Hard Times/Growing – Page 3

Running Into The Arms of Jesus

IMPORTANT NOTE: This was written over 10 years ago (and originally published May 13, 2012), when certain wounds were fresher and not as healed as they are now. The truth of this blog still holds for me but I am not currently in the middle of this kind of intense pain.

There are times when tears come unexpectedly for me. When my emotions feel close to the surface, ready to spill over. A day feels melancholy. Or I feel knots starting to form in my stomach. I feel particularly lonely. Something pokes at an old wound or something hard looms on the horizon. It feels like the lies I’ve worked so hard to not believe suddenly find new weak points in me to attack. Or maybe I’m suddenly tired – of working full time, or of having to be strong, or of being alone. I woke up this morning realizing it was going to be one of those days.

The unexpected part is that most days these same things could exist and they aren’t a burden, I may barely notice them, and they don’t bring tears to my eyes. I don’t spend my days working up energy to “be strong”. I enjoy my life – it’s not a constant struggle. My normal quietness is peaceful, not melancholic.

So what causes two similar days, in terms of circumstances, to feel so different? I can usually identify possible triggers for the emotions. But why are those triggers no big deal most days, yet seem to get their hooks in me on other occasions?

I don’t know why. I do know I have friends that I can call or ask for prayer. It’s both good and wise to do that. I do know that this will pass. I do know that even on these days, I can have extended periods of good “distraction” – where being with people feels normal and life-giving. But that doesn’t always “solve” the problem and the emotional fragility returns after that time is over.

At the core, sometimes I just need Jesus. Not in my normal quiet times, not in my typical prayer times, not in the wonderful gift of friends. I just need Him.

An old hymn, I Will Arise and Go To Jesus, has this chorus:

I will arise and go to Jesus,

He will embrace me in His arms;

In the arms of my dear Savior,

Oh, there are ten thousand charms.

So I run to Jesus, desperate for His arms around me. Not wanting to talk or think or analyze or take the steps I’ve learned in counseling. Just wanting to be held. And knowing that His arms are my safe place, my best protection from the things that hurt and ultimately where I will find what I need.

Moving Beyond Reflection and Gratitude

[This was true when first written 4/23/12 and is still true now.]

In some circles, you hear people bemoaning the fact that many churches are inwardly focused. They care about “their own” and appear to largely ignore the world out there that needs to hear the gospel. I believe churches do need to provide a degree of self-care and that there are often valid things pulling a church in that direction. Certain stages of discipleship could fall into this category. And it is appropriate to care for the spiritual, physical and emotional needs of the “family” – to love them in real and tangible ways. But a church falls short of its mission if it never looks beyond itself – if it hoards the gifts (spiritual and otherwise) that it has received.

If this is true for churches, is it also true for individuals?

You’ve probably discovered by now that I am incredibly grateful for the healing that has occurred in my own life. And reflecting on that, remembering that, is an important part of my story.

But if my testimony is only that I’ve been healed (or blessed in other ways) and am now able to live a peaceful life, then I believe I have stopped short of where this journey is supposed to take me. I become selfish if I hoard these gifts. There’s a purpose for these things that goes beyond my own happiness or less stressful life.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying you have to “get your act together” before God can use you in the lives of others. Or that there’s some sort of burdensome “pay it forward” checklist God is keeping track of. Or that we can never just relax and enjoy where God has brought us.

What I’m saying is that the things Jesus has done in my life equip me to pour into others. I can take my former woundedness and use it to speak hope. I can testify to God’s presence in the midst of pain. I can walk beside someone with deeper understanding of both their present condition and their future possibilities. I can use my home to bless others through hospitality.

Most people will probably have seasons when their own pain makes it difficult to see anything else. When they are the ones desperately in need of those who can speak hope and comfort and healing. When their time and energy are consumed by something that feels overwhelming. When clinging desperately to Jesus is the only thing they can hope to do to barely survive the day. I know I’ve had those seasons, and I may have them again.

Right now, though, it feels that I’ve been healed in order to heal, been blessed in order to bless, been comforted in order to comfort, been set free in order to set free.

The gospel message is not just salvation. It is hope and healing as well. It is proclaiming freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind. It is setting the oppressed free. It is doing the things we see our heavenly Father doing.

There is a world desperately in need of that message.

Lord, let me not get stuck hoarding what you have given me.

Don’t Settle For Peace – Press On To Joy

[Originally written 4/15/12 but there’s a substantial update in this posting. In the last decade I’ve moved more comfortably into joy and what that looks like in me.]

To be deeply peaceful – no matter what the circumstances – is something I’ve learned in the last decade or so. When I first wrote this, I was coming out of the most painful season of my life. The Lord had worked on the level of fear in my life, I’d been through excruciating grief, I’d wrestled with whether I was lovable. There had been a lot – and recognizing that I can have deep and abiding and sustaining peace in the midst of those things was one of the gifts of that journey. There can be a solid peacefulness that co-exists with intense pain.

Peace came pretty naturally to me in those days – and is still a solid pillar in my life now. When something challenges it, I know the steps to regain it. It takes more than it used to to disturb the peacefulness I feel, and when it does get disturbed it’s not the same struggle to get back there. Jesus promised us that His peace is different from the world’s peace – and I’ve experienced that.

