Embracing Brokenness

One of the crazy things I am learning in this phase of life is that sometimes I do not always understand why God directs our lives the way He does.  Why does he direct one person to go while telling another to stay and fight?  Why does He allow some people to experience unimaginable abuse?  Why does He not step in and just "fix" things?

To be honest these are questions I struggle with a lot.  On a personal level I have questioned many times why the direction for me was "Leave now" while another person heard "Stay a  little longer".  Why are my experiences in church different from other peoples?  In some ways I envy the person with incredible happy memories of church camp with friends, youth conventions and end of summer pool parties with friends.  That was not my experience.  And so I question.... "Why God?  Why are our experiences so different?"  

I am in introvert.  I take vast amounts of information and process it internally.  I probably overanalyze  any given situation trying to make sense out of it.  My counselor often challenges me with the question "Why does it need to make sense".  I think over time I have learned that sometimes that can be my way of trying to cope with incredible pain.  Other times it can be an overdeveloped need to take responsibility for everything that happens in my sphere of influence.  

Don't get me wrong.  We need to evaluate from a healthy place what we are responsible for, but the reality is that we are not responsible for everything.  There are two people in every relationship.  All we can do is identify and recognize what we are responsible for.  

So what happens when life doesn't make sense?

Well, that is where waiting and faith come in.

One of my favorite stories in Scripture, is the story of Elijah.  Immediately following this amazing victory over the prophets of Baal, where God sends fire from heaven.  We see Elijah running from the queen and hiding in a cave.  

What follows for Elijah is a period of rest and restoration after which he is sent to first a brook to be fed by ravens and later to a penniless widow and her son.  

Can you imagine what trusting God looked like for Elijah?  

He had to think God was insane!

First you are telling me that birds are going to feed me, and not any bird, but a bird that eats roadkill?

And then you are going to send me to the most needy people in the country for food?

I think that is the beautiful thing I'm learning in this season of life.  When life doesn't make sense.... That is when God creates his greatest work!

The part of Elijah's story that has captured my attention in the last few years, however, is the fact that to follow God with complete faith and confidence, Elijah had to rest and listen.

God's voice is often heard best in or after moments of quiet and rest.  

The world clamors for our attention every moment of every day!  

The thing I have learned about myself is that the quiet and stillness grounds me.  

It allows me the opportunity to connect with God on a deeper level and gives me confidence that I do not naturally have to move forward and stand my ground on what I know to be right.  

At the same time it allows me the space to hear and question God for the things I might not fully understand.  

The truth I am learning is that when something is broken, it is in pieces.  It can be incredibly difficult to put back together and it requires patience and time to fully reconstruct.

We live in a broken world, so of course life doesn't make sense.

When God says "leave" He can be directing you away from the thing that would completely break you will and spirit.  A will and spirit that He designed you with for a holy purpose.  When he tells others to "stay" He knows that this is an area that they were designed to take on.  

The different roles we play in life do not mean that one of us is less than another.  God created us all with a intricate design that only He fully understands.  We live in a broken world and we live as broken versions of our true selves.  God's greatest desire is to see us become the true self He designed us to be.  If we try to force our lives back together with glue and sheer will power we will break crucial parts of ourselves.  When we listen closely and let God direct the re-assembly of our sin-broken lives, we can begin to see how He created us.  

God sent us His Son, Jesus, as an example of what an unbroken life looks like, but all of our personal breaks are in different places.  If we look to one another for the way to "fix" our brokenness we will forever remain broken.  We are looking into a clouded mirror.  When we look to God for our healing, we begin to examine the person we were intended to be.  We can invite Him in to walk through our own story.  When we do that we see all the places that He was with us when we felt alone and isolated.  We find that He surrounded us with just the people we needed for that moment in our healing.  As we examine our story through God's eyes we begin to correctly re-assemble the broken pieces of our lives and it is in that we find our true selves as God designed us.

The Exhale in Our Journey

There comes a moment in every journey when the one traveling must exhale.  

On a hike it might be so you can crest the next hill.  You draw in a deep breath and push through to the top.

In life it often feels like the need to exhale comes before moving into a new phase. A new place of being.  Out of necessity we find ourselves driven to release something from the past so we can move on.  

It feels like I am at that point of my own journey.  I am feeling this need to exhale.  To let go of the voices that try so overwhelmingly to silence my own voice.  It is funny, but up to this point I had not realized how many people and influences I allow to silence my voice.

