Okay, my computer is giving me a really hard time. I can't play with the fonts the way I normally like too... and I can't upload any pictures either, so please forgive my blog for not being quite as "me" as I would like it to be.
In case you were wondering. I finished Jane Eyre about a week ago. It was a really good book. One passage in particular stood out to me. Jane was speaking to Mr. Rochester after he tried to convince her to stay with him, though he was already married to a lunatic woman. Her inward struggle was as follows.
"Feeling . . . clamoured wildly. “Oh, comply!” it said. “. . . soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?” Still indomitable was the reply: “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation . . . They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs.” -Jane, Chapter 27
This passage totally jumped out at me.
So often we try to justify our actions. We try to convince ourselves that in our particular case the rules don’t apply.
Today I had a great opportunity to preview a book that a dear friend of mine recently finished and is polishing it up so it will hopefully soon be published. Of course I can’t and won’t share the story here, but there is a part in the book that reminded me so much of the torturous choice that Jane Eyre had to make.
Stay with the one you love, knowing that it will lead to sin, or walking away broken hearted, but with a clean conscience.
My friends book was dealing with modern times and the difficulties that teenagers have now days following the “rules” that parents put in place for them, or that they may have even put in place for themselves, but even more importantly, the rules and guidelines that our Heavenly Father put in place. It deals with the consequences of choices, both small choices and big choices that we make when we are young, unknowing that there will be lasting consequences from that small, short sighted choice.
Her book reminded me so much of a relationship that I had when I was a teenager. To make a long story short, I really liked this boy, and in my attempts to bring him back to church as he hadn’t been in many years, I fell in love with him, and he with me.
My intentions were all very good with him. I was trying to help him learn more about God and himself, and I was there for him during some hard family times. But as we started to bend the rules a little, things became more and more confusing. Instead of him gaining a stronger testimony of church, I started to forget mine, and got caught up in the romantic teenage drama of first love.
I lost sight of what was truly important, and as the rules got bent more and more I stopped caring for myself. I only cared about not hurting him.
One day he came to college and proposed to me. My first instinct was like Jane’s ““Oh, comply!” it said. “. . . soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his.”
I prayed and prayed. I wanted to marry him, but I knew I would lose much of myself if I did. I finally realized that day what Jane also realized when faced with a similar choice, “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation
I broke my own heart and ended our relationship learning several valuable lessons from it. In order for me to love myself, I have to always be true to myself.
And, like Jane learned, “Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation.”
There are days that I desperately want to stay in bed and sleep instead of going to church for example. But, I then think, “If I justify this choice today, who’s to say that I won’t next week, and the next. Or even more likely, if I make an excuse for today, I am inadvertently teaching my children that it’s okay to justify breaking rules when it just doesn’t suit them at the time.”
There are so many examples I can give, but the point is, if you start down the road of justifying your selfish or bad choices, where do you stop?
Life is full of hard choices to make. That’s why God gave us laws. Not to make our life harder… but to make it easier to make the hard choice when the temptation comes.
Tonight I’m grateful for God’s law, and the guidance and direction it has given me in my life. Because I made that choice to follow God’s law, my heart is healed and I’m deeply in love with a man who I can be completely me with… and he loves ME!
I hope I can instill in my children a respect and love for His law as well, so when hard temptations come to them, the choice will be easier.
No comments:
Post a Comment