The New Eve (18 page)

In other words, we want to know how to do life right. Everyone hungers for a life that makes sense and is really going somewhere. But how do you get your hands on a life like this? Figuring that out is not so simple. Many people think it's life's best-kept secret. Novelist Peter De Vries once lamented that life was destined to remain a mystery: “If you want my final opinion on the mystery of life and all that, I can give it to you in a nutshell. The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.”
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We would all be destined for sorrow if that were true. Without a satisfying purpose our spirits grow weak and listless. As Johann von Goethe put it, “A useless life is an early death.” Fortunately, the converse is also true. People who've discovered purpose and meaning thrive in life. As Stephen Covey discloses in his book
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
, the happiest people among us are those who find life purposeful. They live life as a great big adventure that has a meaningful plot and a rip-roarin' conclusion. Or as Christians believe … a rip-roarin' conclusion that's just the beginning of an even greater adventure in heaven.

But living a purposeful life is not accidental. It doesn't merely happen. It requires a thoughtful process through which you carefully deliberate over various life options. Then, using certain preselected guidelines, you choose the options you believe have the best potential to deliver this life to you. For Christian women, studying and searching the Bible are huge assets in this
undertaking because it contains a treasure chest of proven guidelines. Still, this process is intensely personal and soul-searching. You must also open
yourself.
Get personal. Go deep with intense questions and brutally honest self-examination. At some point you'll have to take a leap of faith and choose what and whom you intend to live for. These become the end goals of your life—your right direction. All of life is then lived in pursuit of them. They will shape and direct who you are. They will also become the primary measurements of your progress in life. Stephen Covey calls this “living with the end in mind.” His research found that most successful people live this way. “To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you're going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.”
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When I set out on a trip, what I believe about the destination dictates the choices I make and the actions I take throughout the journey. Am I driving to Florida with the kids? I believe it's sunny there and packed with beaches and theme parks. I pack shorts, shades, and short-sleeved shirts. I drive south rather than north. I gear up for pleasure rather than business. And if I remember the sunburn I got last time, I stop and buy sunscreen.

But what if it's the dead of winter and I'm heading to northern Michigan instead? It's cold rather than hot. I'm bound for business, not pleasure. I'd better not make the same choices I made for the Florida vacation. Where I drive and what I pack, as well as the plans and choices I make all along the journey, are all shaped by the destination.

Life is the same way. How you want your life to finish should be reflected in how you are living today. King Solomon understood
this. This is why in Ecclesiastes 7:2 he said it's better to go to a funeral than a party. A party can lift your spirits, firm up your network, and introduce you to new friends and ideas. That's good stuff. But if it's meaning, happiness, and fulfillment in life you're after, you go to a funeral. You stand there and gaze uncomfortably at the deceased, not sure how long you should linger before moving on. You think of her life, theme, and legacy. What did she mean to you? To others? What mark did she make in life? Was it meaningful? Was it happy? Did it make a difference? Did it have any connection with eternity? You turn these questions over in your head and listen to the whispered comments all around you. Then you wonder what friends and family would say at
your
funeral.

That's what's so good about this moment. It brings the end to mind.
Your end.
It's natural here to ask yourself if you are measuring up. Do the choices you've been making count for anything? For what? You're on sacred ground now. You've penetrated the fog of daily existence and come face-to-face with what life is really all about: your end goals. So what do you see? Do you like what you see? If not, how as a woman, a wife, a mother, a worker, and a Christian would you like your life to end? Having done and become what? Giving your life to what? Leaving what to whom? Can you see it? Is it clear? Is it meaningful? Satisfying? Will it be meaningful in eternity?

It's healthy to ask yourself these sorts of questions.
Necessary
, even, if you want to be a New Eve. It's a step of bold, practical faith that will eventually lead you to a better life, as it has others.

Of course, there is an easier path. Many people—women and men—take it. It's a way of life that seeks the approval of the moment regardless of the long-term consequences. This lifestyle
pays no heed to the insights of timeless wisdom. Today is all that matters. Cultural cues get all the attention. Whatever the world is saying, being
in
is of utmost importance. Forget the popular slogans and images of yesterday.
Now
is what counts.

A term paper written by a female Yale student exemplifies this way of life:

Most Yale women … aren't clamoring for equal rights or the chance to be called on in class anymore. They want a long wool coat for the winter, a Macintosh laptop computer with an MP3 player, a course load that doesn't include books by dead white men exclusively, a gay man for advice and a straight man for every other weekend or so, one good pair of Manolo Blahniks sometime in the future, to maintain a woman's right to choose, something to finally be done for the women being circumcised in Africa and suffocated under burqas in the Middle East, a cigarette or a shot or a joint when the company is right, a husband at some point though no point soon, a good education, a GPA above 3.5, and a network of connections for when she graduates.
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This Now lifestyle is the opposite of living with the end in mind. Comparison and competition are its chief values. Do I look right? Do I look better than you? Do I have enough? Do I have more than you? Am I better positioned than you? Are my children outperforming yours? You chase after the latest and best with passion, never questioning whether it will be the right stuff in the end.

It rarely is.

My good friend Bob Buford is a gifted social observer. He especially loves analyzing what brings out the best in people. In
his book
Finishing Well
, Bob relayed the following insight that he gleaned from Peter Drucker. Speaking of what he calls the “exemplars” or “heroes” of life—people whose lives have not only been successful but have actually gotten better over time—Drucker said, “They may not be smarter than the others, but the main difference between them and the nonheroes is that they
think ahead
.”
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Most people don't think ahead. They let life surprise them.

The Now lifestyle is a life primed for surprise but not the kind of surprise you're looking for.

