A Simple Life

I’m a Baby Boomer. I raised three Millennials. Not one person in our house is a Gen Xer, although my husband and my son-in-law both missed it by merely a year on either side.

We do not know what it’s like to be the overlooked middle child.

Both of our generations have been marketed to, catered to, had all our whims analyzed and fulfilled, as a giant generation would. Other than the job market after college for both, we’ve had it pretty good.

Poor Gen X

Gen X, on the other hand, gets ignored. I guess that can be OK. As the youngest child of seven, I found getting ignored pretty useful when I wished to fly under the radar. Still do.

The generation between let’s-begin-God’s-people-patriarch Abraham and had-way-too-many-kids-and-wives Jacob feels a lot like the Gen X of Genesis.

Isaac and Rebekah don’t get much press.

You’ll find the story in Genesis 24. Abraham wants his son to marry in his family and to a woman who worships his God, not one nearby. So his servant saddles up the camels and travels 500 miles to find Isaac a wife.

To be clear, this is the camel. Not the wife. Photo by Andre Iv on Unsplash

Enter Rebekah. TL;DR version: he meets her and her family, tells them she’s the one to marry Isaac, they all agree it seems right, and then he tosses a curveball—they all must decide this NOW because he’s leaving tomorrow.

Her mother objects. What mother wouldn’t? She knows she will never see her child again. How can she say a forever good-bye with less than 24-hours notice? Then they do something remarkable for the time—they ask Rebekah.

“We’ll call Rebekah and ask her what she thinks.” So they called Rebekah. “Are you willing to go with this man?” they asked her. And she replied, “Yes, I will go.”

Wife Material

Clearly, this is an adventurous, curious, faith-filled, daring young woman who has a streak of independence. Maybe they knew they would have to ask her or she wouldn’t have it. Maybe she’s been waiting for a chance like this. The text seems to indicate that perhaps she has stayed single for longer than usual, and since she’s beautiful and her family has money, this was surely her choice.

I already like Rebekah.

She gives up so much—her entire family—to travel a great distance to a strange place and a strange man. Is Isaac old? Ugly? Missing teeth and oozing something? Does he already have four wives? Does he (shudder) write “your” when he means “you’re”? She has no clue. The servant’s kind nature and honest, earnest appearance are all she has to go on.

Yet without hesitation, she answers. God is in it. Yes, I will go.

Photo by Jack Anstey on Unsplash

Short story—she goes. They marry. They love til death do them part. They have two sons, who create their whole ‘nother drama. But for the most part, Rebekah, after her giant leap unto the unknown (yes, you may sing a Frozen song here), lives a quiet, ordinary, unremarkable life.

• She isn’t sold into slavery in Egypt.
• She doesn’t bear a child at 90.
• She doesn’t mother the entire nation of Israel.
• She doesn’t build an ark.
• She doesn’t lead an army or slay a giant or save her nation from a despot king and his henchman.

She never even goes far from home (again).

She raises two kids and teaches one to cook.

They are the original Gen X.

Wasn’t this all anti-climatic?
Wasn’t Rebekah disappointed?

Did the giant leap fall flat?

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

Where was the grand adventure?

I think Rebekah would say—it was in obedience.

The leap of faith never promised great fame. It didn’t assure her sword fights and dizzying escapades. She wasn’t asked to do something amazing. She was asked to obey. So she did.

The adventure was not having a clue what was ahead and saying “yes” anyway. That takes more guts than a sword fight any day.

One of my favorite fictional characters is Eowyn, the maiden of Rohan who is certain she was born for adventure and renown (and she was) but who desperately fears she will never be allowed to reach her destiny because she is a woman. Women don’t gain valor. (Well, she has a point.)

Eowyn learns, by the end, what the hobbits always knew—it is no bad thing to celebrate an ordinary life. Sometimes, the most ordinary of people do the most extraordinary things—even if they’re living their normal lives.

Rebekah seems to know this. She faithfully lives out her days, knowing her obedience brought her exactly where she was meant to be.

I could learn a few things from Rebekah.

• Maybe the life we’re living is our adventure.
• Maybe where we are right now is our calling.
• Maybe obedience is the greatest thing no matter where it leads us.
• Maybe we need to find gratitude and joy in ordinary life.
• Maybe it’s the next generation who will matter more than I, and that seemed OK to Rebekah.

Ordinary is its own definition—normal. Most of us are by definition.

Ordinary lives are the backbone of most of the world. The ark-builders and giant-slayers wouldn’t survive without the ordinary ones.

And here’s what I want to remember from Rebekah—

God celebrates ordinary lives of extraordinary obedience.

Seems right. Average people are what he made the most of. He must truly delight in it.

