I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!

Since my last blog post, my life has settled into a fairly dull routine. I am always either studying Japanese or feeling (somewhat) guilty for not studying Japanese. They tested my Japanese in late December and declared me to be where I should be given how long I’ve been studying. So at least there is progress! 

Studying a language full-time for a year can feel rather isolating – similar to being in graduate school, except without all of the classmates. It’s too easy for an introvert like me to turn inward and live on my own little island. Now that it’s late February, there are a number of things that I need to start doing in preparation for moving to Tokyo: updating my household effects inventory, updating my will, filling out the housing questionnaire from the embassy, working through the bureaucratic joy of requesting other training that I need to get done, etc. Not to mention spending time with friends while I still can! But prior to now, I have had too much solitary introspective time, which can sometimes lead to self-absorption and/or self-pity.

The other day, I heard a sermon on Abram and Sarai and God’s promise of a son despite their advanced age. The pastor discussed the tension between God’s promise and our perception of “reality”. Abram and Sarai knew they had God’s promise, but they didn’t see how it could be done. So they took matters into their own hands, and Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. But in God’s good timing, Sarah gave birth to Isaac, and from Isaac a nation was born.

When I was younger, lots of friends would seek to assure me that I would get married someday. (Those assurances stopped around age 35, but now that I’m heading to Japan where many women frequently wait until nearly 40 before getting married, there has been a resurgence in the hopeful comments.) Lovely, well-meaning Christian friends would tell me that I would get married and that I needed to trust that God would fulfill his promises to me. My response was simply (and not very graciously) that nowhere in the Bible does God promise me a husband. It was a conversation killer, but there you go.

But as I once again listened to the story of Abram and Sarai, it occurred to me that maybe while I'm noting what promise is NOT in the Bible, I am essentially ignoring the promise that IS in the Bible: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jer 29:11). The question becomes, do I trust what God says? Do I believe that He has a good and perfect plan for my life – whether in singleness or in marriage, with children or without children, whether in the U.S. or in Japan or in Brazil? I ask myself these questions and I find that I am like the father who sought Jesus’ healing for his son: “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

“Hallelujah! He has found me; Whom my soul so has craved; 

Jesus satisfies all my longings; through His blood I now am saved.” 

(All My Life Long)