recovery

Arm Yourselves: don’t worry, do prepare

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“Now who will want to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it. So don’t worry or be afraid of their threats. Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it…So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude He had, and be ready to suffer, too…”

-1 Peter 3:13-15, 4:1

Be ready to suffer?

“Be ready. Get ready. Here it comes. Are you finally breathing easy? Don’t trust it. More suffering is just around the corner.”

This is the direction my anxiety took things.

After Benaiah was hospitalized and Cody was bitten by a snake in July. It felt like…there’s no such thing as a fresh start. No matter where you go. No matter how you try. You will never find safe. Danger will always be lurking, just out of sight, and the second you let down your guard – it will hurt you, or it will hurt someone you love. Be it a copperhead, a decline in neuro status, a car accident, or another tumor, something awful is always coming. 

To those who are recognizing it, yes, that is an over-active fight-or-flight response at work. And yes, that is getting addressed. But I’m letting you in on some of my heart’s distress, because I spent this summer going quiet publicly, so I could get in the quiet with Jesus and plead with Him to give me some sense of what He was doing with our lives, and to restore my sense of His safety and protection. And now, I’m ready to bring you along into what He’s teaching me, and what I am still learning. 

In response to a lot of things these last few months, I felt my heart drop to my stomach, like the floor was falling out from underneath me. A loud sound when we’re driving. A new group of lumps along the scar of my incision. Another hospital bill. The tornado warning on my phone telling us to get out of our trailer and move to more substantial structure immediately. 

I listened to a video of a surgeon from Mayo Clinic, working to reassure patients who had gotten my type of tumor removed and were wrestling with the stress of potential recurrence. He said something like: “I do understand it’s heavy to carry that possibility – with the need to keep coming for scans, because we can’t tell you for sure that it’s over. But as your doctor, I would share with you that it’s very damaging to your soul to be waiting for that other shoe to drop, and I don’t want you to miss your tumor-free years. Those years are a gift.”

He was walking well in the tension of “Yeah, we might have to deal with that again,” and “There’s a lot of good right now you’ll miss if you’re focusing on it.” And I wanted to learn that. 

Darn it, as far as I know, I am living a tumor-free year right now, and I don’t want to miss one day of it! For that matter, I am living a brain surgery, snake-bite, car accident, tornado-free day today, too. Even as we carry the ache of what we’ve survived, the day we are living right now is a gift. But it is a learned skill to see that again after suffering that has rocked your expectations and rubbed away the young and innocent way you used to see the world. 

And so I have been wrestling.

“Lord, You say to expect suffering.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
-John 16:33

“You tell me I may have peace. In the same breath, you tell me I will have trouble. How do I absorb the reality that there will be more. More and maybe even worse than what we’ve already walked through. How do I expect that and still not lose heart?”

“Just don’t think about it,” doesn’t work for me. I’m a thinker (and “do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself,” is not actually saying “don’t think about it.” It’s saying “do not worry about it”).

The message God weaves throughout His word regarding the dangers we face is not just “don’t prepare.” I am learning to accept that God crafted me as a contingency, rescue-minded person who plans and prepares. A preparer and a responder, which is part of bearing His image as THE Preparer, and THE Responder. Scripturally, there’s a way to live out my design that is in line with truth, and it doesn’t look like worry, or waiting for the other shoe to drop. But that preparation, harnessed by the Holy Spirit, probably looks like anticipating goodness and accepting there will be hard stuff. It will be both. 

“So how do I tell my nervous system it’s safe? What layer of your protection do I need to understand to settle in the here and now? How do I accept what I’ve walked through, and lean forward in wild, courageous trust? How do I get back to that Jonathan, David, Joshua, Caleb spirit of, “This may get hairy, but my God will be with me!”?

“Arm yourself,” kept coming up as I prayed about it, tossing up these questions when I wrestled with anxiety again.

I found the verse it came from in 1 Peter 4:1, “So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude He had, and be ready to suffer, too...”

“Arm yourselves with this same mind.”
Okay,  the same mind of Christ. The attitude He had. That’s what I arm myself with. Set like a flint to Jerusalem.

