As most of you know, I am an Auburn fan and an Auburn student, so on game day in the plains you won't find me anywhere else but in Jordan-Hare Stadium. Now, this Saturday was monumental for the Auburn family because it was the first SEC game of the season, of which we lost 10 in a row last year and the year before (and as always, no, I don't wanna talk about it). So you can imagine my anxiety when it was fourth quarter with 1:56 left on the clock and Mississippi State was up by three.
Usually, if I was at home, this would be the point where I would leave the living room to go watch the rest of the game upstairs in solitude for fear of showing my not so lovable side if things didn't go our way--well, basically if Auburn blew it. Ask my Dad, he knows how angry I can get. I'm definitely not proud.
Okay, so we had possession and before Nick Marshall started throwing down field I said out loud to all the people around me, "He's gonna choke. He's probably going to throw a pick."
Immediately someone turned around and sternly said, "Don't say that."
And with 10 seconds on the clock Marshall threw to Uzomah in the end zone for a touchdown. The crowd went wild, and I no longer had a pit in my stomach. Wow, what a relief. Auburn's first SEC win since 2011. War eagle.
So a burning question comes to mind when I reflect on the events of that night: Why did I feel the need to express that he was going to choke? Where was the hope and my Auburn Spirit?
This is a question that I unfortunately know the answer to. And it goes like this: I have an uncanny desire to prepare myself for hardship in advance.
This may sound strange to you, but don't fret, it sounded strange to me too when I first realized this tendency of mine two months ago. I was sitting in Hayley's basement a week before I was leaving for school, and to be honest, I was terrified about going to Auburn because I knew that I was going to have to handle tribulation, and after a summer full of struggle, I was over it. And because she gets me and I could care less about what she thinks of me, I laid it all out for her and everything began to unravel.
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| Seriously, my love for this girl is unbelievable. |
You see, I dabble in people watching, but I also have a tendency to try to fix everything. Come to find out, these two traits can get me into quite a bit of spiritual trouble.
I had been hearing stories from girls similar to me that had gone to college before me that their freshman year was so unbearably difficult, and being an observant person I consolidated all of their stories and concluded that freshman year has the potential to be the most difficult year thus far in my life. Of course they all talk about how they would never take it back or do it again because they were refined by the fire and became more like Christ through it--which is a gift that can never be surpassed--but I still felt that I needed to grasp the idea in order to maintain the knowledge that I would inevitably struggle in college. And also, I aimed to understand the hardship early in efforts to avoid their struggles.
It seemed that this became all I could talk about with people. I desire to be real and give honest answers to personal questions, so when I was asked how I felt about going off to school, I shrugged away from the obvious "I'm sooo excited! I seriously can't wait!" and edged towards a response more along the lines of "I'm very aware that it is not going to be easy, so I'm excited to see how the hardships make me more like Christ." Okay, seriously? Who says that. I was trying to sound like I was sophisticated and like my head was firmly placed on my shoulders, but in reality, that statement could have easily been translated to "I don't trust that the Lord will provide me joy in the midst of all situations at Auburn so I'm trying to store up understanding now so that I can handle it on my own later." Yikes, my heart is certainly depraved.
So as I was talking to my dearest friend, it occurred to me that I had been living in the future trying to figure out how to best prepare myself for the battles to come, all the while feeling like a spiritual giant with all the answers. And yes, Jesus was swift to slap me in the face with the truth that I simply CANNOT do anything on my own, much less fight a battle against evil by myself, and that boasting in faulty spiritual wisdom that sounds like precept--yet is not--and can be convincing is heartbreakingly deceptive. I was trying to play God by obtaining the knowledge of God. I'm very guilty of this. Talk about conviction.
With this very hefty realization, I pieced together a passage from C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters and how it so relevantly correlated with my new found sin issue. If you haven't read this book, drop everything and do it now. You probably think I'm kidding, but seriously, do it. It is a book written from the perspective of a respected demon, Screwtape, who sends letters to his nephew, Wormwood, as a sort of a "How to" on being a successful demon. Wormwood had been assigned to tempt or lure a Christian man away from their so called "Enemy"--better known as God the Father almighty--and bring him to their "Father Below". It is a fresh perspective on temptations and sin issues that Christians deal with and uncovered many areas in my life where I was stumbling into temptations that I was almost entirely unaware of.
This is the section that pertains entirely to this struggle.
[The demon Screwtape writing to his nephew, Wormwood]
"Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present. With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past. But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity. It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time - for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men's affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead... We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present."
Alright, so yes, being a believer who attended a covenant Christian school for 8 years and is a member of a church deeply rooted in truth, I was aware that spending my time thinking about and investing in the future is wrong and ultimately unfruitful, but for some reason it never occurred to me that meditating on potential affliction and suffering was living with my heart in the future. In fact, one of my favorite verses that the Lord laid on my heart in high school was Acts 1:7-8, which says:
"He said to them: 'It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.'"
But even though this verse taught me that knowing the future is not my responsibility (nor could I handle it), I still wasn't enthusiastic about college because for weeks I had been "daydreaming" about how miserable it was going to be. I was trying to grasp what the Father has set by his own authority. So yes, thinking about future suffering is equally as wrong as gazing towards future joy and blessings instead of counting your blessings in the moment. And for some reason, this is a truth that had never even crossed my mind. How dense am I?
I allowed my ignorance to tempt me into living future-mindedly, which according to C.S. Lewis is the least like eternity (which we were made for, HELLO) out of all segments of time, but when the Holy Spirit so abruptly convicted me of this sin, I knew of nothing to do but to fall prostrate in repentance.
So a week before I left for school, a peace came over me. God provided me with a new mindset about Auburn and tools to fight my tendency to figure out my future and construct my own armor. He reminded me that I am clothed in his armor and that he WILL take care of me (which seems to be a reoccurring theme in my spiritual journey as of late).
And he totally has. Let me just brag on my King for a second.
I have made some incredible friends in the past few weeks, and he has answered my prayer for community in a resounding way. I'm giving him all of the credit because there is no way that I could have met all of these amazing people on my own. I literally feel like I stand with my arms hanging and my jaw dropped when I think about the ways that he has provided immeasurably more than I ever wanted or deserved. Wow, I'm overwhelmed with joy.
And no, my life is no where close to perfect, but I'm watching my struggles shift from loneliness to new and wonderful things (that's sarcasm in case you were wondering because it's still sin). But while I'm still 110% sinful, I'm excited to be refined in new and different ways. It means that he is chiseling away at my sin and he is still working on taking my heart from a tarnished piece of marble to a beautiful image of his son. How could I not be excited about that?
He's been gracious to teach me that living in fear and expectation of suffering is like trying to be the author of a story that has already been written, published, and stocked on a million bookshelves. He has already gone before me, and I now understand that I can, should, and will rest in that truth.
God is not human or the quarterback of a football team, he is the powerful creator and shepherd of everything in existence, so from here on out I won't be sitting around anticipating that my God will choke.
He won't. He can't.
