Marriage Licence

(Written around March 11)

“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God…”

Fridays in Chile, or at least for our school tend to be a day of relaxing with little to no scheduled things and what is scheduled is pretty strictly in the morning with the rest of the day free.  Our first Friday in Vina was very important.  We went down to our government to start the process of getting out Chilean ID’s.

We arrived at 8:00 to make a line outside of the office even though it didn’t open until 8:30.  By 8:30, however, there was a line more than a block long to get into the small office.  Inside, it looked like the room of the DMV where you go to get a new license plate.  There were desks on 3 out of 4 sides and a reel where everyone had to take a number before waiting to be called.  There were, of course, babies crying, impatient people waiting, and us, a pack of semi-dazed Gringos who had woken up early after a PACKED, dizzying week of orientation and talking to our families (Chilean and Estadiounidense, the Spanish and more politically correct word for citizens of the Unite States, since we’re technically all “Americans”).

As we waited to have our pictures taken at this horrifying time of the morning and our fingerprints taken once again, my mind drifted, and so did my eyes.  I took notes on the people I saw: young, old, families, singles, and tired people, some happy, most impatient.  And the people I especially enjoyed watching were those in line for their marriage license.  How happy they were, how young, and how dependent on one other they looked.

God had already begun working on my heat by this point.  With the Aunt Bec’s engagement and the beauty that came of her waiting, with not one but two sermons about the lover relationship we are supposed to have with God,  the themes of faithfulness, purity, and dependence had already begun swimming around in my head.  Even in talking to my host mom and hearing her testimony and what she calls her “fracaso matrimonial” or, literally, marital failure, I’m realizing that marriage is even more beautiful and even more scary than I had ever really imagined.  My relationship with God is even more beautiful and profound than I can even try to aim for, but then there’s grace, as in a marriage between two people, compromise.   Compromise is actually the closest word that we have in English to “engaged” in Spanish.  How much more beautiful is “compromiso” than some word that sounds as if we are ready to shoot a gun or a cannon.  We’re “engaged,” the bullet is “engaged,” the United States is “engaged” in a dispute over foreign policy, Bill Clinton “engaged” in some relations with that Monica lady.

“…and HIS righteousness…”

God is already whispering in my ear.  He’s got secrets to tell me, and sweet nothings to share.  I just hope that I can be giddy over my relationship with Jesus and remember to allow him to be the man in the relationship.  He’s at the helm.  He makes the plans.  He loves me already for who I am, not who I try to be during group orientations.  It breaks his heart to watch me seek after the love of a man without first letting him define pure, prefect, fairytale love the way he designed it.

It doesn’t matter if the man-interest I left at Messiah is recently “with girlfriend.”  It doesn’t matter that I’ve never had a real boyfriend or that I don’t have any prospects.  I didn’t come to Chile to find my husband, either (even if that might be a secret and unfounded desire).  The fact that I even have to “like” someone at all times is rubbish.  God has every intention to romance me this semester and I’m acknowledging that here in public for a little accountability.  I want to be giddy for God.  I want to long for God the way he designed me to.  What good is a Christmas present if you’ve already peeked?  What good is searching and finding a boyfriend who is wrong and won’t last when in the meantime I can can grow in God and trust him to provide?  Isn’t God as big and as powerful, and even more, than I claim he is?

“…and all these things shall be added onto you.”