It's been an interesting week (or month- I'm really not sure how long). I've been in a funk, I guess you could say. REALLY really wrestling with some frustrations and disappointments. No matter what I did, I just could not seem to shake them. I tried pretending they weren't there. That obviously didn't work. I tried being more thankful and praising my way through it. No change. I finally had to get to a place where I could let all my tension and frustrations out and just ask the Lord to be there with me (Reading Lamentations has helped greatly...that book is full of lamenting and perhaps what we would call complaining, yet the writer always turns to God and rests in the promise of God's goodness.)
It is so interesting to me how God heals us. It often feels backwards and up-side-down. What amazes me the most is how committed God is to our wholeness. Every time I think he might give up on me or say "Thats it. I've had enough of you!", I'm proven wrong. He already sees us as whole, so I'm learning that when He addresses us, he is addressing us from that place of wholeness.
I was all pent up with anger, and frustration. Anger at the miscarriages. Anger that I have a blood clotting issue that puts me into the high risk category for any subsequent pregnancies, just overall feeling like my boat has been rocked and feeling oh so tired of it.
As I've written before, I've spent a great deal of my life pretending. Being too afraid to be real or honest about my hurts and heartaches. I was really good at performing and acting my way through things. Well, God is after our hearts, and I'm learning that only that which we expose to his love can be permanently changed. He has never been after our performance, but relationship.
I didn't have a good relationship with either of my parents. Both were riddled with dysfunction, just in different ways. I was an adult in both of those relationship for the majority of my life, meaning that I carried responsibilities in the relationship that I should never have carried. It takes YEARS of hard work in therapy and the Lords presence to undo that. How does this translate to future relationships and my relationship with God? Well, developmentally, I was behind. I'm an excellent servant, but being a daughter is not something that came naturally to me. Intellectually, I am very smart, and I have high emotional intelligence. I often am told that I act much older than my 30 years, but there were certain parts of me that lagged behind relationally simply because I didn't have my needs met. It is those places that desperately need healing.
In Psalms 27:10 "When my father and mother forsake me, The Lord will take care of me." I am learning that God means this 100%. He means to take care of those places that were long abandoned and neglected. Places I didn't even know about. Places I've kept hidden and tucked away out of shame or fear or because I didn't know they were there to begin with. And He is so gentle. He doesn't come barging in. He comes knocking and woos us until we feel safe enough in His love to expose what's really inside. And He will prove himself 100 times over until we get it that it is ok to let those walls down. How does this look in real life? Well, in my experience, it has been that I have been allowed certain circumstances that have brought that pain and dysfunction to the forefront. Not the most comfortable, let me tell you. There are walls and defenses that were erected to protect and in my experience it has been pretty uncomfortable learning a new way of living without those walls in place. And I don't need to be ashamed of those walls. Without them, I may not have survived as well as I did. But now? They are no longer conducive to a healthy way of living. He never shames me there (and He won't shame you). He just says "I see it. And I plan to heal it, if you'll let me." And then he sets us into a process of healing.
My friend wrote an excellent analogy regarding accepting the hard things in life and TRUSTING that God truly knows what is best for us. I'll try to recap that as well as she does.
Lets say that one of our teenage children wanted to go to Paris. That's an excellent idea. We might book a one stop flight to Paris, with a hotel right in the airport so that she doesn't have to figure out how to get to and from the airport safely. We might not even make her pay for the trip. But what would be a better experience in the long run? What if sending her by boat meant that she learned a little bit more about travel than flying on a plane? Sure...the trip will take a few days longer, but she will get to see more of creation. She will get to learn the ins and outs of traveling aboard a ship, and getting from sea to land safely. She'll get to take marvelous pictures of the sea and maybe learn that she is seasick. What if instead of paying for the trip for her (which is not wrong), I tell her she can't go unless she gets a job and starts earning some of the funds herself? What is more valuable? A free trip to Paris or one that she got to participate in paying for, creating a sense of ownership and pride in her own abilities, seeing more of the world and having a FAR richer experience?
What I'm trying to illustrate is that God is far more invested in the long term fruit of our lives than our present circumstances seem to paint for us. I'm not saying (not even in a tiny way) that God somehow arranged my miscarriages, or the death of my father or the loss of almost every relationship in my family, but, Romans 8 clearly says that He works ALL things together for our good. So, what if God brings us to certain obstacles to show us that NO MATTER WHAT, He will always prove himself to be bigger? He will ALWAYS bring us through to the other side. He will ALWAYS comfort us. He will ALWAYS bring healing- whether in the moment or otherwise. Isn't that more important than our temporary comfort?
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Dealing with disappointment in God
First, let me preface and say that I am by NO means calling myself an expert, or claiming that I have this thing down. I am sharing-very humbly- from a place that has been more painful than probably anything else I've experienced, and how I'm learning to move through it- imperfectly.
Disappointment. We've all been there at one time or another. And, I am fairly certain that it won't be the last time in the course of our earthly lives. We get disappointed when a tire pops on the freeway and we have to use all our savings to fix the car, when a child flunks out of school and has to redo that grade all over again, when someone fails us, we lose a job, a pregnancy, a loved one. You catch my drift. There can be a million different reasons why we land in the place of disappointment.