“Be ready to suffer.”
Be ready for the bad. Prepare for the pain.  Forgive the movie quote, but it brought to mind a scene from my favorite move, The Princess Bride. I used to think I was. Ready to suffer, like Westley in the Pit of Despair, bravely raising an eyebrow,

“So it’s to be torture then? Pff. I can cope with torture.”

The albino man sighed as he continued dabbing Westley’s wounds,

“Well, you survived the fire swamp, you must be very brave. But no one withstands the machine.”

Now I feel like the broken Westley in his second interview, just whimpering.

How The Princess Bride Shows Philosophy is Inescapable | by Carl T. Rogers, MFA | Storylosopher ✍️ | The Labyrinth | Medium

Princess Bride -- The Machine on Make a GIF

Prepare for pain? I’ve been through a lot of that, so I can prepare for more, but I don’t know how to not be worried, then.

“How do you say to someone “This is going to hurt,” and “don’t worry” at the same time, Lord? How can you ask me not to worry when you say stuff like that?”

I asked people. Wise people. Counselor people. How do I do this? 
“You have a lot of trauma,” they said.

“Doesn’t everybody?” I thought.


When I asked, “Well, moving forward, do I tell myself it’s over? That it’s not going to happen again?” No one could set my mind at ease. They can’t tell me it’s not going to happen again. Some of it is unlikely. Some of it is actually sort of likely. But I was asking people. So they couldn’t tell me what was going to happen next. I was trying so hard to manage my own heart and mind. But I needed the Lord to manage my heart and mind. 

What helped was a question one of them asked: “Where are you trying so hard to be like Christ, instead of asking Him to illuminate your limitations and to show you what you need from Him?”

So finally, at 3 am, during an early morning breathing treatment for an asthma exacerbation ramped up by bronchitis, I asked Him, “I can’t seem to get a handle on how to help my heart and mind through this. Will you help me manage them? Will you show me what I need to know?” I pulled out 1 Peter, the book that housed this “be ready to suffer” statement and asked, “Will you show me what you mean? Does “arm yourself and be ready to suffer” somehow mean more than “get ready for this to hurt?” 

I’ve been chewing on what I read, and what I noticed ever since.

“So don’t worry or be afraid…”
-1 Peter 3:14

Arm yourself and be ready to suffer, does not mean we should worry or be afraid. The paradox again. Be ready for hard, but don’t worry about it.

“Ok, Lord, you’re being pretty direct about the worry issue, so show me: How do I be ready to suffer without being worried?”

And then my attention slowed and rested on the word “arm”  in “Arm yourselves.”
In the Greek, it’s “hoplisasthe,” which means, “to equip with weapons.”

Here are the thoughts that surfaced:

“Worry” tries to get ready.
“Arm yourself” succeeds.
Worry braces itself and freezes, saying “Oh no, not again!”
“Arm yourself” accepts that battle will happen again and takes action that makes a difference.
Worry searches for a way to avoid a fight.
“Arm yourself” is preparing to win the fight. 
Worry is a pulling apart.
Arming is a pulling together.
Worry hopes that with enough information, it can dodge the blows.
Armor is something you put on to shield yourself from the impact of the blows.
Worry is characterized by dread.
“Arm yourself” is characterized by hope.

“…Be ready to suffer, too. For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin. You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God.”

-1 Peter 4:1-2

Does that mean once we’ve suffered, we never sin again? No, that’s not what it’s getting at. 1 John 1:8-9 says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Scripture lays out that, through the cross, for those who believe in Jesus, our sin is completely paid for (Hebrews 10:10), and we will walk out this life on Earth, battling and wrestling in a sanctifying, internal war between the Spirit and our flesh/sin nature (Romans 7:14-8:1), until the day we see Jesus face to face, and He makes all things new. We can have victory, but we will not be perfect.

