April Fool
“If you try to hang onto your life, you will lose it.”
Matthew 16:25a
A single, early forty-something who chose to become a mom through in vitro fertilization said of her love life, “I think I’m supposed to be single.”
I was flabbergasted not for her—oh, she impresses me—I was stunned for me. Me, the romantic. Me, the one who ALWAYS thought I’d be married by 30 just took a breath. What? Choose being single?
I will be 51-years-old at the end next week. The teenage niece whose soul is most like my own said when she was five (and I was in my mid-thirties) that I was too old then to be married. I am the April fool. She’s likely given up on her uncle ever choosing vows with the one he loves.
In my seminary days, 1404 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston was a revolving door. I had a lot of dates. In all of them, I learned you can’t work for love. You can’t peddle hard enough or fast enough to get a relationship. You can’t work for two. You must wait. You accept what does—and what does not—evolve.
A guy my age just entered a relationship. I don’t know him well, and I do not know the one he’s dating at all, but the guy is a true, diehard romantic like me.
I sit with this verse from Jesus today, the day someone will fall for an April Fool’s Day joke. I’m not laughing. Instead, I’m realizing yet again that we don’t have control. We don’t get to pick who will date us, who will want to take us down the aisle, or who will wipe our tears when loneliness falls onto us again. But we can give up our lives. We can lose control. Drop fear. Forget what we think should and should not be.
I’d much rather swim in the water than be on top of it, but I think of a sailboat. You’re the boat. You have a sail. Raise it. Let Jesus be the wind. Let Him take you where He wants you to go.
Lose your life because the One who loves you wants only what is best for you, and love, this romantic is learning, comes from all directions.
Dear Lord, today you are the wind. I am the sailboat. Take me where you want me to go. Amen.
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