So I have started a new 'tradition' of sorts in my morning routine today. For 15 minutes I will pray for Emily and I. You might be wondering what those prayers are about and I will admit that a majority of the time sounds like this, "Thank you so much for Emily! Thank you so much for Emily! Thank you so much for Emily!" But I also have been praying for her work situation and even my schooling synchronizing with my time with her. I pray that I am becoming the man of God she needs and she is becoming the woman of God I need. I pray for her safety. I pray that she can pick up on everything that God is trying to teach her and myself for that matter. I pray for help in protecting our hearts and learning how to protect them. I pray that the both of us will be rescued when the temptation is too much. I pray that I would only have affection for Emily and would not spread my heart to multiple girls - even if it is just in my head. I pray that same prayer for her. I pray that when the time soon comes that God would keep us both in check and remind us that our love for Him comes before our love for each other.
So that is pretty much the content of the prayer, but the setting for this particular morning was special too. After I got washed and dressed for the day I decided to have my cereal out on my new apartment's balcony. My apartment is on the third story directly looking out to the Superstition Mountains as well as Four Peaks. It is an amazing view. What made it better is that when I began my cereal and prayer time was the exact moment the sun started to rise above the horizon. It had rained hard yesterday, so the clouds in our immediate atmosphere were still thick. When the sun burst forward to just the right of the Superstition Mountains all shades of red, orange, purple, and bright white shot across my scenery. It was one of the most beautiful sunrises I can even remember seeing in my life.
The nature of the sunrise changed over the course of the 15 minutes. It seemed that as the sunrise change so did the nature of my prayers. At first when it was dark and the sun had went behind a cloud for a moment I was praying for my side of our relationship. But as the sun came out of hiding and spread its light farther over the sky and the Phoenix valley my thoughts turned to Emily and God working on her side of this equation. At the end of this time I felt deep angst. Maybe it was feelings of impatience mixed with greed, or even puppy dog love combined with pity. But more than anything in the world at that moment I wanted Emily to have experienced that sunrise at my side. Yeah yeah, I know we will have plenty of sunrises in the future - but I wanted us to have that one too. I want us to have tomorrow's and the next. But we can't and so I'm left with a question. Is it still worth it?
Jacob thought it was.
Genesis 29:18 says this, "Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, "I'll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel."
This story is actually pretty jacked up but there is something special in it that God has taught me. Jacob loved Rachel so much that even before he could have any type of physical intimacy with her, he worked for her father 7 hard years to earn her. She was worth 7 years, no biggie. If you know the story then you know that at the end of the 7 years Rachel's father tricked Jacob and gave Jacob his other daughter whom Jacob did not love. Jacob is stuck with this sister, Leah the ugly one, and still thinks Rachel is worth it. So for a whole other set of 7 years he works for his scumbag father-in-law to earn a relationship with Rachel.
Talk about a perspective shifter. Here I am whining to myself that I can't be with my girlfriend for maybe a year tops - because waiting is so hard. Then you have Jacob who worked manual labor for over 14 years to be with this woman Rachel. Rachel was worth a long distance relationship to Jacob in the sense he could not have that relationship with her even while he worked there. He knew he couldn't have her until he'd served his time and he still went for it.
Emily is sooooooooo worth it to me. There is no other girl I know in my life that I would rather pursue because the long distance thing was too much of a restraint. There is no reason imaginable to me why we can't wait a year to be with one another.
The passage goes on and says in verse 20, "So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her."
She is worth it to me. Besides it's, "only a few days...."
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