It doesn’t mean we’ll never sin again, but I do think this verse is saying that as we suffer, our assessment of sin’s payoff changes. “Hamartia,” the word used for sin in Scripture, means “missing the mark.” It also means “loss.” And the word “done with,” in the phrase “done with sin,” means not only “stop,” but also “refrain” or “restraint.” Suffering develops our restraint. Suffering exposes our deep needs and changes our tolerance for missing the mark and empty chasing. Suffering saps our energy for broken cisterns that do not satisfy. (Jeremiah 2:13).

MacLaren’s Expositions says it this way: “Clearly, the words which follow it forbid its being taken to mean that dead men do not sin. The Apostle’s thought seems to be that such suffering in daily life after Christ’s pattern, and by His help, is at once a sign that the sufferer has shaken off the dominion of sin, and is a means of further emancipating him from it.”

Notice how 1 Peter 3 and 4 carry us from “Don’t be anxious. Don’t be afraid of their threats” to “you will be anxious to do the will of God.” In Greek, the word anxious isn’t there the second time. It literally says, “Not to the desires of men, but to the will of God, to live the remaining time in flesh.”

This is how I would put it in my words: Arm yourselves with Christ’s attitude and be ready to suffer, because it will develop in you a restraint flowing from both the immense power source that is Christ, the One who suffered, and the forming of a deep unwillingness to waste what’s left of your time chasing desires that miss the mark. You will want to use what’s left going after what God desires. Get ready for the difficulty, because you will know, through this, that He is where it’s at. It will train you to use what’s left well.

“…Even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it. So don’t worry or be afraid of their threats. Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it.”

-1 Peter 3:14-15

“So don’t worry or be afraid of their threats,”

Here I noticed the layer of intimidation and empty threats. Scripture acknowledges that we have an enemy with schemes and scare tactics who aims to intimidate us away from battle with fear. But we have a Savior with substance and real strength. True power is not afraid of a fight.

“Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life.”

It’s not, “You can trust me because nothing bad is going to happen, so you don’t have to think about it or do anything about it.” God doesn’t tell us not to prepare. He just offers better preparation. He tells us to prepare by worship.

I’m saying it again because my heart needed it more than once and maybe yours does, too. Consider taking a moment to sit with this:

Our flesh and the Spirit both invite us to prepare, but
The flesh’s version of preparation is worry.
The Spirit’s version of preparation is worship.

My goodness, do I love it when the Bible tells me what to do instead. Don’t worry. Don’t be afraid, 

Instead, worship Christ.

In this verse, the word “worship” or in some translations “sanctify,” means: to venerate, regard as sacred, acknowledge, mark as holy, revere internally.

The phrase could be translated, “As Lord sanctify Christ in your hearts.” It’s worship, and it’s even more than worship. It describes looking at Jesus in a way that hallows Him in our hearts as the One worthy to run things. “Sanctify” is “set this apart as special.” “Sanctify as Lord,” I think is a little closer to “bend the knee, my friend.” In your internal world, surrender to His authority over your life and His care for you. It’s the kind of worship where we humble ourselves before Him and finally let go of the fight for control that belongs to Him. 

Maybe you’re suffering, and you can’t find a thing you did to cause it. It just feels senseless. If so, trust that God will reward you. Don’t be afraid of the threat of even more. Mark out Christ in your heart as the Lord – the One who loves you and holds all things together (Colossians 1:17). Worship Him. And put on the armor and protection of His attitude.

What was His attitude? Great question. That’s another whole Bible Study. If that phrase tugs at you, I encourage you to go explore it, both in the rest of 1 Peter and in Philippians 2.

For today, I’ll just tell you that if you’ve walked through pain, and now you find yourself growing tight inside when you look ahead, I get it. 

At 3:30 am, I sat in the stillness with this passage in 1 Peter. And as the nebulizer choked out the last of its chest tightness-relieving mist, not only did my breathing come easier, my tired heart rested.

Are you tired?

Do you need rest?

After wrestling with how to absorb our story, how to look forward with trust, how to get a sense of “I am safe,” how to not lose heart and how to keep going, while holding the complex reality that we walk in a broken world, we’re in battle, and the race is far from over; I cried out to Jesus to come manage my heart and mind, because I couldn’t.