Shakespeare wrote, “No legacy is so rich as honesty.” I won't dispute the importance of honesty, but I would like to submit the following amendment: No legacy is so rich as a life lived with the end in mind.

The woman who lives this way has a rare perspective. Because she knows that one day she will face God, she orders her life to be God-pleasing and other-centered. She lives to make a difference she can identify now. With this end in mind she makes wise decisions and avoids foolish dead ends. She holds that course even when it is hard because she believes it will bring her great satisfaction. And like Abraham, she finds that her satisfaction with life grows with time. By life's end she has carved out a rich legacy of benefiting others through her works and passions. Her life and godly character have impacted her friends, her community, and her family. “Her children rise up and bless her; Her husband also, and he praises her, saying, ‘Many daughters have done nobly, but you excel them all’” (Prov. 31:28–29).

How does this differ from the legacy so many women are forging as they adopt the world's ever-shifting values? Flip on
E!
or read
People
magazine, and you'll get a pretty good idea.

By definition a legacy is what you leave to others that echoes through the generations. Choices, habits, and circumstances can perpetuate themselves from mother to daughter and on down the line. Take rock star and quintessential bad girl Courtney Love, for example. Her mother, Linda Carroll, described her as “a whirlwind of rage and venom and passion in peroxide hair and lacy, torn dresses.”
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What led Courtney down this path? Her mother thinks it is in the genes. Courtney was born “with a biology that created internal torment,” she says.

Was it really bad biology? When you read about Courtney and all the women who shaped her life, what comes into view is a legacy of living for now. Genes don't make choices, and choices are the things that have haunted Courtney and her foremothers. The story begins in the 1920s when a woman named Elsie gave birth to a baby girl named Paula Fox, who became the acclaimed author of dozens of popular books. But before Paula was a famous writer, she was a horribly neglected child raised by an “unfathomably cruel” mother. Elsie dropped Paula in and out of orphanages and veered in and out of her life like a destructive tornado. For Elsie, Paula was merely an obstacle, a distraction from the things she really wanted in life.

Naturally, Paula grew up confused about womanhood. She fooled around, made bad choices, and gave birth to baby Linda while in her teens. Paula quickly gave Linda away to a woman named Louella, who was in the middle of her own troubled storyline of rejection and bad behavior. For the next eighteen years Louella kept a safe distance between herself and her adopted little girl who longed for love. Indeed, Linda's entire childhood was marked by a hunger to belong to someone—
anyone.

When Linda came of age, she looked for love in all the wrong places. There was casual sex, thoughtless marriage, and nonchalant divorce. There were bongs and binges, communes and
cult leaders. Linda's firstborn child, Courtney, picked up on this legacy of poor choices alarmingly early. At age nine Courtney was caught with pornographic magazines. At age twelve she got drunk and cut herself up. By age sixteen she was on her own, earning a living at strip bars around the world. The rest is tabloid history.

So is all this merely the work of bad genes, as Courtney's mother claims? Quite the contrary. Courtney's life is simply the legacy of lost women with no noble, life-lifting purpose to their lives, making short-sighted, self-destructive choices. And those choices were not only destructive, they were also
instructive.
Courtney learned from the patterns set down before her and then personally pushed those patterns to new extremes.

This is why living with the end in mind is so important. It helps you not only live a fulfilling and productive life, but it also helps you leave a satisfying legacy. That's because the way you live your life is not only about you. Others are impacted!

If you take God and His Word seriously as a Christian woman, you will inevitably face hard lifestyle decisions from time to time. That's because a rich and fulfilling life—one rewarded by God-requires moments of bold faith.
Bold faith.

You will need that kind of faith for the hard choice between full devotion to a successful career or downshifting that career to raise a family. You'll also need it when choosing between Kingdom work or retiring; playing it safe or taking a new, gut-wrenching career risk holding on to your children or letting them go; giving up on your marriage or courageously rebuilding it.

Hard choices and bold faith are part of the purpose-driven journey every New Eve is called to take. As you know, life can get messy. Sometimes doing the right thing causes life to become
even harder. In times like these you must persevere because, despite the difficulties, you know that the path you are pursuing has eternal purpose and God's reward in it. You can draw encouragement that others have gone before you in this. Some of them faced choices and circumstances far harder than anything you're likely to encounter, and yet their end-in-mind perspective gave them remarkable courage and held them steady and true. Blandina, a slave girl who lived in Gaul more than eighteen hundred years ago, is one of the best examples I know.

We know next to nothing about her except that she was one of a handful of Christians in Lyons, Gaul (modern France), in AD 177. Christianity was still new there, but it had grown enough to become a nuisance to the locals and draw the attention of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who believed Christians were immoral and superstitious. Wishing to supply rich landlords with a cheaper means of gladiatorial entertainment, Aurelius fixed his gaze on the Christians. They were generally poor and uneducated, so he calculated that they could be rounded up and killed for sport at a tenth of what it cost to procure and dispose of professional gladiators. And so the band of local Christians was collected and forced into the bloodstained arena at Lyons, where they were presented with a stark choice: either blaspheme Jesus Christ or die. The frenzied crowd roared as first one, then another, and then perhaps a dozen others chose life over faith, but they roared even louder when dozens of the Christians chose death over apostasy.

For several days Blandina was brought to the arena but kept from harm. Her handlers believed that if she saw enough Christians needlessly die, she would renounce Christ and save herself. She watched soldiers strap a ninety-year-old man onto an iron chair that glowed red-hot. She watched animals maim and kill women as the crowd demanded more. Day after day
she watched the horror, but she wouldn't give in. Eventually she was beaten and hung from a stake in the center of the arena. Miraculously, none of the beasts harmed her. Had an angel preserved her for a greater testimony?