Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives...let it be incorruptable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. 1 Peter 3:1

RISK

Posted on Monday, July 7, 2008 by oneP3 | (0) Comments

Risk

We all live with risk. We just don’t all know it. When Katie and I got married, we were taking the same gamble that we will the next time we get married. Our spouses had a choice to be faithful to us and to their commitment or not. But we didn’t think about this because we had never had our trust shredded. We assumed our spouses would be faithful to us and we planned on being faithful to them. The odds are the same now, but it feels infinitely more dangerous. We know other people who have survived abuse, abandonment, adultery and divorce feel the same thing. We have heard many of our friends who have experienced this say, “how do we know that this won’t happen again?” And our answer is that we don’t know this. We can’t. We can only decide to hull up in live safely (albeit lonely), or buck up, shake off the fear, and trust again.

Ultimately we don’t put our trust in man. Horrible things happen in life and this is a fact we (begrudgingly) accept. But we can trust God—not to prevent these events necessarily (maybe He does, maybe He doesn’t. We’ll leave the issue of His sovereignty for the theologians to argue about). But we can trust Him to be faithful to us despite this and in the midst of this. We will take Him at His word to make beauty out of ashes (have we said that before?) and to work all of these things for our good and for the good of our children.

So here we are on the dating scene again. We have little patience for people who aren’t willing to live in risk. Nothing is safe. It is a lie that we tell ourselves only when we have the luxury of believing it. We aren’t naive. We have been wounded deeply and we will always bear the scars of this in some capacity. But we will not shut down because of this and assume that everyone is going to hurt us in the same way. We are going to live wiser and more boldly. Risk is much more adventurous and more meaningful for the Kingdom anyways. Now that we realize the risk of life, we can get down to the business of living—facing our fears, chasing our healing, changing the world as disciples of Jesus. Risk doesn’t scare us anymore. We have been to Oz and exposed the little man behind the curtain. It isn’t as threatening as it used to be. It hasn’t killed us. It has only sobered us and made us stronger. We appreciate it for reminding us that this is the day. (Well maybe that was a little optimistic…wink.

So watch out, folks. We’re single and ready to mingle and full of risky behavior.