 “I, even I, am the Lord,
    and apart from me there is no savior.”
-Isaiah 43:11

I don’t know what’s coming, and neither does anyone else, but He does. Both He and the people who are His hands and feet of healing are binding my wounds, tending to what I’ve walked through, but He, and only He, can prepare me for what’s still to come. 

And it starts with worship.

“For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.”

-Hebrews 12:3

When I feel the tug to worry, I will worship instead. I will dwell on Christ, sufficient for every storm; compassionate toward every weakness; broken for my heartache; who cried til He bled over the difficulty of what He was asked to walk out, but never lost heart; who knew deep weariness, and still renewed His strength and took courage. Christ, who armed Himself for battle. His victory in that battle changed everything. And then He gave it to us.

Are you tired?

I see you. Me, too. But let’s not let that weariness lead to a worry that pulls us apart inside.

Arm yourselves.

And then rest in your protection.

“Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.
 O death, where is your victory?
 O death, where is your sting?”

For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.”

-1 Corinthians 15:54-58


Oh Lord,


I invite your Spirit into my wounded and fearful places. Please, where I worry, give me courage. Where I want to prepare, help me do it your way. By worshipping. By remembering what I’m fighting for. By putting on the armor that protects me from the blows of the fight. By being ready to suffer, but also expecting to win. 

And please, in this moment, meet my brothers and sisters who are hurting, disoriented, discouraged, anxious, and hopeless. Meet them right here, in this moment, right where they are, and whisper hope to their spirits. Gently lead them to fix their eyes on you, and then to be ready. Not because something bad is about to happen, but because this is the territory where you’re ready to fight for their freedom. Help us stand firm and refuse to be afraid of our enemy’s threats. Because you bring the power, and no one can contest it.

In Your Mighty Name, Yeshua, “God saves,”
Amen

“If God is for us, who can be against us?”
-Romans 8:31

“Even from eternity, I am He, and none can deliver out of My hand; I act and who can reverse it?”
-Isaiah 43:13

“I have set the Lord continually before me;
Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”
-Psalm 16:8

“A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil.”
-Ephesians 6:10-11

“They do not fear bad news. They confidently trust the Lord to care for them. They are confident and fearless and can face their foes triumphantly.“

-Psalm 112:7-8

Acquainted with Grief: misty paths and solid ground

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“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
    and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

–Psalm 34:18

“What would you do if you were braver?”

“What would you choose if you knew everything would be okay?”

These have been my litmus test questions when I’m making an important decision.

Courage and trust are the values I want to live my life by.

Thirty-some days ago, we were camping as the year drew to a close, and we purposed to use the time to connect with each other, to slow down, to take in God’s Word, to get quiet, and to listen. We were surprised at what rose to the surface when we were still. We found that most of our good decisions come not from finding enough answers, but from learning to ask the right questions. And we discovered that for both of our hearts, the answers to

“What would do if you were braver?“

“What would you choose if you knew everything would be okay?”

…had changed.

Not that it’s up to us to lay out where we should go. I’ve assumed incorrectly so, so many times. But if it’s up to us to take action rather than only be acted upon, and we have the privilege to fight for the direction we want, it is worth noting that we really want to care for people.

And we want to care for people in an environment that suits the stillness, reflection, and quiet that most accommodates working through grief.

“A man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.” Was a verse that came up in my heart when, again, this year, I was hit with some things. Again, I went through the cycle of shock, desperate positivity, disconnect, numbness, denial, fury, irritability and I recognized it.

This is grief. I am not new to this anymore. Grief and I are familiar.

And according to Isaiah 53:3, Grief and my Messiah are familiar, too. It’s part of why His heart is so soft and compassionate and patient with me.

And I know now that grief is something that can be moved through, lived through. It has changed me, but there is still beauty and life to be lived, and I will be able to enter into them on the other side of the mist, confusion, pain, and sorrow. Though grief is suffocating, and it can block you from seeing anything else, I know now that it can be moved through, acknowledged, and felt, one step at a time, until it is no longer ALL there is.

Grief will still be there, but there will be more. There will be new life.

