It's Not On You.

You are free to not save the world

I wrote this essay more than a year ago. It’s been sitting in my drafts folder ever since. Today (in a fit of procrastination) I wandered through my unpublished work and found myself moved again by this story and the lightness I now carry on my shoulders. Praise God for an easy burden. I want it for you. Maybe reading this will open you up to receiving a better cross.

I don’t know why I didn’t share this when I wrote it—I think I wanted to say more. Life is busy, friends. Sometimes saying something is enough. Hope this helps.

There’s nothing quite like the Manhattan skyline at night—the Brooklyn Bridge strung with white lights like pearls, the city ablaze with electric life, the East River embroiled, swirling, racing, the city a smeared reflection in the turbulent water. Years ago, many years ago now, I lived just down the street from this commanding tableau. I could walk downstairs, turn right, walk two blocks, and see the glow of Lady Liberty’s torch.

On the morning I moved away, I sat on a bench overlooking the city at 2am, tears on my cheeks, devastated. I stood there again last night, raindrops on my cheeks, happy.

“Praise God,” I thought. “I’m so glad I don’t live here.”

-

I didn’t want to leave the hotel room. I’d walked 8 miles already. In the rain. I took off my shoes, climbed into bed, and called my all-time favorite pizza delivery place, Fascati’s on Henry St. I’d been daydreaming about dinner since breakfast.

My call went to voicemail. We’re closed. I didn’t cuss, because I don’t cuss. But if I ever did cuss, this would have been the moment.

Knowing I couldn’t spend the night in Brooklyn without eating pizza and knowing my other favorite pizza place was just a third of a mile up the street, I did the hard thing. I got out of bed, put on my shoes, and walked in the rain to Juliana’s.* Juliana’s lies just under the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s probably the best location for eating pizza on planet earth.

I was hungry, so I saved the view for later and ducked straight into the restaurant where I ate a margherita pizza at a table for one. I pulled out my journal for companionship, and that is how this essay began. Sometimes it takes a walk in the rain to see what you need to see so you can write what you need to write. Here’s what I wrote:

“I’m a different woman than I was when I lived in Brooklyn 15 years ago. A list of the ways I’m different:

• I get up in time for breakfast every day.

• I’m more decisive and less opinionated.

• I talk less about wanting to be a writer (and do much more writing).

• My marriage is a more honest place to live. We’re both better at speaking and hearing the truth.

• I have two daughters, babies I only dreamed about in that season of miscarriages and mystery.

• I’m fully convinced it’s not my job to save the world.”

It’s that last one that sticks out to me, because it’s that last one that so deeply characterized my time in New York.

New York is the city of striving. What is it they say about New York? If you can make it here you can make it anywhere? Everyone I met during the year I lived there had some giant ambition—become a tv bigwig, get my documentary funded, write a hit song, be a hair stylist to the stars, and (most commonly) make a ton of money. [New York necessitates a ton of money.] They didn’t just have dreams; they had hustle, too. They worked all the time. Nights, weekends. We had a friend who would work until 8, take the train to our place in Brooklyn for pizza from 9-10 and then take the train back to New Jersey to sleep for a couple hours before work started up again.

Justin and I weren’t much different. We’d come to New York to save it—a giant ambition if there ever was one. We spent all day every day trying to meet people and tell them about Jesus. We volunteered as ESL teachers at the public library. We talked to strangers at concerts. We joined meet up groups to go bowling or talk about books or eat dinner with people we didn’t know. I even started a Craig’s List book club. One person came. We built a website and blogged and answered emails from parents whose children had gone to New York and left their faith behind—maybe we could contact them and tell them about our plans to start a church and convince them to come? We had tiny Sunday meetings in our apartment with one other person and Wednesday night studies with two or three.

Goodness gracious, we were trying so hard.

And then some days we didn’t try at all, because we’d tried so hard and “nothing” was happening and all we could do was lie in bed and eat ice cream and watch Heroes.

We were also trying to have a baby. And also failing at that.

And trying to be decent people who followed God’s rules. We failed at that a lot, too.

