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February 24, 2010
Finally an Update!
I have neglected this website for too long. Forgive me. It was two months ago that I wrote on Christmas Eve. I just placed in the LIBRARY section of this website a chapter from the manuscript of the book Karen had been working on for several years. The e-mail notice you may have received might make you think that I am referring to my own singleness but really this is Karen’s story of how God worked in her life to where she was willing to accept singleness as God’s will for her. Her story covers a lot of her school years and her coming to know the Lord as well. I would appreciate your taking time to read it and give me an honest critique of it as far as readability.
Anyway, life for me is going on and getting busier as the months pass by. Having Wil home for Christmas was good for both of us. Now Wil is looking forward to Spring Break and the possibility of going to Florida to spend time with one of his high school friends who is in school there. At the same time I am planning a short trip up to Canada to visit friends. I only have a small window to do that as I am leading a GriefShare Support Group now in my church here on Thursday nights. We have had some nice sunny days here recently and I have gotten some of my vegetable garden worked up and ready for planting. The first daffodils are blooming now so hopefully spring is not too far away.
Posted by David at 4:50 PM
Father, I place into Your hands… my singleness
Father, I place into Your hands… my singleness
“Now you tell me!” was my response to Martin Goldsmith’s comments to the coed group of students at the Christian Union meeting in Cambridge. Martin is tall, lean, very Jewish looking, and loves to say provocative things. He then watches; tongue very visibly in cheek, to see how his audience will respond. Well, my response was annoyance! He had just said that if a single girl committed her life to Christ, her chance of finding a suitable mate would drop considerably. He went on to say that if she then became a missionary, the likelihood of her remaining single doubled!
See how annoying he could be? Martin, one of my teachers at All Nations Christian College, had taken me along to that meeting, not because I had anything to contribute, but because he was aware of how little I knew as a Christian when I started out as a first year student at All Nations! I guess he decided to take advantage of the opportunity to see that I got a little extra teaching on the side in the context of that Christian Union meeting. I enrolled at All Nations the year after I asked Jesus to be my Lord and Savior. I hadn’t gone there to be a missionary, only to get to know God and His Word better. So it shouldn’t have mattered to me one way or another that my chances of marriage were decreasing. But I did feel as though God had tricked me into something I might come to regret.
Thirty years later I haven’t forgotten Martin’s comments, so they did niggle more than I wanted to admit at the time. But they didn’t quench my new and exciting faith. Life with Christ was better than anything I’d known previously in my life. I’d never felt so loved and accepted, so free to be the person He made me to be. I had a new identity and was hungry for Christian teaching, even though I struggled to put each thing I learned into practice as soon as I discovered it. I found myself gagging on some lessons as I tried to swallow them before I’d had time to chew and process them into bite sized pieces. All in all I was growing and learning to serve my Lord so not always thinking about marriage.
Yet it wasn’t fun to always be a spectator at friends’ weddings. I had been to a number of weddings in England and I’d missed those of many high school and college friends in the States during the three years I’d lived in London, England. I watched friends who were happily married and having children, and I did wish I could be in their shoes.
I chuckle as I remember the first time I was married. A group of neighborhood friends were playing and we decided to have a wedding! I wore a half slip with lots of layers of light green, yellow, and pink crinoline as a veil. I can’t remember what I had on for a dress or what Eric Lenser, the groom had for a suit. But Eric was the groom, I was the bride, and Wayne Wilson was the pastor who married us. I think we were in third grade at the time.
Dating became a more important part of my life through junior and senior high. Having a boyfriend seemed to be an important and necessary part of the package to be socially acceptable and not an outsider. I wanted to be in the ‘in’ group and was proud of having a boyfriend, even if he did prefer someone else during ice skating season each year. She was cute and a better skater!
Liking a boy from my hometown who went to Lawrence University was a big influence in my decision to attend the same college. Dean was a good friend and we dated most of the four years we were there together. He is a fine organist and I loved hearing him play—often sitting on a wooden pew in a drafty church listening to Widor or Bach toccatas and fugues. I remember asking Dean to promise that he would play the organ at my wedding. I was joking because at the time I hoped he’d be marrying me and thus in a different role at the wedding. Had that happened, my life would have followed a very different pattern.
There was definitely a strong attraction to the opposite sex. I’d have been delighted to have a number of different tall, dark, and handsome boys I knew pay attention to me, but whether I was too bossy or too opinionated or not pretty enough to get their attention, no serious relationships ever developed.