I want to touch on what we do when we become disappointed in God. It's not something Ive heard talked about much in church, or among leaders even. I've heard various verses thrown around "he gives and takes away", or "His ways are not our ways"- and all of those things are true- but that doesn't do much to change the fact that there is a rift and we don't know how to fix it. I know that I myself could barely admit that I have been there on more than one occasion. Almost like if I said it out loud, a bolt of lightening from heaven would come and strike me dead.
I have had certain expectations of God. Expectations I didn't know I had. I expected that since I'd already suffered so much, that I had met my quota and would suffer no more. I expected that my service to him during different seasons meant I wouldn't lose. In essence, it was all about religion. A series of deposits should equal a certain number of withdrawals, right? I had no idea what I was missing out on- relationally. He had so much more to give me.
Well, I hit a place recently with the miscarriages of tremendous pain, anger and resentment towards God. I was unwilling to admit it for fear I might collapse. Just poof- disappear into oblivion. You see- I KNOW that God is all I have. If I'm mad at him, then what hope do I have? What chance do I have of resolving my disappointment with a sovereign God who is by his very nature, GOOD? I knew something needed to be resolved. I knew there was a big wall in between him and me, and I wanted more than anything for that to be removed.
I met with a woman who I go to somewhat regularly for prayer ministry, and basically just sat down and told her where I was at. I wasn't sure how I got here. I felt tremendously confused and shaken to my core. I thought I was doing fine and then BAM. I hit a huge wall. We started praying and I asked God to show me the wall. I immediately saw a thick cement wall. I knew the wall was built of pain and disappointment. I knew that I had built the wall- unknowingly. I didn't know how to tear it down. We asked Jesus to show us how to take the wall down. I saw Him climb over the wall and embrace me and I began to weep. I was unable to contain the sorrow I had locked away in my heart. I understood that he wasn't asking me to change how I felt, but rather bring all of that stuff to him.
This wall had been built a long time ago in response to pain. It was built to protect me, and it did a fine job up until the point where it was no longer necessary or HEALTHY for me to keep it there.
All of a sudden I saw Jesus kneeling at my feet. He was asking me to forgive him for not healing me. I cannot adequately describe the pain I felt in that moment. Me? Forgive Jesus? Jesus did nothing wrong...but my heart needed to forgive him for not meeting my expectation. For allowing me to experience such tremendous heartache that I feared it would consume me. The forgiveness was for me- and it was so he and I could continue to enjoy unbroken relationship. I felt his deep sorrow for my loss. I felt his compassion. I know that there was not a moment of this process that he has left me alone and without help.
What does it mean to forgive Jesus? Well, I'm going to take an excerpt from "Beautiful Outlaw" by John Eldridge:
"Forgive God? This idea is going to cause some readers to freak out. Just listen for a moment. If
you are holding something in your heart against Jesus- the loss of someone you love, a painful
memory from your past, simply the way your life has turned out- if you are holding that against
Jesus, well then, it is between you and Jesus. . And no amount of ignoring it or being faithful in
other areas of your life is going to make it go away. In order to move forward, you are going to
have to forgive Jesus for whatever these things are.... To forgive a person, we pardon a wrong
done to us. 'forgiving' Jesus means to release the hurt and resentment we hold against him. This
comes BEFORE understanding. We don't often know why things have happened the way they have
in our lives. What we do know is that we were hurt, and part of that hurt is toward Jesus, because
in our hearts we believe he let it happen. Again, this is not the time for sifting theological nuances,
but this is why it is so important for you to look at the world the way Jesus did- as a vicious battle
with evil. When you understand that you have an enemy that has hated your guts ever since you
were a child, it will help you not to blame this stuff on God. Anyhow, the facts are it happened, we
are hurt, and part of us believes Jesus should have done something about it, and didn't. That is why
we need to 'forgive' him. We do so in order that this part of us can draw near him again and receive
his love."
What I gleaned from that time of prayer is to let Jesus in. Let him in to all the disappointment, pain, confusion and sadness. It is proving to be an interesting process- given that I've spent a large majority of my life avoiding pain. Avoiding "ugly" emotions. Well, it seems, I'm no longer being allowed to do that. It does no good to avoid or pretend- only that which we expose to the presence of God can truly be changed or healed.
The other thing I want to address here is focus. Again- this is coming from a place of humility in saying that I am stumbling along trying to figure this out just as much as the next guy. But I want to say this: When it comes to dealing with disappointment, no matter what it is from, and we are tempted to believe that God won't be faithful or that He won't bring us through, I am learning to do what God commanded the Israelites to do as they were on their way to the promised land: Remember what he has done. Make an alter- figuratively speaking- of every place He has come through for you. If you have to write it out in a list, then do it. I've noticed when I choose to thank God for what I can, relying on the Holy Spirit to remind me of all those instances where God has come through in big and small ways, it causes my faith to rise up, and my fears to be silenced.
