Mel Furniss 4/30/13 Mel Furniss 4/30/13

Love Does Adventures

So, I don’t know what came over me this past year. Well, to be honest, I do… His name is Bob Goff, and his book is Love Does. MAN OH MAN, how this book changed my life. I had truly forgotten how to dream. How to live with abandon.

How to love with abandon.

The worst thing about growing up is how quickly you become cynical and practical. Having a “childlike spirit” seems like sacrilege, because you’re supposed to be thinking about down payments, 10-year plans, and the “real job” you’re going to get after the one you just got hired to do.

Well, against all odds, as I read this book, I felt something shift in my heart… like I was a new moon and God was getting ready to bring me into the light, little by little. I distinctly remember hearing Him whisper—in a way that only a sweet, protective, all-knowing Dad can, “We’re only just getting started, Melie. I’ve got big plans.”

So off God and I went, on the amazing adventure called 2012. The irony is only hitting me now that the world was supposed to end that year, because in the craziest ways, 2012 was when I shook hands with the world for the first time in my life (Better luck next time, John Cusack).

Now, when I talk about adventures with the Lord, the phrasing alone seems magical and “happily ever after” -ish, as if I got sprinkled with fairy dust and before I knew it, was flying hand in hand with Jesus past the London Eye or the Eiffel Tower.

Umm… Not so much.

Before the book, our year started with my sweet Jasper in the hospital. His anxiety hit an all-time high, so much so that we found ourselves pulled over on the side of I-95 as he shook and convulsed on a patch of grass next to our car. Terrified, I googled the nearest emergency room and off we went.

Being a wife and a woman, two things ran through my head as the love of my life lay in the next room, getting treated by doctors I had never met.

One was—He’s so going to die. I CAN'T BELIEVE he's going to die. This isn't supposed to happen yet... I’m going to be a widow. My life, as I know it, is over.

The second was—Dang it, I’m the worst wife ever! The first thing I think of while my husband is suffering in the hospital is how his funeral arrangements just aren’t jiving with the life plan I laid out for myself. No wonder he has anxiety… I’m the WORST.

(I’d like to throw in a disclaimer here that I got married really young, so these thoughts are also a side effect of being an insecure, pretty selfish, still-pretty-new-to-this-whole-marriage-thing little girl sitting at the grown-ups’ table. However, I’m still holding on hope that there is at least one other woman out there who is saying, “Mel, I get you! I’d be mentally picking out what outfit to wear to the funeral!!”

Wherever you are, strange, morbid lady… Thank you for existing.)

Jasper turned out to be okay, physically at least. The doctors gave him no definitive answers or medication that day, but simply told him that he had an anxiety attack and should slow down. See a doctor at home. Breathe. Seriously? I’m so glad they charged us $2300 to tell my husband to breathe (we’re still paying off that bill).

The next four or five months were undoubtedly the hardest season in our marriage. Jasper’s struggles with anxiety, fear, depression, and shame were greater and more intrusive than I’d ever seen them before. I woke up every day knowing that my husband—my leader, my partner in crime—was hurting in a way that I couldn’t repair. I couldn’t heal his heart or say the perfect words to make the worry dissipate. All I could do was be there. Show up, hold him, pray for him, and be there.

In some ways, it was really beautiful to be that helpless. We both were forced to die to ourselves. To deal with our sin. To desperately cling to the hem of His garment every single day. Looking back, I see why God took us both through that season. Without it, Jasper and I would have gone our whole lives with our struggles, strange predispositions, and numbing insecurities at a nice, easy 30%. But the Lord, in His gracious (and sometimes KILLER) sovereignty, decided to crank up the heat, shining painful, searing light on our weaknesses until we were forced to deal with them. 110%.