Let me bring my story back to England now and the autumn of 1971. I’d been living in London for just over a year and had a free weekend, so decided to cycle to the south coast from London. I didn’t have a map; just a Youth Hostel guide which I hoped would lead me to cheap accommodation. I hadn’t taken into account that the North and South Downs (which are actually rather steep hill ranges) lay between me and Brighton! I still can’t figure out why the British call ups ‘Downs.’ I found my way south through Wimbledon and eventually into slightly more open country. I stayed at a Youth Hostel near Holmbury St. Mary, in Surrey, northwest of Reigate. I asked the hostel warden about interesting places to visit in the area. He told me there was a village church, part Norman, part Saxon just a few miles away. The next day I went exploring (I’d given up on the idea of making it as far as the south coast!) and found the church. It was a lovely October day, with crisp, colorful leaves underfoot and still clinging to the trees. The sun was warm. In the States we’d have referred to the day as Indian Summer. I explored the tiny church, then settled down under a cherry tree to write letters. It seemed a wonderfully peaceful spot and I was basking in the warmth and quiet around me, such a contrast to the noise and bustle of London. I expected to be undisturbed for hours, but soon discovered that footpaths from neighboring farms crossed in the church yard. And though the building was centuries old, it wasn’t dead! One woman came to arrange flowers for Sunday. Another came by to check on the Scripture readings for the services the next day since he was to be reading them during the service. This “reader” stopped to chat and we found lots to talk about. Tim lived in a half-timbered farm house nearby and was planning to move to London. His father had recently died and he had been back at home to help his mother.
To shorten an otherwise long story, Tim and I got together quite often once he moved to the capital, and went to the ballet together. I was into brass rubbing (using heelball wax to rub an impression of a monumental brass on to a sheet of paper—much like covering a penny with a piece of paper and rubbing it was a pencil so that you than had a black and white impression of Abraham Lincoln or Queen Elizabeth on the paper, depending on which penny you used). Tim had a car and one weekend we went to the Cotswolds in the west of England, near Cheltenham where Tim had studied. Tim knew that many churches in the area had monumental brasses amidst the paving stones on their floors. Many were of wool merchants standing on their sacks of wool with a favorite dog at their side. What I remember best about that trip is what happened on the Monday night.
We had been staying in Youth Hostels, but all the hostels in the area were closed on a Monday night so that the wardens had a free evening. That meant we had no place to stay and neither of us could afford a hotel or even a bed and breakfast. Tim’s suggestion was that we go to a farm in Skipton where he knew the owners and ask to spend the night. He assured me they wouldn’t mind as they had a Bible study at their home on Monday evenings so would already have lots of company! I wasn’t too keen on a Bible study, but we needed somewhere to stay, so I agreed to go. I’m sure that by the time I’d opened my mouth twice in the Bible study it was clear to everyone in the room but me that I didn’t really know Jesus Christ in a personal way. Oh, I’d grown up going to church and even taken a lot of religion courses in college, but hadn’t ever studied the Bible, and didn’t actually realize that God could speak through His written Word to me personally. John’s Gospel, chapter two was the topic for discussion that evening. I can remember mouthing arguments I’d heard other people use to disagree with a literal interpretation of what was written. So I contributed to the discussion, but remained ignorant. Afterwards Tim asked our hosts if we could spend the night, and they kindly obliged. Another American girl was also staying with them. Elizabeth later contacted me in London and encouraged me to read the Bible and get a tiny book of daily readings called “Daily Light.”
My interest in Tim, more than in the Bible, drew me to the Bible study he soon started attending in London. It met in a large flat on Great Montague Street, across from the British Museum. The Bible study was on Thursday evenings and soon I was attending regularly, even going on my own if Tim couldn’t make it. January 20, 1972 was a Thursday, and after a meal as a group of more than thirty young people, we broke into three smaller groups for Bible study. Afterwards I got to talking to a fellow American with a most unusual name, Sparkle! She had come to use the phone to call her family in the States and wasn’t able to get the call through. Sparkle was a stranger to me, but she did have a familiar accent, and we got to talking. All sorts of jumbled thoughts and questions that had been churning in my brain came tumbling out. Sparkle listened, then pulled out a little booklet she had in her pocket, and began leafing through it, explaining the content as she went: “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” she read. I found it a lot easier to believe that He loved other people than that He loved me, but I kept listening. When she got to the part about a chair and a throne it made sense to me that I’d been sitting on the throne of my life, not Jesus, and it was time to get up and let Him be Lord of my life. We prayed together and I asked Him to be my Lord and to forgive my sins. Life had been pretty good so far, but I was afraid my luck would run out and I was well aware that my life lacked purpose and direction. I knew than that I needed and wanted Jesus to take control of my life---and He did.
