I was a little frustrated. I had no right to be, but I was. Unmet expectation has a way of doing that. But it's not always a bad thing.
I went in to my Bible study last night expecting to discuss the lesson I’d worked on the week before – the lesson the Bible study author wrote for us to discuss – the lesson I thought I needed and had anticipated discussing for six weeks -- but that’s not what happened. I was disappointed to say the least.
Disappointment occurred in two stages.
For the past six weeks, our women’s Bible study group has been going through Brave, a study written by Christian author Angela Thomas. It’s a study that’s prompted a lot of my personal writing of late.
At the beginning of the study, I looked through the lessons and zeroed in on Lesson 5 entitled “I Am Invisible.” Intrigued by the title and provoked by the concept of “invisibility,” I dove into the lesson, which centered on the plight of Hagar, a woman in the Bible I had always felt a sort of “kinship” with, but never understood why.
She hadn’t shown the courage and faith of a Biblical heroine like Esther or Ruth. She didn’t give birth to one of the Patriarchs like Sarah or Rebekah (In fact, she was a slave girl who’d given birth to the man who would become the forerunner of Islam). But she had shown bravery in the face of tribulation, and had been singled out by God for a personal visit and a place in world history. Why? In part, because out of obedience to God, she turned around and returned to the source of her pain. Seems like sort of a dubious honor. Feels like my life on many days. That’s why I can relate to her. That’s why I anticipated the discussion and counted ahead to this lesson.
(I’m not going to write about my kinship with Hagar or feelings of invisibility in this installment. That comes in the next one. This installment is about disappointment and discipline and how God is using them in me.)
Disappointment #1 came when I looked at the calendar and realized that our family vacation was going to fall during the week that our group was supposed to discuss Lesson 5. I remember thinking in frustration, “Well, that figures!”
But God intervened. Much to my delight, I found out that our group was going to take a break the week we were gone (because it was a holiday week) and I wouldn’t miss the discussion after all. I would get to be a part of the lesson I had eagerly anticipated for five weeks and the one that I felt spoke volumes to who I was and what I’d been feeling my whole life. I believed I wanted and needed the catharsis that would come from discussing this lesson with the other women in my group. In other words, I was planning to use the lesson that week for my own personal group therapy.
So during our vacation and I read through the lesson and answered the questions eagerly anticipating the discussion and the fellowship that would come from it. I looked forward to shared empathy with my “Sisters of the Shared Invisibility.”
However -- Disappointment #2 -- that’s not the way it worked out.
My friend, Debbie, who led the discussion last night, had other ideas. She took the lesson in a different direction “turning the concept of invisibility on its head” as she put it. As a knee-jerk response (emphasis on ‘jerk’) I decided from the get-go that I might just shut it down and go to a different place in my head because I wasn’t going to get the “therapy” or the answers from the lesson I wanted.
Debbie, instead, prompted by God to do something different, focused on the “other” characters of the lesson: Abram/Abraham, Sarai/Sarah and Ishmael and elements of their character. Debbie’s an excellent teacher who puts a lot of prayer, study and thought into her teaching. I could write volumes about her teaching (not to mention what she means to my life personally), but it’s not her teaching that’s germane to this writing because it’s not the teaching she brought that taught me last night. It was what God showed me afterwards that was pertinent.
Teaching comes in all different kinds of packages and through and all different kinds of voices.
Let me just tell you that I couldn’t be mad at Debbie too long especially for being obedient to God. She is one of my best friends, and I know her well enough to know that she listens to God when He speaks to her and she is, more often that not, obedient to His leading. I don’t know why God led her to take the discussion in this direction, but I didn’t doubt for a second that He had.
I just realized I wasn’t going to get what I wanted from it, so I had two choices: (1) I could be angry or (2) I could pray and ask God to help me be patient and listen. I think I chose a combination of the two.
I listened but it was like the modern-day parable of the child riding in the back seat of the car:
The story goes that the driver, presumably the mother, is driving down a road and looks in her rear view mirror. In horror, she sees her child out of the seatbelt, standing up in the back seat of the car. She immediately pulls the car over and stops. She turns around and emphatically tells the child to sit down and fasten the seatbelt. After a brief stare down the child reluctantly sits down and fastens the seat belt. The mother puts the car in drive and continues on to her destination. In a short while, from the backseat, she hears a quiet voice mutter the words: “I’m sittin’ down on the outside, but I’m standin’ up on the inside.”
That’s how I am when I don’t get my way. I’ll reluctantly do what I’m supposed to do, but I may not enthusiastically engage in it. I may even stare daggers into your back when you tell me to do it -- like the child in the back seat.
So when it was all said and done I walked away from Bible study frustrated and a wee bit angry. I felt I’d been thrown an unfair curve. I went home, still chewing on frustration and confusion, and trying to decipher what it all meant.
When I got home, I shared my frustration with my husband. I also shared the subject matter of the lesson with Bob and my disappointment at not getting to discuss it. I explained my kinship with Hagar – my own feelings of invisibility and how this lesson was ‘written for me’ and how this interpretation of the lesson that was supposed to help me with my “invisibility complex” actually made me feel more invisible because it didn’t address my issues.
Bob responded in a very “Bob-like” way. I listened. Then for a brief time, I really didn’t like him or his response very much:
He said, “Did you ever stop and think that God knew you could feed yourself from the lesson and tonight’s discussion wasn’t really for you?”
I swear sometimes I could be bleeding from my eyes and instead of sympathy; I’d get a life lesson on what God was trying to show me through the blood that clouded my vision. (I do love you, honey!)
Well, no, I didn’t think about that, and thank you for pointing that out instead of agreeing with me.
Wait minute! You mean it wasn’t about me? It wasn’t just for me?
It’s like God stared down into my soul and whispered the first line of Chapter One of Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life, into the depth of me: “It’s not about you.”
If not me, then who for? I don’t know for sure. I believe it must’ve been meant for one of the 20 or so other women in the room. Only God knows and Debbie put her teaching in His hands to distribute as He saw fit. I know Debbie prayed for it to reach somebody who needed it and I also pray that it did. And in a way, it taught me as well. Probably not in the way she’d intended. But isn’t that just like God:
“’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD.” (Isaiah 55:8, NIV)
So, my lesson last night didn’t come really from the study at all, but from my own reaction to it. In it, I was reminded of several bits of wisdom, including these:
1) Bible study groups are not always time for my own personal therapy. (In other words, it’s not always ‘about me’ or ‘for me.’)
2) Lessons can be learned from disappointment and unmet expectations and how I deal with them.
3) Don’t discount any teaching that comes from God, even if it doesn’t seem like it applies to you. (2 Timothy 3:16)
Ok, message received.
Next stop – Hagar and the Invisible. (Sounds like a comic strip. . . )
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