But I was once challenged to not settle just for peace, but to press on to joy. This was earlier in my journey and the advice giver acknowledged that after a long season of pain and anguish, he knew that arriving at a place of peace felt really good. But he encouraged me to press on until I reached joy. For the joy set before Him, Jesus endured the cross. (Heb. 12:2)

But what does joy look like in me? Ten years ago, here is what I felt: Despite huge amounts of breaking free from it, I’m still shy in most settings. I don’t have the bubbly personality where joy spills over infectiously. I’m quieter by nature. I don’t spontaneously blurt out the things that indicate joy. Shyness creates unique challenges in this area. The fear of embarrassment is still a struggle for me. It seems as if peacefulness suits my personality better than joy does.

But I had a nagging sense that the Lord had more for me.

It’s not that joy was not present. I did think I had pressed past peace and into joy. It’s that I didn’t know how to make it visible. I often think that if I could change one thing about myself, it most likely would be this. I’d like to be more expressive to those around me – especially in the things that indicate joy and delight. But there I was, still quiet and shy about it.

A few days before writing this ten years ago, something caused a blip in my peacefulness and my joy. It hurt and it was unfair and I spent one evening doing a little bit of grieving. I brought a handful of people alongside me. The peace began to flow back in.

And I realized this at that point – the reminder to press on to joy was coming more automatically those days. It had become an integral extension of peace. Whether or not I would ever be able to express it in a way that others could see, I did know that the joy of the Lord is my strength.

In the decade since then, I have learned to be more comfortable with a quiet joy. My shyness is still there, but not as controlling. I still have times when I wish I could be “the fun one”. But I also am very comfortable with who I am.

I still think I live more comfortably in “peace,” but “joy” is also a fruit of the Spirit and I want my life to be characterized by it as well. The Lord has stretched me in the last decade – and I am bit by bit relaxing into it in new ways.

What I Know For Sure

[Originally published 4/1/12. Still true for me today.]

Oprah often asks her guests – in her TV interviews and in her magazine – this question: “What do you know for sure?”

Of the many ways I could answer that, here is one that remains constant. I know for sure that Jesus understands a woman’s heart.

It started out being “I know that Jesus understands us.” A Palm Sunday sermon when I was in my 30s took that truth from a head knowledge to a more powerful heart connection. The gist of the sermon was that Jesus, during His time on earth, and especially during the events of Holy Week, knew what it felt like to be lonely, to be misunderstood, to have the “system” (both religious and legal) that was supposed to protect people turn against Him, to have friends break promises, betray Him and not be there for Him. The list could go on and on.

The point is – it hit me in a new and powerful way that I was not only forgiven, I was understood. My specifics might not line up with what Jesus experienced, but the comfort of knowing that my emotions were understood became real.

Fast forward a lot of years and I found myself struggling to breathe (metaphorically) because the pain of a marriage that ended was so great, the betrayal so agonizing. In reality, it had been coming for a long time but those early weeks and months after the separation took the pain to a new level.

I found myself reading the gospels and becoming acutely aware of Jesus’ encounters with women. There’s the woman who anointed His feet, the woman at the well, the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years, mothers whose children died, women who needed physical or spiritual healing, and the list goes on. Luke even specifically refers to the women who financially supported Jesus’ ministry out of their own means, giving them names – not just referring to them as someone’s wife.

I was a broken-hearted woman reading these stories, someone whose core identity as a wife and a woman had been trampled on. And here’s what I saw – a lot of little details that brought hope to my heart: Jesus looked into their eyes, He praised them in front of the crowd and He took specific steps to restore them to community (i.e., to alleviate their shame and their isolation). He acknowledged and received their faith and their love – and treated both of those as precious gifts. I have journal pages full of the emotions connected to the understanding and comfort that were embedded in those encounters.

The non-stop intensity of the agony passed, the healing began, I could breathe again, do what I needed to do and even thrive. And I knew this for sure: Jesus understands a woman’s heart.

Fear Not?

Update: This was originally published on 2/23/2012. No longer operating with fear as the largest controlling factor in my life is probably the biggest change of the last 15 years.

I am not, by nature or inclination, a risk taker. Those who knew me years ago would not list that among my traits. Current friends probably wouldn’t either – but there’s a subtle difference and it’s the role that fear plays. For most of my life, fear consistently got in the way. But then an interesting thing began to happen – both before I originally wrote this post and in the years since then.

The grip that fear had on me, the role it played in my decision-making, changed.

As I weathered devastating personal storms, drew closer to Jesus, became more aware of the profound needs and injustices in the world and began in deeper ways to yearn for God’s kingdom to grow on earth, I found myself restless, wanting something “more”. The “more” was not about things, job, security, or leisure time. Instead, I yearned to be fully engaged in the adventure of what God is doing in the world – and in me.

To pursue this meant some big changes. It meant my life could no longer be ruled by fear or by the lies that would derail me. I could no longer be immobilized by a list of “what ifs”.

The outward look of what I do was not what determined this. It was an internal shift that said I would not let fear put constraints on whether I would say ‘yes’ to the Holy Spirit’s nudge, and I would not let complacency set my life’s path.

I originally wrote much of this in early 2011 – as part of my initial fundraising materials. (To be on staff at Adventures in Missions, I must meet a fundraising goal that offsets my salary.) I took significant steps during 2011 and early 2012. The move to Georgia to join the team at Adventures was a huge one. Starting the blog was a smaller step. When this started I not completely overcome fear – and 11 years later I still haven’t – but I’m SO much further along. I still move slowly and cautiously in some things. Part of that slow and cautious approach is okay and it’s part of the value that I can “bring to the table.” But other parts may still need to be broken loose. And as I revisit this journey, I will talk about the process I’ve gone through.

When I started the original blog, there was a lot I didn’t know about what was ahead, but this much I did know – I hoped to spend the rest of my life taking new steps toward fully saying “yes” to Jesus.