Peace in Acceptance

Hi, this is Cynthia Dowling, and with this podcast I’m starting a kind of family chat series requested by my children, chronicling critical junctures in my life, highlighting my responses, and what the Lord taught me along the way. So, here we go with topic number one--singleness! Have you ever considered that being single is a gift from God? Whether young or old or somewhere in between, God has allowed it, and however painful, it is His choice. Acceptance of “what is” is something that even Jesus struggled with in the Garden of Gethsemane, but His response continued to be, “Not my will, but thine be done.” Jesus chose to accept God’s will, although excruciating, and He exampled the correct response. Although singleness occurred for me when I was young, that early choice of acceptance grew my faith and became an example to me as I faced future and often harder difficulties to accept. So, don't fast forward because of the topic, whatever your age there's something here for you!

My first real struggle with acceptance was in the form of singleness, which started way back when I was a child building future castles in the air about how my life would unfold. When I was young, being single never crossed my mind from playing house in childhood or looking forward to going to college as a teenager. But even though my plans from childhood were to graduate from college in the spring and get married that summer, God had different plans. The guy I was dating seriously at the end of my college years took me to look at rings and then decided I was not the person for him. Shocking, crushing, bewildering, confusing! So many emotions overwhelmed me, as well as the unanswerable question, “Why?” All my plans, how I thought it would be, had to change in a moment. But God had a journey for me to prepare me, while I was single, for what he had for me in the future. But, of course, I wanted to be married right now, like all my friends. Thankfully, my parents had instilled into me, and I believed for myself, that just as God had made Eve for Adam, He had made me for one man. So, in time, I understood that God just weeded out a non-Adam, which I later called “frogs”—sometimes, I found, you have to pick up a lot of frogs before you get a prince, which is exactly what the Lord gave me in time! And through my years of singleness, I held on to that truth. Could I have gotten married? Oh, yes, many times over, but I didn't want just any man, I wanted the man God had for me, a man that would always stay true to the Lord in leading our home, even with my A+ type personality. As an aside, I do have to tell you that my dad had always told me that there were very few men in this world that could handle me, and he was one of them! So, you see, I knew I would run the show, if the Lord did not give me a very strong, godly man to keep me in check. Knowing that fact further thinned my pool of potential suitors. But, even so, I came to the place when I told the Lord that I did not want to get married, if my husband would fall away from the Lord, ruining my life and my children's lives. So, how did I survive single? I did the next thing that the Lord had already prepared for me: I started teaching school in a small Christian School in New York.

The Lord had an interesting path for me through the next five years. People I knew and even a complete stranger, sitting next to me on an airplane, once told me I should be married and I was just too picky. I tried, then endured, and finally passed on blind dates. And I even entered one other serious relationship that through the counseling of my pastor I came to realize was not going to work, so I walked away. Yes, I actually walked away from marriage when I was in my mid 20’s with no other prospect in sight. Yes, I wanted the man God wanted for me, if there was such a man, more than I wanted to get married. Let me repeat that statement, I wanted the man God wanted for me more than I wanted to get married, settle down, and have children. By this time, I had realized fully that marriage was NOT a Cinderella plan or, if you prefer, a “happily ever after plan.” So, if you are single, what is your goal? To get married and be like all your other friends? To have a man or woman to come home to so you won't be lonely? To cuddle a little baby and know that it's yours? Sure, I had those desires, but they were not my primary desire. In fact, I became so discouraged about praying for God's man for me, that I actually told the Lord I really couldn't pray about it anymore. Praying about it was literally distracting me from my work. Since I knew that God could hear all the prayers for a mate that I had ever prayed through the years, I asked Him to echo those prayers through the years when I would be silent. So, I left marriage with Him in His goodness and Almighty wisdom, taught for four years, and then started my master’s degree. During all that time, God was molding my thinking about having a right relationship with Him as my instructor, His Spirit as my guide into all truth, and his word as my “street guide.”

Also, through my dating journey, I discovered that any type of physical relationship, even holding hands, started to shift the focus from getting to know each other, to just wanting to be near each other. Well, there was one thing I did want to know if the Lord brought a man into my life, and that was, who is this man. So, after coming to this conclusion, I decided that I would pull back to ground zero: I would not even hold hands with anyone who asked me out, even after dating a period of time! Adding that disclosure into the conversation was, shall we say, quite a difficult decision to carry through, but I did it. You may wonder how that went over. Well, with tolerance most of the time and sometimes override. If override, then I knew I had discovered another non-Adam or “frog,” and in very short order we were no longer dating. Another thing I learned is that I loved my work. I loved my students. I loved seeing the light come on when they learned things, so I threw myself into my work and really enjoyed it. I even got very creative with my bulletin boards, and that was fun too!

So, now you know, God's plan for me was not my plan for me! So many times we get muddled and think that God let us down, when really He is working His good plan, and not giving us our willful, short-sighted plan. I don't know how many people I have seen over the years come to the place where they believe, and many times voice, that “God does not work for me,” or “I'm not going there again.” As you heard earlier, my expectations were crushed and dashed, and after I sorted it out, I realized that those were my expectations for me. God had other expectations for me--much better expectations for me. He wanted me to learn to wait, wait on Him, so He could give me the desires of my heart. I wasn’t ready or prepared for the part of His plan that I wanted to skip ahead to enjoy. You know, it never occurred to me that I could scuttle staying true to the Lord for the long haul; I had to learn the basics of endurance, acceptance and submission of my will to God for starters. God was in the process of shaping a man and a woman to come together in time to do the works he had created them to do more effectively together than they could do them apart--very important works that were in the mind of God before the foundations of the world were made. THAT is the big, eternal picture. What God is doing is so much bigger than what we think He should be doing!

So if you are discouraged in your singleness, give your fears and even prayers to God. Rest in the Lord and do what He has given you to do, and you might find you really like it! Let God thin your pool of potential suitors, while refusing to allow media to create your expectations. Give God the time He needs to prepare you and your potential future mate while you wait. Does that mean marriage in the future? Only He knows that, but you have to leave the future and its mysteries to Him.

During this difficult time in my life and in subsequent times, the Lord confronted me and then comforted me with the phrase: “In Acceptance Lieth Peace.” This phrase was popularized by Amy Carmichael, an early missionary to India, and she wrote a poem with that title. The poem chronicles the unsuccessful methods she tried to combat her grief: forgetting, frenetic activity, withdrawing, acquiescing—all without success, until she accepted the truth that God had given her this hard thing, and she did not have to understand why. Jesus says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” In acceptance lieth peace.

In closing, remember that acceptance is often a process, it was for Jesus, and it can be for you. When I finally relented my will to the Lord and accepted His choice, I felt and believed I could put it all behind me and move on. But no, reminders were all around me, and I found God’s acceptance training can be more of a process, than a “once and done” choice. So, keep on making that acceptance choice; and as time moves forward, you’ll be amazed how fewer and farther between those acceptance choices become and how much more peace you’re gaining, until one day you realize that you are thinking God’s good and true thoughts about what has been so difficult. So, let’s all do what God knows works: “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.”