Red Eyes...(An Honest Update of Where We're At)

I love having background music on throughout the day…it motivates me and takes my heart up and out of the mundane and makes me feel more alive (well, as alive as one can feel while washing dishes or folding laundry).  My favorite kinds of music stretch across many genres, but I think I am mostly drawn to music that has significant (and sometimes obscure) lyrics.  But, for as much as I love music with deep lyrics, I have realized that I often don’t really pay attention to the lyrics until I am jogging with headphones or alone in my car on a long drive (which happen, respectively, sporadically and um, hardly ever).  Recently, I was jogging (yay!) and listening to Switchfoot and I came across the song “Red Eyes,” which I had heard many times before but never paid attention to very carefully.

What are you waiting for
The day is gone?
I said I'm waiting for dawn

What are you aiming for
Out here alone?
I said I'm aiming for home

Holding on, holding on
With red eyes
What are you looking for?
With red eyes
Red eyes

All of my days are spent
Within this skin
Within this cage that I'm in

Nowhere feels safe to me
Nowhere feels home
Even in crowds I'm alone

Holding on, I'm holding on

With red eyes, What are you looking for?
With red eyes, Red eyes
With red eyes, What are you looking for?
With red eyes, Red eyes

Every now and then I see you dreaming
Every now and then I see you cry
Every now and then I see you reaching
Reaching for the other side
(What are you waiting for?)
(What are you waiting for?)
What are you waiting for?

With red eyes, What are you looking for?
With red eyes, Red eyes
Your red eyes, What are you looking for?
With red eyes, Red eyes

(What are you waiting for?
What are you waiting for?
In this needle and haystack life
I found miracles there in your eyes
It's no accident we're here tonight
What are you waiting for? Waiting for?
We are once in a lifetime
Waiting for
We are once in a lifetime
Waiting for
Alive
We are once in a lifetime
Waiting)

(So now I need to warn you…this post is going to get really honest, so only keep reading if you’re into that kind of thing)

I immediately thought, actually, of Jeremy when the song was over.  Jeremy, my husband, who has shed more tears in the last year than in the rest of the decade and a half that I have known him. 

And then I thought about my friends and family members who have achingly empty arms right now as they struggle with miscarriage and infertility; my friends who are longing to see healing in themselves or their marriages or their children; my sister who was waiting and waiting for a resolution; my still-single friends; my friend awaiting word from the doctor about whether her cancer is back…the list went on and on.

This is the nature of many seasons in our lives…the yearning and looking and waiting for something to change that is causing us sorrow.  As a person who believes in an eternal God who will one day make everything right in the world, I live with the tension that is represented in this song (as does the composer, Jon Foreman).  I want relief for myself, and I desperately want relief for others who suffer—many who suffer much more deeply than I.  Our pastor, in explaining the idea that we can’t compare our suffering to others’, described suffering as the distance between our “actual state and our desired state.” That about sums it up for me in this season.

A picture taken while pursuing a job opportunity last year...bittersweet

For Jeremy and I, the past year and a half (almost 2) has felt like a tightrope walk between hopefulness and despair.  It hasn’t been gut-wrenching or tragic, but it has been long and tiresome.  We left a life we loved in Flagstaff to pursue what we believe was God’s calling for the next step of our life.  Knowing full well that “a man plans his course but God determines his steps,” we set out with a plan for Jeremy to get a Master’s of Theology (a research degree) as a stepping stone to applying for a PhD program sometime down the line.  Part of this plan included living with my parents while we figured out where exactly we would need to be and for how long…all of these unknowns related to where Jeremy got a job and therefore how long his degree would take. 

View from the peaks in Flagstaff

A life of faith is all about some strange balance between what we do and what God does…or maybe through this process I’ve begun to realize that it’s more what God does through us, that we in our physical bodies on this physical planet constrained by time are the means through which he chooses to work.  Meaning, he gives us his wisdom through the Bible and through others and he gives us his spirit and then he tells us to focus solely on him because we cannot see the future.  And then it seems sometimes that he sends us out in the dark with only his promises to rely on.  So, when our plans have continued to be frustrated again and again, as we have applied here, pursued this, cried over what seemed like perfect opportunities only to be crushed later, felt lonely and misunderstood, asked and asked and only heard "no", we have no one to “blame” except God, who has promised to know every need that we have and every hair on our heads.  

Oh, how we wanted to stay with our international student housemates when it was time to leave this summer...makes me cry just thinking about it!

Ironically, Jeremy’s main studies have been related to the idea that we are not so in control of our lives as we think we are…and this is a hard lesson for us in our post-modern, Western, affluent society to accept (Jeremy and I included!).  God seems to be at work, first in our hearts and then hopefully with encouragement we can share with others in due time.  Somehow in the midst of all the red eyes, there has been this deep peace that rises up knowing that he is doing something in the dark that we can’t see.

(Sunflare pic didn't quite turn out as I expected...like many other things this year)

There are plenty of things we would have, should have, could have done differently if we could have seen the future.  But we couldn’t and God made us this way as finite beings with lots of strengths and weaknesses.  So here we are, looking at all the other ships that have sailed on without us, looking around at the smoldering ashes of all that we had imagined would transpire over the last 18 months that didn’t and seeing the one thing that remains clear: God called Jeremy to pursue further theological study and he has blessed that endeavor abundantly.  And, moreover, he continues to bless our marriage, give us daily joys, heap wonderful relationships with friends and neighbors and family upon us, and teach us more about himself. 

Neighborhood kids: a sweet gift to us

As I read in the Bible about what Jesus really says about what it means to follow him, I am comforted again and again by his call to “seek first his kingdom, and all these things (money, clothes, food) will be added unto you” or that “he who seeks to save his life must lose it.”  

Jeremy baptizing two of his former high school students in Flagstaff this summer.

We still have many unanswered questions and continue to struggle to figure out what all of this means, but he hasn’t changed and he told us to keep our eyes on him.  I feel like Peter on a stormy night in the Sea of Galilea, who in his fear, asks for conformation that it is indeed Jesus telling him to come.  The waves were big and the wind was great and I’m sure Peter’s eyes were red, but all that mattered was keeping sight of Jesus who had called him.

Carlsbad...where we could have lived if we hadn't gotten out of the boat to follow him to Kazakhstan

So, for the time being, Jeremy is finishing his ThM (with excellence, it seems) and is looking into PhD programs.  We also continue to deal with life and responsibilities and pursuing means of income.  God has blessed me with a tutoring job for twin girls who recently lost their mother (it is truly a blessing to be their tutor—I love it!) and I am babysitting and teaching piano.

And we wait for the rest that is to come.

Window on the Talbot Building, at Biola University, where Jeremy goes to class.