A Decade and a Year

January 10th, 2011 marks for me a decade of coming to America and a year of coming to Christ. It's normal and customary, I suppose, to ask what I have learned. We assume we learn as we experience events, people, life. We're supposed to be wiser as we're older. My father used to say that his hair didn't get gray just because the sun shone on it. Nestled comfortably in my thirties today, I find a few gray hairs myself and wonder what I have learned, if anything.

Much happened in the past decade - I fell in love with a man I couldn't believe really existed, got married, got a masters degree, bought some houses, got rid of all but one, acquired debt, went from wanting to be a writer to being a real estate broker to landlord to homemaker, gained and lost thirty-five pounds twice over, had two babies - one with an epidural one without, learned innumerable skills from painting (a house) to knitting (a small square) to sewing curtains to filing taxes and other government forms to baking pretty much anything to gardening tomatoes and pruning geraniums.

Marriage in itself has taught me a lot. When I read about God's "covenant love" and how Christ calls us His beloved, it makes sense to me. I understand it experientially, I truly get it as a reality because that is the love James has for me. It is an abiding, everlasting love, but more than anything it is an honoring love. There is much about love as honor, love as work I have yet to learn from this man who still does not call himself a Christian, yet lives Christ's word.

Parenthood was not what I expected either. But then again, who really knows what being a parent is like until you are one? Who knows the joy of holding something that  began as an orgasm and is now crying for warmth and comfort and food and diapers and will someday have legs that walk and a mind of its own? It's just like trying to describe what being married is like - it changes you, it makes you more giving, it reminds you of how rotten you really are and how far you are from what you really should be and yet, miracle of all miracles, you're there, you're enough... and you're needed, even loved.

A famous theologian once said, "Of what value is learning that does not turn to love?"And I think that's what this decade has been - a study of how to love. I'll admit I didn't have much of it when I first stepped on American soil. I was selfish, spoilt, always wanting my way, insisting on getting mine. Love, I think, was inside me but it was twisted. Manipulation, greed, guilt, depression, shyness, insecurity clung to me and their roots ran deep. Fear, the inability to forgive, anger, doubt - these were my friends for a long time. But I was in search of Truth and had been for a long time. (Aren't we all?) And some of my husband's first words to me cut through all that muck right to the core: "I need to be with someone who loves me." Truth has a way of doing that. Nine years later, another simple sentence by another Man: "I am The Way." Both answers to prayer. Both life-saving.

So don't ask me what I have learned. Because I am still learning to love.