Learning from Cain we talked about competition and how unholy and unhelpful it can get. If we take a page from Rebekah, we see something else. Competing makes zero sense when God delights in our obedience, period. There’s no competition to obey. In fact, I’d say the field is pretty open. So a heart and mind concentrating on obeying hasn’t much space to look around at how others are doing and ramp up the resume.

I know. I’m lousy at this, too.

Some folks do make it a reason to sit out their life and allow their fear of failure to keep them out of their calling. That’s not what I’m suggesting. Radical obedience, though, will always lead us toward our calling. It simply might not be what we expected.

Rebekah is OK with that. Are we?

Rosie the Riveter, Home Built Sewers, and the Holy "I Can’t"

I can’t. Do you say those words often? I don’t. Like, never. “Yes, I can” runs in my veins like iron runs through our well water. I would have made a great Rosie the Riveter.

Not only don’t I ever say “I can’t,” but if someone says it to me (as in, “you can’t do that”), well, that’s probably the best motivation to ensure I will try.

I think this is a result of being the daughter of a man who built his own garage and laid his own septic tank. (That last one at night, on account of the law frowns on home built septics, apparently.) My dad repaired washers and dryers for a living. He didn’t exactly have a degree from the Ty Pennington School of Demolition and Carpentry. He just never knew he couldn’t do things, so he did them.

This stubborn inheritance may be part of the reason why, just prior to getting sick last June, my calendar included five speaking engagements, one vacation for five, a writer’s conference, a pastor’s conference, two kids’ graduations, a weekend road trip, normal work, a wedding . . . and a partridge in a pear tree. I’m certain there was no connection between that and the getting sick thing. None whatsoever.

All this to say—I’ve been saying “I can’t” a lot the last five months. And I’ve hated it.

I can’t commit to a mission trip. I can’t take a walk around the lake. I can’t promise I’ll make a two-hour drive. I can’t sit up at the table to play a board game. I can’t sign on to help promote your book. I can’t even get off the stupid couch to turn off the TV. Yes, it’s been that bad. Friends I’ve wanted to support haven’t been supported by me. Kids I’ve wanted to spend time with have had to do their things without me. And I’ve rebelled against the I cant’s. Oh, how I have rebelled. Inwardly, because it’s tough to rebel too strenuously when “I can’t get off the couch” is the one “I can’t” that’s absolutely incontrovertible.

I’ve never known the complete, frustrated helplessness that is physical disability, nor the depth to which it can affect your outlook. (Not to mention your disposition. Those people who suffer sweetly through illness? Yeah, so not me. I’m a certified crank. True story.)

I knew I hated hearing “you can’t,” but I never knew how deeply I would despise saying “I can’t,” knowing it to be true, and feeling the fear of not knowing when it would not be.

“I can’t” are two little words, containing an ocean of meaning, complexity, and emotion I never realized. I rebel at their truth. I don’t think I’m the only one.

In fact, I know I’m not, because that little incident in the Genesis Garden happened when two people looked at one another and thought, “Did He really say we can’t? I don’t like that.” And we all know how that ended.

No, being forced into I can’t because of physical limitations and fighting the limitations God created are not the same thing. But the former only exists because the latter occurred. On some level, the “I cant’s” we hate are all a result of the “I won’t” chosen so long ago.

All this time, I’ve been trying to figure out what I can learn from the past five months, and maybe it’s simpler than I’m making it. Maybe, it’s that discontent with the results of that one big, disastrous “I will” is OK. Not just OK, but encouraging. A sign of life. A proof that we know in our being this is not how it was meant to play out.

Maybe it’s OK to hate our I cant’s. Maybe they’re a reflection of our restlessness with the way things are versus the way they should be. We know we were not made for sickness and disability and frustration. We know the world was not created for hunger and cruelty and greed. One huge cry of frustration at our “I cant’s” really may be a healthy cry. A cry of birth, signaling our anger at not being able to heal the ills around us.

And after the angry cry of birth comes the living. The refusal to give in to the cant’s and the agreement that whatever we can matters.

I know someone with a chronic illness who so often can’t. Yet when she can, she fights human trafficking with every ounce of her passion. Are the two connected? Does her frustration at physical difficulty interplay with the willingness to fight against an evil the world was not meant to hold? Oh, I think it does.

I think our real limits can always fuel our discontent with unjust limits. It should not surprise us, really.

CS Lewis felt and explained our discontent often.

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.” 

Unlike my friend, I am going to get better. This will be over, and I’ll be back to being my contrary active self. But when “Yes I can” is back, I hope it fuels a different sort of discontent. One not so much focused on me but on fixing what has been broken and retrieving what has been lost.

What have you discovered through your “I cant’s”?