In July 2023 I wrote this:

“I looked across the coffee shop at the only artwork on the wall with color. A picture of the mist in the jungle trees. I felt your nudge to go there. Metaphorically. Into the mist. Into the moments when I felt lost. Not just for other people, but for myself.

It represents the heat, the pressure, the moisture, the darkness, and the tangled paths of pain, suffering, and confusion. I am mostly out into the light now. And doing everything I can to not relive who I was in the depths.

… I don’t know. I DON’T KNOW what it means that you chose me out of all the pleading moms, begging you to rescue their babies, and you said yes. AND that you left me broken.

I have both “blessed be your name’s” here.

/Blessed be your name, when the sun’s shining down on me, when the world’s all as it should be, blessed be your name./

AND

/Blessed be your name, when the road’s marked with suffering, when there’s pain in the offering, blessed be your name./

I’ve had both before…but not at the same time.

SUCH blessing and SUCH brokenness.

Which will hold my attention?

Where you have answered or where you have said that your grace is sufficient?

Hope realized or the demand for more endurance?

I don’t speak of the events and experiences I walked through like somebody who lived a story that can be told…but as a clinical report. A timeline. A compounding list of my surprise, struggle, horror and angst.

It’s not enough to make light of it or excuse it and I can’t explain it. But my other hard experiences, in time, have all become good stories where I can see your faithfulness and I have finally, with some of them, come to terms with the rich context that they are for taking people on a journey with me to a truth that we both need.

The jungles hold that. And my soul needs it. To own my own story. To come to terms with what I have survived so that I can stand, firm and grounded and strong, on the other side of what I’ve overcome, instead of flinching, hunched and haunted – spirit broken.

And maybe part of the path to that wholeness, the first step toward those misty trees, is acknowledging that I have a broken spirit.

“The Lord hears his people when they call to him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed. The righteous person faces many troubles, but the Lord comes to the rescue each time.”

–Psalm 34:17-19

Welp. That hit a nerve.

Now I’m weeping in a coffeeshop.

This grief is so darn unpredictable. That a beautiful verse about your nearness and your rescue…unexpectedly hits on how “many troubles” are part of the plan for people who are doing their best to follow you – not a sign that we’re getting something wrong…or that it would let up if we just believed well.

The difficulty is training, not punishment.

Jen Wilkin hit on this concept in her Hebrews study, and it has become such a core truth for me. Such a mercy for me to hold on to. That you have something for me to learn through this. That it’s not happening because I did something wrong.

That it wasn’t wrong to want another baby.

That I didn’t screw everything up.

That it’s not my fault my family had to relocate and my husband had to lay aside flying.

That I couldn’t control what happened to me and that though I did my very best to plan for it…it wasn’t enough, and that was okay. Because you will rescue me.

Each.

Time.

One of our pastors challenged our church this week to steward people well by stewarding the truth well. He explained that valuing and caring for those relationships means letting them see that your life is a mess when it is – because You work in that truth, Lord, to support us, encourage us, care for us, and provide safety for others in knowing it is not just them who’s coming apart at the seams.

Man, do I know what it’s like to come apart. Not just to feel the pinch of something, the underlying hum of anxiety, or to race with all I’m trying to keep up with.

But to watch helplessly as it all unravels. To stare in horror as the unraveling reaches not just my plans, my home, my work, my relationships, but works its way to me. To watch it fall to the floor and go limp and know that I have no idea how to put this back together. We have not just lost a couple rows of stitching here. There is no stitch in time to save it anymore. We are down to heaps of thread that have no connection to each other. They must be entirely re-woven.

And the screams of “Why????”

Why would you let this happen when I’m trying to serve you? Wasn’t there anything good in it worth preserving? What are the people who are still on the field serving you getting right that I am missing? What am I too dense to understand? Where am I not listening to you that you had to tear it all down? Did you not have my attention already?

In your kindness, I have had a few close friends remind me that you entrusted Job with his difficulties, you singled him out from all the earth, because of your pleasure in him. Not because he was especially hard to teach, but because he had an especially rare heart for you.