Yeah, it hurt. Sometimes it hurt so badly, I thought that we had lost. That our marriage was over. That we were too far gone to be restored. But God saw us. And He proved Himself faithful yet again. I learned how truly, disgustingly selfish I am—how I placed my identity so much in being insecure, that by thinking so little of myself, I was thinking only of myself. Jasper learned how pervasively his parents’ divorce affected his heart. He was so scared to open up to the real stuff in life because he was afraid of becoming just like them, of one of us running away. (I could go into the nuances of how these lessons changed and re-shaped our walk together as husband and wife, but maybe I’ll go into all that later.)

Consequently, we had no choice—we had to repent, learn, and love harder than we ever had before. It was painful in every way… but equally glorious.

Shauna Niequist talks about how, as husband and wife, we assume we become family when we say the vows, sign the certificate, or cut the cake. But in all honesty, “family gets made when you decide to hold hands and sit shoulder to shoulder when it seems like the sky is falling. Family gets made when the world becomes strange and disorienting, and the only face you recognize is his. Family gets made when the future obscures itself like a solar eclipse, and in the intervening darkness, you decide that no matter what happens in the night, you’ll face it as one.”

In this crippling, beautiful season, Jasper became my family. And he will continue to become my family for as long as we both shall live.

It’s no fairy dust, but it’s pretty dang adventurous.

Mel Furniss 8/20/12 Mel Furniss 8/20/12

Satisfied

I’ve lived so long in the practical— striving for my own good, fighting for my own desires, seeking to be satisfied in trophies, diplomas, marriage certificates, paychecks. Whether I meant to or not, I lived defined by what I could see and hold.

So I went for it. I gained as many earthly glories as I thought I deserved. Student body VP, full college scholarship, select worship team member, magna cum laude graduate, debt-free, wife of high school sweetheart, writer for non-profit organization.

I nailed it, right? It’s the first half of Philippians 3, but Mel’s version. A Hebrew of Hebrews, blameless.

Yet in the past couple of years, I couldn’t shake this feeling of now what?

“Why are you downcast, o my soul? Why are you so disturbed within me?”

As a deer pants for water, my soul panted for the Lord—for Him to reveal Himself to me. I begged my God, “Where are you, Lord? Do you see me? What have You purposed me to do… to be?”

Imagine the turmoil within my heart when I gained all the treasures I thought I needed, but then found a big, gaping hole in place of satisfaction.

“Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him.”

I didn’t have a big AHA moment that changed my heart. I still battle my flesh as the Lord continues to refine this jar of clay.

All I know is, the gospel of the Living God is enough. It is my definition. It is my satisfaction. In light of it, all that I have gained looks like filthy rags. And because of the gospel and Christ’s example, I am invited into a life full of others-minded, adventurous, inconvenient, active love.

Jesus played with the little children, danced at wedding receptions, washed His disciples’ feet, wept over His friend’s death, befriended the despised, fed the hungry, carried hope, freedom, joy, and truth on His lips, and died the death we all deserved. His love was whimsical, relentless, liberating, unbreakable, selfless.

He is the epitome of love doing.

And so here I stand, my purpose secure and eternally wrapped in the gospel alone…

Do not be fooled into believing that your career is your identity. Do not fearfully worship the god of money and financial security. Do not define yourself by your relationships. Do not submit to the lie that this life is about you alone. You are My ambassador, called and equipped to carry out the love that I, your Savior, lived and died for—an inconvenient, generous, gospel love. Shut down every selfish thought. When you grow angry and cry out to be served, serve your neighbor. When you are so desperate to share your opinions, listen to your friend. When you feel heavy under the weight of financial strain, give even more generously. When the dissension in your heart stirs up arguments, speak slowly and forgive quickly. When they mock you for loving with whimsy and adventure, show them grace upon grace.

When this type of living seems impossible, refocus yourself on the gospel and remember My example, for it is My inexpressible joy to live this way for you EVERY DAY. You are living My dream come true; you are My plan. Rejoice in the honor of carrying out My name and live in thankfulness for all that you have today. I will give and I will take away, but rest in peace knowing that all that you truly have—forever—is Me.

So let your love be active… and unceasingly trust that I, Abba Father, am standing beside you, holding your hand, relentlessly promising, “I’m with you. Always.”