I believe you will use every trial and every tear for your glory. I believe I’ll go deeper with you than I ever have before. I believe you have more for me than I could ever imagine. I believe you have amazing plans for me, not plans to just survive or tolerate or coast through life, but plans to thrive, plans to live abundantly. I may not know what’s happening, but I know you haven’t abandoned me. I know you aren’t done with me. I know there’s greater things you have for me. I know you’re not done forming and shaping and training me. I know your commitment to me is the same as it’s always been. I know that even in the times that I don’t feel you, your love and affection remains with me. Not for a second have you taken your eyes off me. Not for a second have you thought less of me. Not for a second have you doubted me or my call or my abilities. Your patience is limitless. You keep calling me to greatness. You keep drawing me close to you with your ties of love.
Golden Moments
What’s the best memories you have as a child? What made you feel the most loved? What were those “golden” moments where everything felt right? I’m calling them golden moments because I don’t really know how to describe them, but they are remembered with that warm, fuzzy feeling. I know not everyone is so fortunate to have many good memories with their family. It doesn’t necessarily have to be family. Maybe it was a teacher, coach, or neighbor. I’ve been reflecting on what makes a “good memory” for a child. And more importantly than a good memory, what makes a child feel loved, valued, and important. Because while memories fade, I believe it’s the love, care and attention that plays a big role in how worthy, valuable and confident we will feel as adults.
Here’s what came up as I reflected on my own childhood:
Family game night was on Friday night. Family vacations and trips that usually took place camping and in nature. We had weekly family Bible studies and family dinner every night without fail (except on Sundays when we got to eat whatever we wanted in front of the tv.) The things we took for granted as children and then annoyed us as teenagers were the things that my heart holds onto the most from back then. These were our golden traditions. There’s something about the consistency of these little rituals that I believe build a sense of security and love in us as children. One of those for me was reading next to my mother in her bed almost every night for years. We each had our separate books and would read silently to ourselves. I know it was my mom’s time to unwind, but something about getting to just be with her was comforting for me.
It’s the time spent together, the undivided attention, the care put into it. It’s both the special trips and the daily rituals.
I participated in a poetry workshop recently, and the host told us about one of her favorite traditions of going with her mom to pick flowers and later pressing them in huge dictionaries on the hearth of their fireplace. It’s the little traditions that hold a magical feeling with them when we look back. That reminded me of our etiquette class my mom gave us where she prepared fancy food and we learned table manners as we ate by candlelight. It was an experience that made me feel so special.
I also have some of those fun-filled memories spending time with my siblings one-on-one. From a fake tea-party with my sister in our old parlor where we pretended we were rich, elegant women from another era, to playing out scenes of a lego space launch with my brother, to coming home from middle school and watching the Simpson’s with my other sister in her room until it was time for dinner. Those are the first ones that came to mind.
What little traditions will I create with my kids, I wonder. What golden moments will they cherish, even if it doesn’t seem like they are enjoying it in the moment.
One of the most beautiful things is that it doesn’t have to be an over-the-top, extravagant plan. It can be amazingly simple. Because it’s not about what you’re doing, it’s about feeling that connection; enjoying each other’s presence. It’s about setting aside time to give your undivided attention. It’s pausing from the craziness of life and never-ending to-do lists to show that at the end of the day, what matters is you, and us being together, and that’s it.
Maybe it’s a special plan out of the ordinary; maybe it’s a simple nightly routine. The ordinary and out-of-ordinary experiences both have significant value for a child if you’re intentional about it.
I think about how we can all be that safe person in some child’s life.
Freedom to Feel
The water seems clean until there’s movement. Living in a pandemic can sure stir up a lot of things. I’ve had to confront some of my own issues to stay afloat on these Corona rapids. Here’s a look into that process:
A couple of weeks ago I was feeling very irritated and couldn’t shake it. My mind scrolled through my usual go-to methods for “feeling better”: junk food, sleep, Netflix, or scrolling through social media, but none of them seemed like viable options on a mid-morning workday. I tried surrendering the irritation to God but later realized I had acted like a delivery man during quarantine: choosing the “leave at door” option with little to no contact with Him. When that didn’t work, I tried ignoring it until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I finally laid down on the floor, similar to a child who has worn themselves out after a tantrum, and said “ok God where are you?”
My mind was wandering at a surprising rate, but I just kept refocusing my mind on Him, imagining a star-filled universe in my head and repeating “God, where are you?” and “Jesus, I’m so irritated!” every 5 seconds. Suddenly I was picturing Jesus’ eyes. I felt completely exposed, but my frustration didn’t seem to bother Him in the least. I was completely seen and completely accepted by His gaze. He met me right where I was at. My frustration melted away. In this moment I realized that this is what it meant to come to Him in my weakness. I was reminded of the words Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians 12:9:
“I will not boast about myself except about my weaknesses…He said ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. For Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties. For when I am weak then I am strong.”