And so it is with many who love you and walk with you. Their paths are tangled with unraveling, pain, loss, plot twists, shipwrecks, and snakebites.

“So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude He had, and be ready to suffer, too…Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through , as if something strange were happening to you. Instead, be very glad – for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory…So if you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God who created you, for He will never fail you.”

–1 Peter 4:1, 12, 19

I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

–John 16:33

Oh Lord, Send forth your word and heal me.

Transform me by the renewing of my mind.

Teach me and help me to ruminate on these truths.

Light my way through the mist, as we revisit the dark places, as we press into the pain, as I seek to understand…maybe not what you have allowed, but you. Your heart for me. Your faithful character. The One who will never fail me.

The more I understand of you, the less I have to understand the path we have traversed. Yours was no cake-walk. I can entrust you with mine. I know you understand it.

Psalm 34:18: “He rescues those whose spirits are crushed.”

Crushed…like grapes. Pressed…like olives. A friend once told me that out of the crushing comes the wine and the oil you use to anoint the wounds of others. But WE are rescued out of the crushing. Lord this is my prayer. Rescue me, whose body was saved, but whose spirit is crushed. I need your work of rescue again, Son of David, have mercy on me. Let me be poor in spirit before you. That I may be blessed by your mercy.

Lead me to the forest, and help me to be brave and patient with the process of sorting through what is painful, of watching things not be in place while you are weaving me and the pieces of my life back together, with frail, delicate thread infused dually with the oil of your strength, and the sweetness of your comfort. A many-faceted, complex garment you are weaving. From a rag to scrub up the messes, to the softest of blankets to wrap around the ones lost in the midst of those messes. From a worker (Martha), to a lover (Mary).”

I prayed this prayer one and a half years ago. And here I am.

My heart is cooperating so well with the medication that I’ve been able to enjoy running. My tumor is out. I can feel my hands and feet again. There are things I am still wading through and waiting for, but I’m no longer huddled in a blanket crying and hoping my life will somehow thread back together again (most days). I feel strong and eager and ready to build something.

I cried out to the Lord and He answered me. Over the last year and a half, He gave me the courage to face down that misty forest. I walked in, and I hiked, and I hiked and I go back often to forage, to understand, and to plant. The forest and I are familiar now.

He is giving me firm footing. Less often do I wrestle with “Will I be abandoned? Will I have what I need?” More often now it is, “Lord, can I wait well for how you WILL take care of me in this? Can I keep YOU in focus instead of the unknowns? If I can do that, I can do this.”

Of course, I still want recognition and attention, but I also recognize the sour aftertaste they carry now. The glory of men. Yeck. It doesn’t satisfy. Oh, how my heart longs to be filled up and satisfied with His gaze, His attention, His love, His approval, of which there is plenty to fill me up and stuff me full so that I approach other people not out of hunger, but overflowing.

And here I am today.

Trying not to be distracted by a random lot of land in North Carolina. Trying to push it down and focus.  But full of desire and ideas for it. For how He might use it.

Cody and I prayed about it and went to take a look. I’m not sure what I expected would happen.

But as we walked across it, from corner to corner, it seemed to me to be a place for souls in pain to heal.

Oh Lord,

I return again and again to the soft blanket idea. Have you brought us out and back again, and through so many things, softening us with each hit that our enemy intended to jade us, and finally bringing us to the edge of our mist, to wrap us around people and be a vessel of your care and gentleness to them as they face their own forest?

As we look to you and depend on you, would you pour into us and into them? Would you be close to us all when our hearts are aching and our spirits are crushed? You are the only Healer who can do the tender work of restoring broken souls.

Amanda Williams, in “Godly Grief” writes:  “I don’t want to experience grief and suffering. I can’t solve them, can’t explain them away – I can only enter in, and honestly, I’d rather not. The only way to get to the other side of the mountains is to walk through them.”

Something has shifted, a little at time, with each pass through my own story, hunting for the markers of your faithfulness.  I no longer want to shrink back from grief and suffering. I want to enter in with people. I want to enter in for myself. I want to walk through to the other side of the mountains, so that we may finally breathe in that view. I am addicted to those, “There it is! We’re going to make it after all!!” moments, where the light warms the edges of that thick mist and we finally push out into the open, and we breathe freely, for we have traversed the fog and it cannot hold us anymore.