Somewhere inside I let a lie take root that various people over the course of my life have spoken into in a way that made me believe it as truth.  A lie that said my words do not hold the same value as another's.  The lie that said I was not good enough in a particular position.  The lie that said because I happen to be female my voice should not be heard as much as someone who happens to be male.  

I look at my journey and realize that as far as I have come and as much as I have grown, I still have pieces of the lies that have been spoken into my life that influence how I use my voice.  I move slower toward what I know to be right because voices with authority in past parts of my journey have convinced me that they hear God's voice for my life better than I could.  It makes me hesitate and think that God speaks to them differently than he does me because I hear a different message from him.  It convinces me that what I hear has to be wrong. 

Right now the need to exhale at this part of my journey feels so strong it is almost tangible, like I could reach out and touch it.  

Exhale.

The word is like a breath of fresh spring air wafting through the open window.  An invitation to forget the death and cold of winter and the past and an opportunity to welcome and embrace new life and new beginnings.

Exhale.

It is an invitation to rest in the present moment of our journey.  To welcome God into the very second we are in and to experience his truth in a completely new way.  It is an invitation to be still, to hear the still small sounds that we ignored in the busyness that has been our past.

What does that look like for you today?  How does it change your present to say yes to the stillness that allows us to hear most clearly from God?  

Reflections on 2015 and My One Word 2016

It's been months since I've posted.  I debated whether to even bother with it.  I'm pregnant, a mommy to an extremely active toddler, a wife and an adult college student.  All of those combined make life feel really overwhelming at times.  It's not really extreme busyness, but all of them combined mean that posting on a blog that isn't accomplishing a school assignment has fallen off of the radar for me.  

I suppose that all of that led to what has become my One Word for 2016.  2015 was full of choices made by myself and with my husband that definitely lived up to my word/s for 2015.  Recklessly Abandon.  In one simple year with only the agreement to follow God wherever that phrase led I find that it's been a year filled with change and challenges for both myself personally and for our family. 

Following God with Reckless Abandon means that you are challenged on whether you will do the things that do not make sense to anyone around you.  For us it meant leaving the church we were part of and over the next few months joining our lives (however painful slowly it might seemed to have taken) to a church plant 30 minutes away because God says "that is where I want to grow you".  It means reaching out to someone you've admired from a distance and risking rejection by asking "Will you mentor me?"  It looks like starting school when it hardly makes sense as you are no where near being in the career field that this degree will qualify you for and it means saying "yes" to God when He says you are finished with the job that is helping pay some of the bills.

For the past two years, I have chosen one word to live out through the year.  To be honest, the first time was largely driven by the fact the church I served at on staff decided to do a series on One Word and as part of the staff I felt a certain amount of pressure to perform and felt I should chose a word.  I find it funny how God can take something that you do out of a sense of duty and make it something that redefines your life.  That first year my word was Pieces.  I don't think I will ever forget that year...  It literally felt like my life fell apart.  I lost the one job I had that made sense to me and felt like it was suppose to be in line with my calling.  I experienced an isolating pregnancy and went into the end of 2014 depleted, alone and feeling extremely broken.  Coming into 2015, I had a certain amount of trepidation at choosing another word, but this time the challenge came from a blogger and author I had come to love and respect so I decided I would once again try the word for a year.

Entering 2016, I once again wondered if I really wanted to chance letting a word define my year and my answer came as I listened to a song that had come to my attention over the past few months.  Plumb's Exhale.  

Exhale.  It's a word that speaks of letting go.  Getting rid of the toxic things that hang over our lives and moving toward the grace, freedom and love that God offers us.  One of the things I have learned about myself is that as a relational introvert, I can have a tendency to hang on to relationships long after they have outlived their purpose in my life.  What I'm finding in this season of my life is that I have less capacity for things so I am going into the New Year knowing I have to be intentional with my time, energy and resources.  It means choosing wisely in what I hold on to and what I let go.  

Exhale.  

Let go. 

Somehow I already expect 2016 to be painful in some ways, but I have also learned out of two years of words that proved painful that in our greatest pain, God is doing some of His most powerful healing in our lives.  He is growing and stretching us because He knows what we are capable of becoming.  We become the one's to halt our own growth when we let fear dictate our lives and decisions.  What about you?  Have you ever tried One Word for a year?  Is this the year to try it?  I'd love to hear if you do!