When I was little, I used to get seriously exasperated that I wouldn’t get to view my own funeral. Yes, I know that sounds a little warped, but it’s true! I hated the idea that when I died, I wouldn’t get a glimpse of any of it.
What was my need to see my own farewell? I think people’s first guess would be that I wanted to see how popular I was and hear people sing my praises, but I realized recently that stroking my ego wasn’t what I was really seeking.
As a little girl, and now as a grown up girl, I need to know I matter. I don’t like the feeling of being expendable, or just being decoration on God’s wall of creations. Deep down, I desperately want to know I serve a purpose. Especially when living in the relatively obscure life of a stay at home mom, its easy to listen to the lies whispered in my ear by Satan, telling me that I’m forgotten by the world, am hardly a contributing member of society, and am serving no great purpose. Of course, I know in my head that I am raising my children to become disciples of Jesus and am seeking to be a helper for my husband, but on a heart level, I am not so easily convinced.
God has been speaking to me on this subject as of late, and it has really been making all the difference. He’s been healing the torn places of my heart with the salve of Psalm 139, a psalm I’ve read numerous times, but never drank deeply of:
1 You have searched me, LORD,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.
19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
20 They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, LORD,
and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
22 I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
God ordained all of my days before they came to be. That verse itself implies I must have a unique purpose, otherwise, why would he go to all the trouble of picking the number of days I’ll be alive. Whey did he go to the trouble of making me a Melancholy/Sanguine, a XNFJ on Myers-Briggs, allow me to be broken in specific ways and then cause me to “coincidentally” encounter numerous people who were broken in the exact same ways and didn’t know Him personally….if he didn’t have a purpose for my life?
“The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.”
Maybe this is my ultimate purpose. Maybe I glorify God through enjoying him in unique ways that others don’t, or in such a combination of ways that are unique to me. So, for weird example purposes:
Maybe if there wasn’t a me: there wouldn’t be a “Texas raised girl who loves cows, nature, the color red, Muslims, Africa, reading and writing, Vermont, coffee, tickling her little boys, quilting, chemistry, and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese” girl out there, and things just wouldn’t be OK without that one person worshipping and enjoying him.
I think I like looking at it that way. And fortunately, God’s healed me of my neurotic obsession with my funeral. I’m thinking that when I get to be with Jesus I’ll be so thrilled that it will be a while before I realized that I died, and the funeral would have been long over and down with anyways.
Seeking to fully live,
