When I was in high school, my friend Audrey was obsessed with teddy bears. This probably had to do with the fact that her on-again/off-again boyfriend looked a bit like a big teddy bear, with his caramel skin, fuzzy afro and cute smile. However, Audrey’s parents didn’t like teddy-bear boyfriend, and Audrey ended up kinda-sorta-dating him behind their back. Audrey also loved God. At the time, I didn’t realize how hard the situation was for her. Torn between trying to obey her parents, doing the right thing in the eyes of God, and keep her teddy-bear boyfriend from threatening to hurt himself if she left him.
At some point during their relationship, Audrey came across a picture, which she shared with me. Many of you may have seen it before. It’s a picture of a girl holding a small, ratty teddy bear. Across from her is Jesus, who is holding out His hand for the girl’s small teddy, saying “Just trust me.” The girl, not seeing the newer, bigger teddy bear behind Jesus’ back, says “But I love it God.”
Audrey immediately identified with the teddy bear imagery, and I, in turn, internalized the message: If you give up what you love when God asks you to, He’ll give you something better in return. At the same time as Audrey’s teddy bear drama, I was facing my own difficult choice. I had met a guy, Jason, the year before, and was crushing harder than I’d ever crushed before. We had become good friends, and although we never confessed our mutual feelings, our personalities and minds meshed better than I’d ever imagined possible. The problem was, he wasn’t a Christian. In the nine months that he and I were close, I was in a constant battle with myself. Trying to find a way that I could be with this guy, yet coming up against a brick wall again and again when confronted with his lack of Christian faith.
When Audrey showed me the teddy bear photo, I immediately resonated with it. I became convicted that God was asking me to give up my teddy bear, my friendship with Jason, and that if I did He would replace it with something much better. So, in one of the hardest decisions of my life to date, I gave up my teddy bear. After that, a few things came to light that I hadn’t anticipated.
Firstly, I couldn’t imagine a bigger, better teddy bear. Jason was so perfect for me, and I couldn’t get my head around it being possible that I’d find that connection again. So, although outwardly I walked away from the friendship, inwardly burned a tiny candle of hope that somehow it would work out one day. A candle which I found was impossible to extinguish no matter how hard I tried.
Secondly, the picture missed something really important: God’s time isn’t our time. In the picture, it was simple. You give God your small ratty teddy bear and He in exchange gives you a new one. I expected this from God. I waited for my new teddy bear, and as months turned into years, I began to lose hope. Jason was still in my life, a constant reminder of what I had given up. I got angry at God. “I did what you asked me to, why are you not holding up your end of the bargain?” I prayed, hoped, wished, and waited. I didn’t count on the transaction of teddy bears not being immediate.
Looking back, I realize that my hope in God to be faithful was dependent on Him answering His promises to me in what I thought was a reasonable amount of time. Turns out Abraham from the Old Testament had the same problem. God gave him the promise of descendants, giving an old man hope for a child years after having given up. But then, after the promise was given, nothing happened, for two and a half decades.
Like me, Abraham began to lose hope. He tried to force God’s promise to be fulfilled, and the result was years of a bloody war between the descendants of Isaac and those of Ishmael. I made a similar mistake. Three years after my decision to give up my teddy bear, I threw caution to the wind and chose to date a guy I knew was bad for me, hoping for the best. Like Abraham, I ended up paying a price for trying to hurry God’s promises.
Ironically, God seems to fulfil His promises to me and answer my prayers right after I’ve given up. Turns out, bigger, better teddy bears do in fact exist, and God is faithful. It’s a lesson both Abraham and I learned, in a hard, but ultimately amazing way.
WRITER: Caitlin Jankiewicz