did not even know my fiance, turn my actions into something traitorous and harmful. How dare they imply that what was invested in me was invested for the Army alone and not for God's wider purposes.
Eventually, I began to teeter between the strong desire to prove their judgements wrong and my own internal temptations to question the path God had chosen for me (after all, if God had desired for me to be in a permanent relationship with a Salvationist, He had ample opportunity and constant willingness, if not desperation, on my part). But really, it all comes down to trusting God's sovereignty, as Rinehart's book asserts.
My favorite passage, and the one that led me to pick up this book, is titled, "What Might Be Simply Is Not." When Catherine Gillespie reviewed the book, she highlighted this passage where Rinehart quotes Jim Elliot, as he contemplates his own regrets:
"I have returned to his words many times when I feel the loss of something I had anticipated but which fails to happen - all the what-could-have-beens of life. Elliott writes:
'What is, is actual - what might be simply is not, and I must not therefore query God as though he robbed me - of things that are not ... [the] things that are belong to us, and they are good, God-given and enriched.'
There is a quiet release in my spirit ... when I realize that often, my dreams really are not God's dreams. What does not happen was not meant to take place. My failure - or someone else's failure - didn't catch God by surprise, like it slipped under the wire when he wasn't looking."
This book is a must-read for anyone struggling to make sense of a life that hasn't followed the path you desired. It is a gentle reminder that God has a "different kind of wonderful" in store for you, that often can only be achieved by bringing you through the difficult patches that we want to view as mistakes or regrets.
I also loved this book because she quotes so many of my favorite people. In a passage focused on finding God's place for you, Rinehart quotes Frederick Buechner, "The place God has for you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."
She goes on to state: "the common theme that emerges from the lives of women who smile at the future - women who love their lives - is that they've discovered the intersection where their deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.... The fine irony is this: discovering that small part, the one with your name on it, is often the phoenix that rises from the ashes of your broken dreams."
She quotes C.S. Lewis, "God's love is unique in the universe in that it consumes and yet leaves us more intact."
She explains, "What we clutch has a way of being pried from our grips. And yet God is there, shaping in you and through you what he really means to come of your life."
She encourages the reader to nurture a spirit of gratitude despite less-than-ideal circumstances. "You don't have to waste away in the jail of this-should-have-been and I-wish-it-were. The truth is that there will always be something missing in the picture. Gratitude is getting to enjoy the moment ... Gratitude is what keeps you from standing knee-deep in a river of water and dying of thirst."
I was deeply thrilled when I discovered that this little book held a quote I had long wished I had taken down verbatim, when I heard Brennan Manning deliver it as a benediction for a service I attended. It turns out the words are actually from an old priest named Larry Hines. To me, it sums up the beauty of fully resting in God's divine sovereignty for your life.
"May all your expectations be frustrated;
May all your plans be thwarted.
May all your desires be withered into nothingness
So that you may experience the poverty and powerlessness of a child ...
And sing and dance in the great compassionate heart of God."
Before I pass this book on to anyone else (something I feel convicted to do, because it holds such important encouragement), I plan to take some time (perhaps at my summer retreat of CBLI) working through the excellent study guide section at the end of the book. After that, let me know if you want to be on my lending rotation.
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