This may seem like a tangent from discussing my ‘love life’ but actually, getting to know Jesus was getting to learn the true meaning of love. Though there were warm and exciting feelings in my friendships with men, I came to realize just how selfish and self-centered my feelings had been. The concept of love giving and of caring more for the person loved than for myself and my own interests, was an entirely new concept.
On the way home from the Bible study that wintry evening, I remember stopping under a lamp post and telling Tim I had asked Jesus to be my Lord and Savior. I didn’t feel any different, but I’d done it, and somehow telling someone else made it more real than just praying with Sparkle. I don’t think I ever saw her again. God brought us both in out of the cold to connect for a significant moment, then took us on separate paths. Mine led to a deep desire to know God better and to become familiar with His Word. That got me to All Nations in September of 1973.
There is no need to go into others who did show an interest in me but for whom I felt no reciprocal feelings. It seemed that the tall, dark, handsome ones were always interested in someone else! I was glad to have them as friends, not boyfriends. But there were times when the longing for the partnership and security of marriage tugged at my emotions. Yet I had misgivings about marriage. I think a part of me had always been afraid of being married. My mother’s marriage only lasted a little over three years, and I was only two when dad walked out, so had no idea what a ‘normal’ home with two parents was really like. I didn’t want to be divorced, so maybe it was safer not to marry.
Despite Martin Goldsmith’s warning I did become a missionary and went to the Philippines as he predicted, a single woman. On one home assignment I met someone I really liked and wondered if he could be Mr. Right. I was visiting my good friend Linda in Texas when I decided I just had to know whether I’d find a husband. My plan was to fast and pray until the Lord gave me an answer! I can’t remember how long I spent on my knees beside the bed—at least four or five hours—when God spoke to me. His voice was clearer and more distinct than I’d ever heard it before and I still remember what He said.
“Trust me, my child. If I tell you now that you will be married, you’ll want it right away. If I tell you that you won’t marry, you aren’t yet ready to receive that answer. Trust me.”
I didn’t get the answer I wanted. Instead I was deeply reassured that God knew me inside out and knew what was best for me. I was satisfied, and ready to eat!
A few months later I was back in England and on my way to a CWR Counseling course. I had booked the course months in advance, but as it came time to go, I was dragging my feet. I’d been traveling all over the United States. I counted 50 different beds I’d slept in over the six months I was there and I was tired of changing beds. I was also tired of having no fixed address, apart from heaven, and I didn’t know the zip code there. So when the course started only a week after I arrived in England I simply didn’t want to pack a suitcase and travel to yet another different bed. But I did go, and during the week there the Lord met with me in a new and deeper way.
Selwyn Hughes, the main speaker on the course, explained that we all had a deep need for significance and security and a sense of self worth. When our efforts to meet those needs were thwarted, it could lead to frustration, anger, resentment, etc. And if we looked in the wrong direction to have the needs met, we could get what we wanted, and find our hearts and lives still empty and longing. I began to realize that a record playing in my head, at an unconscious level, for many years had repeated, “When you are married and have a family, then you will feel secure.” I have believed that, and thus was convinced that I couldn’t know security apart from marriage! But if, as Selwyn taught, our deepest needs for significance and security can only be met in our relationship to Jesus Christ, then I didn’t need a husband and children to be secure! That took some processing, and I began to realize that God had protected me from a premature marriage to someone who I expected to meet my needs in a way that only God can. I thought about others I knew who married for the wrong reasons and now felt trapped in a relationship that hadn’t turned out as they expected. I began to thank God for protecting me from being in those same shoes myself.
At one point during the course, we were asked to write down the most painful experience we’d ever had. I didn’t know how to answer that question, so asked God to show me. He reminded me of something that happened when I was about ten and spending the day with my father, older half sister, and younger brother. I remembered the event, but had completely buried the pain I felt that day as my father took us to meet his drinking buddies and introduced his oldest and youngest children. I was just one of the insignificant ones in the middle, unnoticed. Feelings of the pain of rejection were buried in my heart that day, buried so deeply that God had to bring them to the surface when He was ready to bring healing. I shared the incident with a small group during an evening session and they prayed for me. One of the ladies saw me as that skinny ten year old, tearful and alone, and saw Jesus standing near me beckoning to me to come to Him, to receive his attention, His love, and acceptance. Through my tears I too could see Jesus reaching out in love to me, and gladly ran into His arms.
