When God's Call Requires Change

The Curse of the Comfortable Life

Melanie did not have an easy life.  Her parents were passionate and impulsive, which sometimes meant laughter and excitement, but more it often manifested itself in screaming fights, and moving, and periods of fearful uncertainty.  As a result, she grew into a woman who deliberately contradicted everything about them.  She was gentle and soft, she never raised her voice, and she agonized over the tiniest decisions to the point of making herself sick.

Only one decision came easy to her: marrying Rob.

Rob was not a man in the way that her father was.  If the toilet was clogged, Rob was useless.  It also fell to Melanie to roll up the newspaper and smash the wasps that continually found their way into the apartment through a gap near the dryer vent which, it never occurred to Rob to repair.  But that didn't matter to Melanie because he was a man in the way that it mattered to her.  He would protect her with his life, and nearly did one night when they were visiting friends downtown.  Perhaps the incident wouldn't have come to that but Rob didn't back down.  The next day he asked her to marry him and she said yes before he got the question out.

Rob didn't have much luck finding a job.  He tried working in sales and hated it.  He had moderate success in IT but was laid off.  In a complete departure, he worked in landscaping for a year and didn't mind it but couldn't see supporting a family that way.  Though Melanie had always wanted children (and still did) she asked one night how Rob felt about nursing school.  "If that's what you want to do," he had said with a shrug and she thought, perhaps, he was a little bit relieved.

She took her time, researching, deliberating, weighing each program, predicting how it would fit into her life, deciding which one would make her happiest.  When she finally selected one, she found it to be much harder than anticipated.  But the day came when she sat on a cushioned stool in front of a real live patient for clinicals, the smell of latex in the air, a throbbing purple vein before her, and she reached down and found the magic balance between cold detachment and warm compassion.  She plunged the hollow needle into the vein and watched as the tube filled with dark blood.  Her patient had said, "That wasn't so bad," and she knew she was born to do this.

It didn't freak her out when Rob came to her one day and said he wanted to enlist in the Army.  She knew that it would be a long process, if it actually happened (which she doubted), and that she would have plenty of time to accomplish her goals, so she told him to go ahead and talk to the recruiter.  It couldn't hurt to ask questions.

He burst through the door of their apartment that same afternoon, flush with excitement, a thick packet of papers in his hand, and said, "They want me on a bus to Fort Sill in three weeks."  He spoke rapidly, breathlessly, telling her the unusual circumstances of his immediate ship date but she didn't hear any of it after he said, "We'll be at our first duty station in four months."   He put his hands on her hips and did a little suggestive dance and said, "You'll be playing the little Army wife in no time."

She shoved him away and said, "You expect me to be happy about this?  What about my career?  I've worked so hard for this and I'm supposed to just throw the last eighteen months in the garbage?"

They didn't speak for two days. 

After that, Rob was angry and she was sorry because he had a right to be.  Two years ago, she was as desperate as he was for him to have a good job so that they could have a good life.  She would have followed him with no regrets.  But now she was creating her own good life and she was so close to the finish line.  There was such promise ahead if she stuck to the nursing program, and what could Rob promise?  A tiny house on post with old cabinets and an endless job search for her, an under-qualified woman who would never, ever finish anything she started because she would have to follow him wherever he went?

When so much time had passed that they began to feel that they were wasting what little time they had left, she wiped her eyes and said, "I love you, Rob, but I need to stay here and finish what I've started."

Rob shipped out and Melanie got her nursing degree.  She landed the job she'd always wanted.  She stayed faithful to Rob and he to her despite the distance.  This was not exactly the life she planned but she was making it work and that little part of her that craved stable, predictable life was happy enough.  Rob didn't hold it against her.  He understood.  He always held out hope that she would give up her version of a good life for the one he promised.

This is a story that I've seen played out many times.  Sometimes it ends badly but sometimes, like with Rob and Melanie, the end is not necessarily bad, but you get the feeling that it could have been better, don't you?

I think that's how we are so often when God has called us to something that has the promise of greatness but the risk is just too big and we're just too comfortable where we're at.  There is a story in Numbers in which the Israelites are about to go into the Promised Land.  It's been 40 years since they left Egypt and now all they have to do is muster the courage to cross the Jordan and fight to obtain it.  They've waited their whole lives for this, for the "land of milk and honey," for God to make good on what He promised their parents.  There are good things, finally, to come for them. 

But three tribes, Rueben, Gad, and the half tribe Manasseh beg Moses to let them stay where they are.  They've built up their livestock, and the land they're on now is good enough, and, well, they just don't want to cross the Jordan right now.  Things are going ok for them, so why take the risk?  Moses is initially furious with them and thinks they are being unfaithful but they assure him they are not.  They pledge their young fighting men to go when duty calls but they say, "We simply want to build pens for our livestock." 

If they are willing to accept this portion of land instead of the one that is waiting for them in the Promised Land (Numbers 32:16-19), what is left for Moses (and God) but to say, "Fine.  If this is what you want, I'm not going to drag you kicking and screaming.  The choice of whether or not to enter into God's will is ultimately up to you." 

This is the question we have to ask when we have made our choices and we are satisfied with our lives the way we have ordered them: Am I shrinking from potentially great things because of the risk that stands in the way?  Have I ever led my family to shun comforts in favor of the hard work of obtaining promises seen from a distance?

We are at such a disadvantage as Americans who "create our own destiny" and amass wealth that tricks us into thinking our lives are just fine, thank you very much.  When you're settling in at the end of a comfortable day, looking ahead at another comfortable day tomorrow, and the next day and the next, and hoping that it just goes on this way for 30 years so nothing ever gets uncomfortable, do you ever wonder what you might be missing?  I promise you, God does, for He did not call you to a life of fear and timidity.