You name it, we've been into it. After nearly fifteen years of marriage, there isn't a get-rich-fairly-expediently program we haven't tried. Network marketing. Computer-based marketing. Starting our own companies. eBay. The Stock Market. Real Estate Investing.
If we would just keep trying, just not give up, the testimonial tapes said, we would be cruising the Costco parking lot in a super sleek, high class, brand-spankin' new 12-passenger van in very little time.
We're not.
If we just believed, the convention speakers crowed, we would be in a position to help others. Think of the tithe we could give off my $10,000-a-week check!
We're not.
"You will find fulfillment," the national leaders and super-star sales award winners chimed in.
We didn't.
There are some who do. They make gallons of money. I know some who help others very generously, indeed. I see some who seem very fulfilled.
But it wasn't us.
I prayed fervently, begging God for success.
It didn't happen.
"Why, Lord?" I was exasperated. "Why can I never get my downline going? Why is there always something holding us back? I want to do big things, and can't you appreciate the good I would do for you if I made this business work?
He used his library voice to ask me how pure my motives really were.
My frustration mounted. It seemed like every time I set out to make a major conquest, I would find myself back at home, rejected, raising my kids and keeping house, a little further in debt. I thought of the verse: "What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg will give him a scorpion?" (Luke 11:11-12) and wondered why God wasn't behaving more parentally. I was asking for a comfy nest egg, and he was giving me debt, whose scorpion stinger was threatening financial demise.
"Why, Lord, why?" I muttered for years, deep in my heart, resentment inching toward the 'FULL' line.
Then one day, he answered me. Through my husband, of course, who said with a shrug of his shoulders without turning around, "Maybe God just wants us to be ordinary."
Ordinary?
How…how…UN-AMERICAN! How contrary to my instincts not to be always striving to best my neighbor! How almost unacceptable not to strive to reach the top rung of the company. How silly not to strive after more and more money. Striving, striving, chasing, racing. A meaningless chasing after the wind, says Ecclesiastes.
How freeing.
If God wants me to be ordinary, I can be my kids' mom without feeling inferior. I can work and play with contentment in the sphere of my influence, even if it reaches no further than the stoplight at the corner. I can be satisfied in an old van with only one sliding door. I can sell my house at a very modest gain, and bless the new owners with a smaller mortgage. I can be friends with the woman whose skills and connections used to set my jealousy flaring like Wolverine's knuckle blades.
I can be me.
And my striving can be toward holiness, a lofty goal, but completely obtainable even for the ordinary as the saints well prove. It took me a while to come to terms with this revelation. In fact it required a "metanoia," a change of heart.
It was some time later when I read the rest of the verse:
"If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:13)
I began to beg in earnest.