When I went to bed that night, two thoughts were spinning in my head. The first was the words of a chorus I must have learned in Sunday school many years before,
“Now I belong to Jesus, Jesus belongs to me,
Not for the years of time alone, but for eternity.”
The sense of belonging was WODERFUL!! The other thought was, if I were to marry, the invitation would read:
The Lord Jesus Christ
Gives His daughter Karen
To be married to
___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Suddenly it didn’t matter whether the blank at the bottom of the invitation was ever filled in or not. What mattered was that I knew who my real father, my heavenly father was, and that was enough.
A few months later I was on my way back to the Philippines for another four year term. I’d already been there for ten years and assumed that, just as Martin Goldsmith had predicted, I would remain single for however much longer He wanted me serving Him there. There was a lightness in my heart and spirit as I left friends in England. I was more at peace with singleness than I’d ever been before, and looked forward to pouring the energy that had previously gone into longing for a husband, into my Father’s service.
That could have been the end of this chapter, except that God had other plans. When I returned to our mission language center in Batangas City to do a language refresher course, I discovered that there were quite a number of new students, including five single fellows! When I started ten years earlier there were only five in our group, a couple, another single girl, a single fellow, and myself. The other singles were both from England and Michael decided when we were still on the Candidate Course in England that he was interested in Dawn. It took about a year for her to be sure that marriage to Him was what God had for her, but about a year after we started our training in Singapore, Michael and Dawn were married and I was their bridesmaid. During my early years in the Philippines, there just weren’t many single men around. So here I was, meeting three from other missions, and two who were also with OMF.
I arranged to arrive in Batangas on a Thursday because I knew there would be a Bible study that evening, and it would be a good way to meet other students. Most of our classes were individual ones with our Tagalog teachers, so we didn’t always see much of other students. There was a ‘brown out’ (power outage) that evening, a very frequent occurrence in those days, especially in the province. So Phil, who was leading the study, had a Coleman lamp in front of him so that he could read his notes and see his Bible, but the rest of us were sitting in the dark! That led to interesting discussion! Never at a loss for words, I made numerous comments during the study, and at the end asked any who cared to join me to plan on a beach outing on the Saturday. I loved to swim, and knew that it was culturally inappropriate for me to head for a beach alone. I didn’t really care who came along, as long as there were others so that I could get into the sea again.
I had suggested a meeting place for Saturday morning, near the jeepney stop where we could get a ride to Anilao beach. Two couples, one with young children, and one of the single fellows took me up on the swimming outing. As soon as we got to the beach, I headed for the water and kept swimming for several hours! The salt water is buoyant and it was easy to float when I got tired. I thought that Dave, the single fellow in the group, liked swimming as much as I did since he stayed out in the water with me when the others tired of swimming and went back to shore. After a while, he climbed up on a sail board anchored off shore (probably a resting spot for snorklers since there was lovely coral in the area). I kept swimming around him like a shark (!) and we asked the sort of questions you do when getting to know a stranger. I was surprised to learn that he was also from the Midwest, had become a Christian while in the Navy, and been at a Bible school in Oregon the same years I’d been at All Nations. When I got home that afternoon I had quite a lot to write in my journal, much of it about that young man!
My plan was only to spend two weeks in Batangas doing the refresher course, and the weekend in the middle I went across to the island of Mindoro to see friends there. I’d been reading through the Bible that year, and my readings on the ferry crossing were in the Song of Solomon! It seemed particularly inappropriate as I kept thinking about Dave. After returning from Mindoro I felt I needed to talk to him. Several things he had done during that first week, perfectly innocent in themselves, seemed rather out of place in the Philippines context and I felt I needed to tell him, as kindly as possible, that he was sending signals I was sure he didn’t mean to send.
The day I returned from Mindoro I received a letter from an acquaintance in Belgium. I had met him and his family years before hitchhiking on the Continent and kept in touch. By this time his wife had become a Christian, but he was still sitting on the fence. I heard from him occasionally and this particular letter had many religious questions. I wasn’t sure how to answer the letter, so asked Dave’s advice. I thought that after discussing Andre’s letter, I might be able to give him a bit of sisterly advice. We had a good Bible study together, looking for Scriptures to share with Andre. Then I blurted out a question that was on my mind. “Dave, why are you still single?” By that time I’d learned that he was about a year and a half older than me, had never been married, and I couldn’t figure out why! Usually I could figure out pretty quickly why older men were still single, but he was an enigma.
