No Good Thing

I work in a restaurant kitchen, and my coworkers really are my friends. I’m closer to most of them than I am to people in my church or youth group, but very few of them are Christians. By secular standards they’re “good” people, but their idea of fun is very different from mine. Anyway, it was the middle of summer (which is our crazy busy season) and I was feeling like all I did was work and sleep and that I didn’t have any sort of social life and was I some sort of loser because I didn’t have friends that I hung out with after work? Then, a former coworker is coming into town for a day and everyone is getting together after work for drinks down at one of the bars in town. As a courtesy, of course, I was included in the general “hey you want to come?” but everyone knew that I wouldn’t. And I went home that day in an absolutely foul mood.  It was a bit before I could really articulate why I was so miserable, but then I realized…. I was jealous.  All my friends were socializing—having a social life—and because of what I believed, who I was, I couldn’t participate. 

Now, I realize that there was nothing stopping me from going and not drinking, just having a soda, whatever—but I knew I wouldn’t enjoy it. And that was what rankled, that I would not be able to enjoy it because of who I was and what I believed.  I was angry at my life and the way I was. I’ll confess, there was one other thing that was making me angry. This coworker they were meeting up with was someone that I had had a (what was for me) major crush on while he was working there.  And the only thing that was stopping me from at least making my interest known was the fact that he wasn’t a Christian. In all other respects, he was almost exactly the kind of guy that I’d be interested in.

I was a grouch for about a day, until (and I don’t say this disrespectfully, it genuinely felt like this) God hit me upside the head with a very specific verse… Ps. 84:11b ‘the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.’ And it kept bouncing around my head until I felt like saying, “Ok God, I get it!”

“No good thing”… there’s two conclusions I can pull from this, neither one of which I particularly like. When I feel like there’s something I don’t have that I should, maybe it’s genuinely not a good thing. Or maybe I’m not walking uprightly. Now, since I believe that if I’m not walking uprightly God will show it to me, I have to accept that whatever I don’t have is because it’s not a good thing for me to have.  But I certainly felt like I was missing out on something good, and he was a really nice guy…

The whole “guy thing” is, honestly, an area I feel deprived in. In my 24 years, I have never been asked out on a date. Personally, I feel like having a boyfriend would be a good thing. It would certainly be ‘normal’. Be that as it may, it’s never happened, and I have days of “woe is me, what’s wrong with me?”  This time though, it’s not my ‘religion’ that’s withholding something from me… it’s my God. And I know perfectly well that it must be God who is keeping it from happening, because despite my pessimism to the contrary, I’m not repulsive.

 So I’m left with the fact that God must be withholding a boyfriend from me because it would NOT be good for me, for whatever reason.  In fact, God must be withholding something bad from me… because otherwise He’s not good. 

P.S. I'm not saying I get why it would be bad, and I certainly have done more than my fair share of praying for a boyfriend, but I have come to terms with the fact that, even though I don't have what I want, God is still good.