New Blog Site

Hi All,

I moved my blog site to a new site and won't be updating this one anymore.  Feel free to look up the other site at  www.andreabanandrea.blogspot.com

Andrea

Between Hope and Reality

 Hope for love can be destructive.  Dreams and thoughts can dance together forming a beautiful and dangerous tango.  Both influencing each other until reality is lost in thoughts, and dreams hold unrealistic hopes.

I tend to feel emotions quickly and strongly, including these hopes that can be destructive.  I have learned to build walls in the past year to protect me from this type of hope.  These walls have protected me from rejection and from the possible pain of love.  Walls that have allowed friends through, but never love.  These walls have allowed me to be myself.  They’ve allowed me to live in reality without skewing emotions.  

Hope for love can’t be locked up forever though.  Abandoning hope can be destructive.  Without hope the walls will swallow you whole and can hurt more than unrealized hopes.  The dance is safer, but not as beautiful with walls. Perhaps hope of love is worth the dangerous dance with reality; and abandoned dreams could still be a reality.  

A reality where walls were used for protection for a time, but were knocked down by discarding pretenses.  Where being open to the possibility of love allows for a deeper unselfish connection.  A reality where just maybe he feels a little hope too and a small glance and a shared smile turn into a shy hug.  Where hope puts a crack in a wall, and even if nothing but friendship comes, there is a glimmer, a spark of feelings, somewhere between hope and reality. 

The Echoes of Pain

He is in pain.  The worst type of pain, the type that includes a loss of hope, a loss of faith in others and stems from a loss of love; it’s a common life pain.  This pain runs deep and whenever it surfaces brings other pains with it.  Pains from other areas of life that seem to be buried deep beneath the surface yet always rise to the occasion and join in with the fresh pain.  This pain will go away, with time, but it may come again in the future, as part of the past pains when a new pain comes.  It could be prevented.  A heart can be hardened and protected, but can it ever truly be full then?  It’s a risk, to un-harden a heart, to try to remove the callouses and risk the pain.  The pain in the pain is sometimes from knowing it could have been prevented.  That it never needed to be there.   But it does need to be there.  To fully love, it needs to be there.  

There is pain in watching him.  A pain in knowing his pain intimately as it echoes my own past pains.  Echoes of pain that once slashed deeply and viciously with very little hints of mercy.  A familiarity with the loss of hope and love.  I know it is not my pain, but for a moment it is mine as it hauntingly echoes.  A shared pain, yet not shared. His pain real; mine from the past, wanting to cry out, "I know, me too!" and to soothe and comfort as the echoes resound through me.  But echoes are different from the real pain, even though there is a familiarity with the pain, there has been healing. 

He’ll be okay. He’s in God’s hands.  The pain is in God’s hands.  Someday, his pain too, will just be an echo.   

This Time I Will Praise the Lord

There are a few things, or relationships, in life that I have continually wanted or asked God for.  I am fine without them but they are not far from my prayers, and generally end up being the center of them, more than they should be if I am honest.

I’ve been thinking about prayer a lot lately and my relationship with God.  Prayer is an important piece of communication with God, and I’m recognizing that my prayers can be more “me” centered than God centered.  While I think it is important to bring desires and petitions to God, I’ve lately felt the need to bring more to God than that.  Specifically being thankful and bringing praise for what has been going on in my life, or what He may be doing in it without my knowledge, no matter the circumstances. 

Every now and then I read a passage in the Bible that I am familiar with, but it speaks to me in a new way.  Recently, I have been thinking about women in the Bible, and specifically the story of Leah and Rachel in Genesis 29.

For light context purposes, Leah and Rachel were sisters. Leah was the older sister and we know that she “had weak eyes” and Rachel was the younger sister and beautiful.  Through a series of prior events, they end up married to the same man, Jacob.  Jacob loved Rachel more and was ultimately tricked into marrying Leah first and then married Rachel as well.  This scenario is a reality TV show just waiting to happen (Sister Wives, literally).    