Disappointment. We've all been there at one time or another. And, I am fairly certain that it won't be the last time in the course of our earthly lives. We get disappointed when a tire pops on the freeway and we have to use all our savings to fix the car, when a child flunks out of school and has to redo that grade all over again, when someone fails us, we lose a job, a pregnancy, a loved one. You catch my drift. There can be a million different reasons why we land in the place of disappointment.
I want to touch on what we do when we become disappointed in God. It's not something Ive heard talked about much in church, or among leaders even. I've heard various verses thrown around "he gives and takes away", or "His ways are not our ways"- and all of those things are true- but that doesn't do much to change the fact that there is a rift and we don't know how to fix it. I know that I myself could barely admit that I have been there on more than one occasion. Almost like if I said it out loud, a bolt of lightening from heaven would come and strike me dead.
I have had certain expectations of God. Expectations I didn't know I had. I expected that since I'd already suffered so much, that I had met my quota and would suffer no more. I expected that my service to him during different seasons meant I wouldn't lose. In essence, it was all about religion. A series of deposits should equal a certain number of withdrawals, right? I had no idea what I was missing out on- relationally. He had so much more to give me.
Well, I hit a place recently with the miscarriages of tremendous pain, anger and resentment towards God. I was unwilling to admit it for fear I might collapse. Just poof- disappear into oblivion. You see- I KNOW that God is all I have. If I'm mad at him, then what hope do I have? What chance do I have of resolving my disappointment with a sovereign God who is by his very nature, GOOD? I knew something needed to be resolved. I knew there was a big wall in between him and me, and I wanted more than anything for that to be removed.
I met with a woman who I go to somewhat regularly for prayer ministry, and basically just sat down and told her where I was at. I wasn't sure how I got here. I felt tremendously confused and shaken to my core. I thought I was doing fine and then BAM. I hit a huge wall. We started praying and I asked God to show me the wall. I immediately saw a thick cement wall. I knew the wall was built of pain and disappointment. I knew that I had built the wall- unknowingly. I didn't know how to tear it down. We asked Jesus to show us how to take the wall down. I saw Him climb over the wall and embrace me and I began to weep. I was unable to contain the sorrow I had locked away in my heart. I understood that he wasn't asking me to change how I felt, but rather bring all of that stuff to him.
This wall had been built a long time ago in response to pain. It was built to protect me, and it did a fine job up until the point where it was no longer necessary or HEALTHY for me to keep it there.
All of a sudden I saw Jesus kneeling at my feet. He was asking me to forgive him for not healing me. I cannot adequately describe the pain I felt in that moment. Me? Forgive Jesus? Jesus did nothing wrong...but my heart needed to forgive him for not meeting my expectation. For allowing me to experience such tremendous heartache that I feared it would consume me. The forgiveness was for me- and it was so he and I could continue to enjoy unbroken relationship. I felt his deep sorrow for my loss. I felt his compassion. I know that there was not a moment of this process that he has left me alone and without help.
What does it mean to forgive Jesus? Well, I'm going to take an excerpt from "Beautiful Outlaw" by John Eldridge:
"Forgive God? This idea is going to cause some readers to freak out. Just listen for a moment. If
you are holding something in your heart against Jesus- the loss of someone you love, a painful
memory from your past, simply the way your life has turned out- if you are holding that against
Jesus, well then, it is between you and Jesus. . And no amount of ignoring it or being faithful in
other areas of your life is going to make it go away. In order to move forward, you are going to
have to forgive Jesus for whatever these things are.... To forgive a person, we pardon a wrong
done to us. 'forgiving' Jesus means to release the hurt and resentment we hold against him. This
comes BEFORE understanding. We don't often know why things have happened the way they have
in our lives. What we do know is that we were hurt, and part of that hurt is toward Jesus, because
in our hearts we believe he let it happen. Again, this is not the time for sifting theological nuances,
but this is why it is so important for you to look at the world the way Jesus did- as a vicious battle
with evil. When you understand that you have an enemy that has hated your guts ever since you
were a child, it will help you not to blame this stuff on God. Anyhow, the facts are it happened, we
are hurt, and part of us believes Jesus should have done something about it, and didn't. That is why
we need to 'forgive' him. We do so in order that this part of us can draw near him again and receive
his love."
What I gleaned from that time of prayer is to let Jesus in. Let him in to all the disappointment, pain, confusion and sadness. It is proving to be an interesting process- given that I've spent a large majority of my life avoiding pain. Avoiding "ugly" emotions. Well, it seems, I'm no longer being allowed to do that. It does no good to avoid or pretend- only that which we expose to the presence of God can truly be changed or healed.
The other thing I want to address here is focus. Again- this is coming from a place of humility in saying that I am stumbling along trying to figure this out just as much as the next guy. But I want to say this: When it comes to dealing with disappointment, no matter what it is from, and we are tempted to believe that God won't be faithful or that He won't bring us through, I am learning to do what God commanded the Israelites to do as they were on their way to the promised land: Remember what he has done. Make an alter- figuratively speaking- of every place He has come through for you. If you have to write it out in a list, then do it. I've noticed when I choose to thank God for what I can, relying on the Holy Spirit to remind me of all those instances where God has come through in big and small ways, it causes my faith to rise up, and my fears to be silenced.
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