Later I learned that he had a pat answer ready for that question, one he had learned from another bachelor some years before. That answer was, “I haven’t yet met the girl who deserves to be as happy as I can make her!” If Dave had given me that answer, this would probably be the end of my chapter. But instead, he told me how he had grown up on a farm, been in a small country school in a class of all boys until he went to the big high school in town in ninth grade. He was shy, and didn’t date at all in high school. While in Bible school he was interested in a girl, and when she ended that relationship, he was crushed. He had been reading Elizabeth Elliott’s book “Through Gates of Splendor” about the life of her husband Jim Elliott. And when he read about Jim asking God to put his emotions to sleep (as He had put Adam to sleep in order to form Eve from Adam’s rib) until he met the woman he was to marry, Dave had prayed the same prayer. Dave told me all of this and ended his story by saying, “And that’s what God did… until I met you.”
I was speechless. I felt like a bowl of jelly gradually sliding out of the bowl, down the chair, onto the floor, and through the cracks in the floor. I never did get to telling him that offering me flowers (that he’d been given on his birthday) and staying behind at the end of a Bible study were sending the wrong signals. I guess they were the signals he meant to send! If Dave hadn’t declared an interest before I returned to Manila, we probably wouldn’t have seen each other until we were both at a mission conference. But having said he wanted to get to know me, we did a lot of letter writing over the coming weeks and months.
Our beach outing was on June 4th, and on July 4th Dave and other Americans at the language center came to Manila, to the house where I was staying to celebrate that American occasion! That weekend Dave spoke to Gus Noble, our OMF director, about me. Gus warned him not to hurt me. If he wasn’t interested in pursuing the relationship, he needed to let me know soon. On the other hand, Gus pointed out that Dave needed to get off the roundabout sometime, and maybe this was the time!
I didn’t know the gist of their conversation at the time, and was surprised that Dave seemed so agitated that afternoon. He and the others from Batangas drove back south and we continued to write fairly regularly.
He and other language students came up a month later for a field trip, to visit different Manila based ministries. It was arranged that Dave would visit our church planting team and during that weekend he asked me to be his wife! Again I was speechless, but managed to nod in the affirmative.
We were married six months later, on January 9th, 1988. Denny and Patty Merritt, team mates of mine in Tanauan, Batangas wrote and sang a ballad at our wedding. We had tears in our eyes and huge grins on our faces as we listened to what they sang:
WAITING FOR THE KING
(for Dave and Karen Lampinen:
01/09/1988)
Would you like to hear a pretty story
It may sound familiar, but it's true
All about a prince in Royal Service
And how he finally found his princess true
Once upon a time there was a Kingdom
And in that country lived a princess fair
The King Himself decided to adopt her
She grew to love and serve Him everywhere
She would freely move about the palace
Singing praises daily at the throne
Then her king sent Karen on a journey
She went at once to call His children Home
Other girls her age had early married
And full of love and life she would have too
But only if her King would grant His blessing
She came to see that nothing less would do
(CHORUS)
Waiting for the King
Trust in him and sing
All that he knows best for you
will come . . .
. . . in time
Go in his strong hand
Fit within his plan
Royal blessing you will surely find
In another province of the Kingdom
A prince grew up to be a gentle man
Once a rebel, now a loyal soldier
He marched off to fulfill his Master's plan
David too had vowed his sole allegiance
To only marry one his King would choose
When he met that lady, he was certain
It was ordained, PROCLAIM THE JOYOUS NEWS!
(musical fanfare)
David and his princess want to tell you
Karen and her prince want this made clear
To wait upon the King for Royal timing
Is not an easy thing--the cost was dear
But in the trusting came a new dimension
A laying down of all at Jesus' feet
To know the Father's love and full acceptance
Is all we need to make our lives complete
(CHORUS)
Waiting for the King
Trust in him and sing
All that he knows best for you
will come . . .
. . . in time
Go in his strong hand
Fit within his plan
Royal blessing you will surely find
[written and sung by Denny and Patty Merritt in Tanauan, Batangas, Philippines, on the occasion of the wedding of David Lampinen to Karen Druliner 01/09/88]
Posted by David at 4:25 PM