I’ve related a lot to Leah in this story recently.  No, not because I’m married to a man who has an additional wife.  Women during this time period found their purpose in child bearing.  Having children meant they were building their estate and ensuring a future (especially if the children were male).  While these two women were very different from each other, they both wanted God to change their circumstances.  Leah desired the love of her husband (which Rachel had) and Rachel desired to have children (which Leah had). 

Leah’s responses to God in her circumstances have been resonating with me lately.

Genesis 29

31 When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. 32 Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, “It is because the Lord has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.”

33 She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “Because the Lord heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too.” So she named him Simeon.

34 Again she conceived, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” So he was named Levi.

35 She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “This time I will praise the Lord.” So she named him Judah. Then she stopped having children.

I specifically have been focusing on Leah’s responses to having children.  She names her children in response to her circumstances and God.  

•  With Reuben she recognizes that God saw her.  She also says that surely her husband will love her.  She still desires the love of her husband which she does not have. God doesn’t change her circumstances and Jacob doesn’t love her as a result of her having Reuben.         
• With Simeon she recognizes that God heard her.  She again recognizes that she is not loved and still desires the love of her husband.  God still doesn’t change her circumstances and Jacob doesn’t love her as a result of having Simeon.
• With Levi she hopes that her husband will become attached to her, since she has now born him his first three children, all male.  Still, God doesn’t change her circumstances and Jacob doesn’t love her.
• With Judah, she simply responds, “This time I will praise the Lord.”

God didn’t change Leah’s circumstances and we know from the passages that follow that Jacob continues to love Rachel instead of Leah.  Yet Leah’s response of “This time I will praise the Lord” shows a heart shift within Leah.  She will go on to struggle with her lack of love from her husband and strife with her sister, yet she turns towards God in it.

Ironically in this story, Rachel has the love that Leah desires, yet does not have the children.  Later on we see her taking matters into her own hands and giving her servant to Jacob as a third wife in order to have children on Rachel’s behalf.  Leah ultimately follows suit and also give Jacob her servant as a fourth wife. 

The struggle between the women continue as both women desires what the other has (love or children).  Their struggles and circumstances ultimately impact their entire family.  We will never know the entirety of what God was doing in this situation and in their pain, but we can see some things that came from it.

In the end Jacob had 12 sons.  Rachel, the wife he loved, did not have a son until son number 11.  This son was Joseph.  Joseph was favored by his father as he was the son of the wife he loved, but perhaps also because of the time it took to even have a child with his favorite wife.  I think it would be a safe assumption that the strife between the wives would have impacted the family dynamic and influenced the first 10 sons.  They knew that Joseph was favored, and that Joseph’s mother was favored, and ultimately their jealousy of their brother led them to sell him as a slave.  This is a messed up family dynamic, but God ended up using it to put Joseph in a place to save Egypt during famine later in the story.  Rachel had to watch her husband have 10 other children before she had Joseph.  This would be painful but ultimately it was what saved Egypt and their family in the long run.

We sometimes will never know what God is doing behind the scenes.  It doesn’t ever say that Leah was loved by her husband, but she was the mother of six of his children (half of the tribes of Israel) and Judah, the son where she responds with “This time I will praise the Lord,” ends up having Jesus in his lineage. 

I have definitely had my Rachel and Leah moments in life situations.  I’ve tried to take matters into my own hands like Rachel and fix my circumstances, when maybe they were exactly what they needed to be.  I have also cried out to God like Leah and asked him to change my circumstances, over and over again.  Recently I’ve been thinking “This time I will praise God” in the circumstances or desires that go unchanged or unfilled.

I’ve been recognizing that my responses, or my conversation with God, should really be an attitude of praise rather than discontentment.  There are so many other things to be thankful for, and perhaps something bigger that He is doing that I cannot see, and will never see.

Dear Andrea

Dear Young 21 Year Old Andrea:

Guess what, your life is not over.  Currently in life you are struggling with who you are as a person, being tortured from living a double life and deciding what you really want out of life.  You will be okay.  You will also be a completely different person in a matter of years.  Embrace the life changing experiences that are about to come your direction.