Ryan Miller writes:

“Chinese bamboo takes 5 years of being watered every day before it breaks through the ground, but in five months time, it will grow 90 feet in the air. Your breakthrough will look different than you think it will. And your job is not to control when breakthrough happens, your job is to faithfully water every single day and trust the Lord for the breakthrough, even in the wilderness seasons. Because God does his best work in the wilderness. And your goal is to take the manna and to take the quail day by day and to say “Heavenly Father, I trust you for the breakthrough, I’m just going to be faithful.”

Lord,

You are the God who gives the breakthrough. In your time and in your way, Lord, not in mine. You are the God who knows exactly what to expect, and who has laid the groundwork and set in motion the provision for all that is to come. I am surrounded before and behind, bubble-wrapped in your protection and love and not a thing can touch my life or go one centimeter further than you permit. You draw the line and make the waters recede and all the universe must heed your voice. Broken things can be built up again. There is nothing this life can hold that can ruin me. And the hardest things, you like to turn on their heads and redeem for beauty, for healing, for newness, and for strength.

We will carry our sorrows, but you will carry us with understanding of those sorrows and with a solid, leak-proof plan to guard all that we entrust to you, to bless us and give to us and rescue us and make much of yourself through our weaknesses before a watching world.

/This is my story. This is my song. Praising my savior all the day long./

-Fanny Crosby, Blessed Assurance

/I won’t be quiet, my God is alive, How could I keep it inside?/

-Elevation Worship, Praise

Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief.

Mighty God. Wonderful Counselor.

You understand our pain.

And you have held me in mine.

And through fire, you have pressed into my heart some things that must be said.

Some truths that must be wielded as a shield against an enemy who loves to kick us while we’re down by hurling accusations at us and twisting your character. In the times when we most need to collapse, exhausted, banking only on your unfailing love and faithfulness, he loves to whisper suggestions that you might not be so loving, faithful, or interested after all.

Not everyone is in a place to hear it. But for those who are groping in the dark, I must speak.

Don’t listen to that. Listen to Him. Hold on for all you’re worth to His true words. He loves you. He wants you. He’s working in this. We don’t have to understand how. I know you feel lost. This isn’t over. This way, this way, you’re going to make it, press into the mist, keep limping, keep coming, He is worth it, He is worth it, He is worth it.”

For this has been my story.

And this will be my song.

Thank you, Jesus, for you have brought my broken spirit here, to a point where it wants to be poured out.

“Praise the Lord; praise God our savior! For each day He carries us in His arms.”

–Psalm 68:19

“I waited patiently for the Lord to help me,
    and he turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the pit of despair,
    out of the mud and the mire.
He set my feet on solid ground
    and steadied me as I walked along.
He has given me a new song to sing,
    a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see what he has done and be amazed.
    They will put their trust in the Lord.”

–Psalm 40:1-3

““His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in Him we live and move and exist…”

–Acts 17:27-28

Outward Checkmarks, Inner Rest

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“You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way.  But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.”

–Matthew 7:13-14

—

Our pastor, Ethan Crowder, taught through Matthew 7 several weeks ago and it floored me. (you can listen to the sermon here.)

It wasn’t new information, but he put it in a new light. He reminded us that when Jesus mentions the “many” who choose the broad road, He wasn’t primarily referring to the many people who live horrible, sin-filled, evil lives. He was talking about the vast number of people who are working so hard to live outwardly good lives, but do not have true, inward righteousness.

Few trust in Christ. And He is the only way to be inwardly clean.

Few understand that God is not interested in all the outward effort and appearances and trying to keep up and trying to be good enough. He wants fruit that flows from the inner life, from a heart that knows only Jesus was ever good enough. He’s looking for people who walk the difficult, narrow road of placing all their trust in Him, step after step after step.