The failing made us feel guilty, and the guilt weighed so much it made trying seem impossible. But then we’d feel guilty about not trying and commit to trying even harder. And we’d try and try and try. And fail. And the failure induced guilt and the guilt brought on surrender, and once again we were indulging all our worst impulses. Which would leave us feeling guiltier, so we’d commit again to try again. This time we’d try harder, hardest.

Eventually we’d have to leave New York (just days after discovering we were pregnant with our daughter London) because our support ran out, partly due to our low numbers of Bible studies and conversions. Our fault, our failure.

A year after we left Brooklyn, Justin met up for lunch with one of the people who’d been supporting us in New York. He said to Justin, “I’m so glad everything worked out. You have a beautiful home, a good job, London has a yard to play in. You seem happier.” Justin came home crying. When he told me what the man had said I cried, too. Who cares about happier? We had more work to do. We left all those people in New York—the handful of people we were in Bible studies with, our neighbors who’d never met an evangelical Christian other than us, the one other member of our little house church… What were they supposed to do without us?

This post-New York life was easier, but that didn’t mean it was better. Sure, New York was hard. But God’s path is supposed to be hard. Right?

-

During the year we lived in Brooklyn I became obsessed with the idea of taking up my cross and following Jesus. I read John Stott’s The Cross of Christ, Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship, and Shane Claiborne’s Irresistible Revolution.** I concluded that Christ’s sacrifice demanded my sacrifice and that sacrifice looked like a long list of verbs: striving, giving, emptying, trying, going, making, teaching, writing, meeting, seeking… I was miserable, but that made sense. I had a cross on my back.

When we had to leave New York I remember feeling like God had let me down, like I’d done so much for Him and somehow it wasn’t enough. I prayed, “God, we left everything for you. We sold our house and car and left our jobs.” Sometimes I wondered if God had ended our time in New York because we’d enjoyed living there too much. Maybe if we’d suffered more…

I was right about Christ’s sacrifice demanding sacrifice. I was wrong about what sacrifice meant (and where it led). I thought it meant me, like Cain, offering up my best, giving God my best laid plans, the fruit of the labor of my own hands. I was Jephthah, offering my only daughter on a pyre, because I’d made a promise, a promise God never asked me to make.

I’ve learned in the years since, that sacrifice isn’t about striving; it’s about submission. It isn’t about dreaming up ways you want to lay your life down; it’s about obeying God when He asks you to lay your life down.*** Sacrifice isn’t about pursuing pain. It comes with pain, and the pain is made bearable because God turns it to joy (“My yoke is easy, my burden is light,” “Count it all joy when you falls into various trials”).

Really, all God ever wanted from me was submission to His plan. And though the cross does lead to suffering, the suffering that comes from submission yields deep, inexhaustible joy.

-

I stood looking out at the skyline last night feeling so grateful, grateful mostly not to be living in New York, not to be a slave to my own ambitions, chasing a purpose God didn’t give.

These days I’m learning how to sit tight and wait for God’s leading. I’m learning that Scripture’s full of things I can do right here while I wait, things that don’t feel so much like waiting at all—love my neighbor, be patient with my kids, be generous with my husband, worship, make good choices about what I eat and what I watch and how I spend my time. I’m learning that doing what God’s asked me to do is easier when I’m not also doing a bunch of things God never asked me to do. I’m learning that the Christian life is abundant life—that it should be full of peace and joy and hope.

I couldn’t make it in New York City. I’m certain I could have if God had asked me to. I guess the truest sentence is this one: I couldn’t make it on my own.

I don’t know why I ever tried. I never will again.

-JL

*Juliana’s is a pizza place under the Brooklyn Bridge beside the more famous Grimaldi’s. Grimaldi’s was my favorite place ever until the owners sold it. Now it’s a bit of a tourist trap. A few years ago the original owners of Grimaldi’s got bored in retirement and opened Juliana’s next door. So if you’re in Brooklyn, go to Juliana’s. :)

**If I’d been a more attentive reader I might have realized that Stott especially never recommended a self-made plan.

***Can you have an idea and pursue it for the glory of God? 100% (Jonathan is a great example, the apostle Paul, too). I’ve actually written about the holy work of choosing suffering. But don’t do it without His blessing.