There is great value in showing our true, authentic selves. Authenticity gives us the freedom to say “I am human. I have weaknesses and flaws.” We all know our weaknesses can and should make us more dependent on God. If we were without defect, would we still seek Him? God’s not expecting flawlessness. The type of perfection He calls us to still leaves room for failure and mistakes.
I focus a lot on wanting to be as emotionally and spiritually healthy as possible, which often leads to over-analyzing myself. In one of my over-analyzation sessions, I realized I had become so focused on how I “should” be that I wouldn’t even let myself acknowledge the thoughts, feelings, and desires that didn’t align with the person I wanted to be. I was stuffing down anything that I didn’t like instead of addressing it.
During quarantine I’ve had even more time to read and take courses on different topics such as healthy relationships and boundaries. I got to the point where I was so discouraged by discovering so many areas I needed growth in, that I took a much needed break from it all.
That’s why this encounter was all the more meaningful for me. I had been overlooking a key concept: God uses us in our weakness.
So what’s the lesson learned? It would save us a lot of time and shorten our period of “feeling bad” if we went to Him first with our disappointment, fear, frustration, sin, and acknowledged our pain rather than ignoring it or trying to hand it over to Him without unpacking it. You can’t truly surrender your feelings to God without letting yourself feel them first. You can’t ding-dong-ditch God with your burdens. Allowing ourselves to feel the pain is a nod to our weakness and our need for Him. We can try to glaze over our internal issues with a nice buttercream frosting by eating actual frosting, or spending hours getting lost in the internet, or drinking too much, or chasing that attractive guy/girl, or whatever your comfort of choice is, but in the end we are only distracting ourselves. The feelings are still there festering underneath the surface, and our true needs and desires are buried even further beneath.
Choose to stand in the uncomfortableness for a minute while you ring the doorbell. Let Him answer and examine the problem with you. Tell Him about it anyway you’d like: shouting, crying, throwing a tantrum on the floor, etc. It’s about letting God meet us where we’re at and experiencing it with Him.
Only then we can properly cast our burdens on the Lord and let Him sustain us (Psalm 55:22).
We’re opening ourselves up to receive His comfort, love, grace, peace, acceptance, attention, etc., and His insight on the matter. He can show us if there’s a deeper issue at hand and walk us through the process of healing.
Loving out the Lie
Most people can agree with the idea that we are made up of three parts: soul, body, and spirit, with the soul being made up of our mind, emotions, and will. I’ve heard in some of Bethel Church’s teachings about how when we are fighting against our “flesh” or emotions it can help to realign our souls with our spirit. Because while our soul can wrestle with God and with wanting to submit to Him, our spirit, once we’ve received the Holy Spirit, is always turned towards God and in agreement with Him. How can we realign ourselves? As simple as it sounds, just by speaking we can bring ourselves back into alignment. Our words hold power that not only affect the natural but the spiritual realm as well. (Hence why the enemy tries so hard to steal our voice!)
When I am trying to connect with God but keep getting distracted or when I am struggling to surrender something I usually say something like “my spirit, I give you leadership position over my body and soul to receive revelation from the Holy Spirit.” (for more guidance check out the Nothing Hidden Ministries app*).
I said this one Sunday under my breath during worship because I kept getting distracted by my thoughts. (Yes, you have to be ok with looking like you talk to yourself if you do it in public.) When I did, I heard a phrase being repeated in my head, “I love Him, I love Him, I love Him” which I somehow knew was coming from my spirit.
The reason this phrase was especially impactful, was because the moment I heard it in my mind, I was taken back to recent memories where I had been struggling with feeling like I didn’t really love God sometimes. And then the more I would dwell on it, the worse I would feel, wondering how I had made it this far in my walk with God and still felt that way. In those times I was reminded that love is a choice and I’m choosing to love Him, but I still felt like I had to fight through those feelings with some guilt and shame mixed in.
Later in the service we had time to just listen to God and that’s when I felt Him communicating the message, “You love me. I feel loved by you. You love me well.” In that moment I realized I had been believing a lie that whole time and God had spoken the exact truth I needed to hear to overthrow the lie. I have become good at identifying lies but this one really felt true. I’m again reminded that our feelings aren’t the best indicator of truth. As Steve Backlund says, to feel better we don’t usually have to do something different, but believe something different. We have to believe something higher than what we’re experiencing: that’s faith.
It’s crazy how dealing with that one lie has changed my relationship with God. Before when I felt distance from God throughout the day I would feel guilty and struggle to connect with Him again. Now I just whisper “I love you” and we are back to where we left off.
*”Spirit Blessing” https://app.nothinghidden.com/tools/c/0
Hopeful Wonderer 