“The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

–1 Samuel 16:7

I already know that my best attempts at a good life are not enough. I know I need the cross. I grasp that without Christ, there’s a chasm between God and I that I could never reach across. What I find myself wrestling to grasp is that the cross not only bridged the chasm, it moved me to the other side of it. Out of death and striving and failure; into life, wholeness, and favor. I know it, but I forget it. And I get stressed all over again when I don’t think I’m doing a good enough job.

In his message, Ethan said, “It’s easy to look the part…but genuine righteousness is always inward before its outward. It’s always a matter of your heart before it’s a matter of your life…If we check all the boxes with how we live but fail to have a heart that’s changed by the Gospel, then we’ve missed the point…God doesn’t want you to be Jesus. He wants you to TRUST Jesus.”

This wrecked me because, for a year, I have been trying so hard to keep up with what is expected outwardly while I’m grieving, churning, wrestling, and fearful on the inside. But I could have dropped all the outward things, the pressure to be enough and to be good for other people. Jesus is enough. I don’t have to be Him. I can just be the person who’s clinging to Him. What God wanted was inward. He had to do some work on the inward. And I couldn’t speed it up.

My trust and confidence were mangled and not functioning and I wanted to think rightly about God and have all the outward flow from being in a good place inwardly but I didn’t know how to get there any sooner. I wanted so badly to do well and to make good choices even if it took a while for the emotions to catch up, but the emotions also had to be processed. I think what stood out to me in this sermon was the relief of pressure: there is no pressure for me to be good enough. I cannot be. But Christ is – and He produces good in me as I keep coming to Him.

One of the most surprising things I felt this year was the urge to avoid church and fellowship and the attention. I couldn’t figure out why I wanted to get away from the very people who care so much for me and my family, but I think I understand now that it was the pressure. I perceived expectations that I couldn’t meet. To be their missionary and their small group leader and their helpful church volunteer and their mentor and their enthusiastic Vacation Bible School teacher when I was also a traumatized post-partum mom recovering from eight months of hyperemesis gravidarum, three hospitalizations, heart complications, moving suddenly across the Atlantic with only 5 suitcases worth of belongings, and facing the scariest days of her life as she waded through a flood of scans, appointments, and treatment recommendations for her tiny baby’s swollen brain.

I tried so stinking hard to have something to offer, but I think I could have just let it all fall. I could have just been exactly where I was, processing what I was dealing with, and if it was messy, I think they would have just loved me. Just like the Lord does.

And Oh, I need that love.

While I’m still trying to be enough, I will feel strain, distance and disappointment that don’t apply to me. I am on the other side of the chasm because of the cross. I have been showered with affection, approval, warmth and welcome because of the work Jesus finished. And it is not meeting the outward checkmarks that will finally ease that heavy pressure. It is resting in this unearned love – love that has been lavished upon and given whole-heartedly to me. Only out of that can I walk forward and have something to offer others. Something that is sincere and full of life, not forced and wrung out of a tired, collapsing shell.

Oh Lord,

May I find my rest in this love. May I learn to wait on you and let you produce the fruit. Help me to clear away the outward pressure and performance and let life make its way out – however small and humble its baby shoots are. Work the fruit of patience in my life, especially as I gauge what needs you are asking me to step into and what needs I should yield to your mighty hands, which can hold them all. Teach me to wait on the careful, inward work you are doing to produce true righteousness in my heart, especially when I’m tempted to rush it because I don’t see satisfying results yet.

Curb my perfectionism by killing my pride. Help me to drop those high, high expectations of myself and instead set all my expectation on you. Show me how to be at ease with learning, with interruption, with unfinished, with messy, with life as an imperfect disciple and a growing parent.

Remind my heart that it doesn’t please you to buckle down and strive with all my might outwardly while my heart is despairing. You are near the broken-hearted and you bind up their wounds (Psalm 34:18, 147:3). You lead gently those that have young (Isaiah 40:11). Good Shepherd, perhaps part of the difficult, narrow road is the difficult work of trusting you when I need to rest and recover, because I believe you when you say you are gentle.

“Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him...”

–Colossians 2:7

“I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.”

–Ephesians 3:16-19