Right now you are in your “recovering home-schooler” years and ultimately you will realize how much the home-school years actually provided a foundation for life going forward.  Yes, you should move with a band to NY when you are 23.  In this move you will discover that there is more to life than you.  You will also discover that there are different types of love.  You will develop unbreakable bonds with the friends you move with and spend the next few years with.  Cherish the friend Thanksgivings, the Laundry Mat nights, the Erie Canal walks, the band nights, sitting on the porch during warm thunderstorms, and getting stuck in the snow in your Honda (repeatedly).  Wherever life takes you, you will always have the time in NY and the sense of joy / friendship / community and pure love that was experienced even though times were hard.  Also, when you are stuck in a Walmart parking lot/camping in South Dakota for a week……buy the red camping chair as soon as the van breaks down.  Trust me on this one.

By the way, you will break your heart repeatedly.  By breaking your own heart, I mean that you will like guy after guy…..really like them, and think they are the one…..never date them……they will be oblivious to you or lead you on…..and then they will meet someone else and fall in love.  So they won’t break your heart, but you will break your own by placing so much of your identity and future dreams on the person you currently like.   I’d tell you not to do this, and your friends will tell you not to do this, but the reality is that you have to do this in order to move forward in the future. You will learn from emotional pain and it will be hard.  You will also learn your real identity and Who it is based in.  Some tips for recovery are bubble baths, baking/cooking new foods, girl nights, coffee with your good friend and also connecting/arguing with God. 

I know you always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom to a bunch of kids, have a country house in a small town with gardens and pets, and be really involved in ministry.  While this is a noble ambition, it won’t occur in the next ten years.  You will actually have a pretty intense career and be involved in many leadership roles (who would’ve thought?) that will stretch and grow you.  You will begin to realize that God has other plans for the next ten years, and possibly longer.  You will however have lots of young people in your life to cherish and love (12 nieces/nephews and godsons on top of that!).  You will also be more involved with ministry than you ever thought and connecting with others in your mutual pain, joys and life moments.  Even though it will sometimes not seem like it, God knows what He is teaching you.

I don’t have much that I want to tell you, because I don’t want to ruin it.  I want you to always have hope for what could be and always stay positive, even in the devastating times.  There will be devastating times.  You will become a beautiful woman, no, I don’t mean that you will be a hot model (but you’ll be decently cute, at least a little).  I mean that the different types of pain you will go through will lead to a woman with endurance, encouragement, love of others, confidence sprinkled with shyness, generosity, driven/hard-working, with hopefully some wisdom and a reliance on God.  Honestly, you will have many faults and failures too, but I’ll let you figure out what those are and continue to bring them to God.  You won’t be perfect.

I know you will constantly battle with thoughts of why you remain single.  I’m going to let you in on a secret.  There will be times that you think it is because of your weirdo personality.  It’s not.  That personality will be cherished by many.  There will be times you will think it is because you are ugly and some guy just hasn’t seen past your ugliness to see your personality.  It’s not.  Just stop.   There will be times you will blame God.  There will be times you will blame yourself.  

Here is the secret.  You are single because the timing is not right for you.  You may feel like you are waiting, and waiting, and waiting for life to start.  You’ll continue this thought process until you are about 30 and then snap out of it.  There is and never will be anything “wrong” with you and it is not because you are not good enough for a man or relationship.  You are human with flaws, and so is whoever you will end up with.  God only knows the right timing.  Think of everything you will learn over the next ten years and things that you wouldn’t learn if things were different.  Who knows, maybe you are single because your future husband is still learning things that he needs to learn before meeting you.  You’d rather he learn them now since you’re stuck once you’re committed!  Maybe, someday you’ll meet a guy that you can be yourself around and instantly connect with rather than shutting down and not talking to.  My advice:  Don’t wait.  Live life instead and love and enjoy those around you.  Live life with others and constantly seek God.  But don’t painfully wait.

Lovingly,

Andrea (ten years from the future)

PS, I’ll write to you again when I am 41 to see how those ten years went!