Wow. What a ride this year has been. With all that has happened this year in my life personally, the global impact of COVID-19, and New Years is fast approaching, I've been finding myself evaluating what I really want my life to look like. For so many years, I let fear be the driving factor behind everything I did, from the clothes I wore to the jobs I did. I was afraid what people would think of me when I walked into my 10 year high school reunion. Did I look good enough? Did I have a good looking guy on my arm? Was my job impressive?
This summer would have been my 10 year high school reunion, and I would have shown up alone, working turf care at a golf course, carrying an excessive amount of student debt, and nothing to show for it. And you know what happened?
COVID.
So, thankfully, no such event occurred. What did occur, however, was a season in which the struggle had nothing to do with the pandemic and the fallout from it, and everything to do with my heart.
For so long, I treated scripture as a self-help manual. Though that is sorta-kinda what it is, I was leaving God out of it. I was using Scripture as my divine magic wand - wave it around over a few verses and BAM! I'm all better. I had spent so much of the last few years trying to milk glory out of my situation by my own hand, that I was effectively telling God what he was and wasn't teaching me. I realized that I was basically forcing change and growth in my life so that I could effectively end the chapter and move on to the next, hoping that it was there that I would get everything I wanted.
As this realization dawned on me, I started to see my relationship with God as one built on production and performance. I was striving to prove that I had a healthy relationship with God because of all the boxes I was checking, all the studies I was doing, the books I was reading, the pages of my journal I was filling. Though none of these things are bad - in fact, they have been healthy ways for me to enter into the presence of God. But at the time, they were crutches. I was motivated by outward appearance, while God was desperate to speak to my heart.
Then, late one afternoon I got a call from a friend and mentor, asking me where I had been that day. Confusion quickly turned into horror and pain as I realized I had gotten my days mixed up, and missed a trip out to the camp I volunteer at. As the program team for the week, we decided that in light of COVID restrictions, we would go out to camp and shoot some videos to share during what would have been our week of camp.
And I missed it.
I was devastated, mad at myself, heartbroken, questioning what was wrong with me, and what kind of person would miss out on the one chance to participate in their favourite ministry this year. For those who may not know me that well, I should tell you that when camp was officially cancelled for the year, I cried for three days. Camp is my favourite week of the year. I think about it and dream about it and look forward to it more than Christmas, my birthday, or a Dermot Kennedy concert.
To say I beat myself up after that is an understatement.
Then I spiralled. I struggled a lot with what God's plan for my life was. There were so many things that I wanted to do, but felt like I was not equipped or there were too many obstacles. For a while, I was super distant from God. I felt like he had let me down, and broken my heart when opportunity after opportunity passed me by, and I was left feeling rejected and useless. I retreated into myself and my insecurities, and by the time October rolled around, I found myself to be somewhat unpleasant and very unhappy. I may have escaped facing my fears at my 10 year high school reunion this summer, but that doesn't mean they disappeared. As we know, those things we hide in the dark, thrive in the dark. It isn't until we shine a light on them that they are defeated.
So slowly, piece by piece, I started handing things over to God.
My desire to withdraw and put distance between us because I felt he had hurt me, became the doorway through which I see his grace and his unchanging love for me.
My heartache at feeling unheard and rejected became the tool through which God shows me his love and protection for me is stronger than my temptations
My wondering through the wilderness became the journey that brought me deeper into the heart of God.
All of this happened because I finally decided to turn around and listen in the midst of my pity-party-temper-tantrum. I had finally had enough of feeling sorry for myself, self medicating, and escaping.
You see, there is something unique and powerful about letting yourself simply feel what you are feeling. No policing, no 'should' or 'shouldn't', no filters. In the past, I've been quick to shut down and silence any thing that threatened to make me feel uncomfortable. But as we know, you cannot selectively turn off emotions - when you numb one, you numb all. In the past, it wasn't until I was a long way down that road that I would begin to wonder if there was a better way to deal with my emotions, and if this pain was more self-inflicted than it had originally been.
These days, life experience, maturity, and the grace of God keep me from setting foot on that path again as long as, in the end, I take all the things I am feeling and bring them to God.
I know that the uncomfortable things in life are not to be avoided at all costs. They become the training ground for my greatest breakthrough.
I know that, though it is difficult, I have to acknowledge and wrestle with my feelings, no matter what they are.
I am learning that my feelings do not dictate reality. In addition, no matter what my reality may be, it cannot, will not, change the fact that God is good.
The only way that I am going to remember this fact, day in, day out, month after month, through storms and chaos and heartbreak and struggle and disappointment, is to be reminded again, and again and again. And again.
I do that by finding people to be accountable to: friends, students, mentors. I commit to reading even when I am convinced that I will not learn something new. However, this time I am not reading in order to squeeze out God's grace - I enter in by asking God to reveal himself in a new way and to bring me deeper. Without fail, in big or small ways, he does just that.
I am learning to trust God, and what I have learned is that He loves me the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He longs to reveal the depth of His love for me as we walk through life together. It's going to be messy. I am going to get things wrong. But it is not up to me to force goodness out of a difficult situation. That is a gift that He longs to reveal to me in His timing. My job is to be open and vulnerable with God so that I can hear when He speaks.
And right now, He tells me that I am His beloved Daughter, which whom He is well pleased.
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