Sometimes life is less than what we hoped for. We hate our job, our marriage is crumbling, we’re single, we’re sick, we’re lonely, we’re depressed. We see other people’s lives on social media and at church and what they have seems so perfect. It’s so easy to wish for their lives over our own.

“The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel” ~Steve Furtick~

This could not be more true.

Do you ever wish for someone else’s life? Their perfect marriage? Their health? Their beautiful house in the country? Their perfect bikini bod?

I have.

There will always be times in our life where all we can see is our mess, and those are the times where it’s most important to love our lives.

It can be so very dangerous to live in desire of what someone else has, and it can be so hard not to do so. I’ve found that once I get caught in that pattern of thinking, it’s hard to come out of it.

So then how do you love your own life when someone else’s seems so much better? How do you attend a wedding when you are in the midst of divorce? How do you pray for your friend’s bout with the flu when you are dying. How do you go shopping with your best friend when she is 5 sizes smaller than you? How do you love your apartment when everyone else seems to have a beautiful house?

Do you believe that what you have is God’s best for you? Do you believe in His perfect plan? Is it possible that regardless of what you think your life should look like, He has known all along what it would be?

My friend Joanna is battling cancer and all the emotional and physical pain that comes with it. She is a beautiful warrior who teaches me things every day. We’ve talked often about God’s plan, how He has put everything in to place for Joanna and her family before her diagnosis. How He knew all along that this was her path and has been preparing her for this her entire life.

What an amazing God that is. Who hand picks everything in our lives to work together for His good. And sometimes that means that we have cancer, or we live in a teeny apartment, or we are a size 10. Can we trust Him in the path he has handpicked for us?

This isn’t to say that life isn’t hard, that we don’t struggle with our journeys, that they aren’t incredibly difficult at times. No on would argue that life is hard. But God is in control, of every little thing.

Having struggled with anxiety for most of my life, I become angry at times that it crushes me sometimes. I’ve often asked God what His deal is, plaguing me with this. If you’ve ever struggled with anxiety you know what I’m talking about. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that my anxiety is God’s way of protecting me from a life without Him. If I didn’t struggle with something that is so out of my control I don’t think I would seek the love and peace of my Savior so desperately.

So my friends, trust in God’s plan for your life. It may not be easy, it may be excruciating, but know that His perfect plan is unfolding in every little part of your life.

This weekend Eric and I traveled to a place in the mountains with no cell phone service. I kept thinking about Cold Case files andLaw and Order as we went farther up the mountain. With no cell phone service you could easily be stranded on the mountainside, or worse. “You are the girl who survived 2 months in the woods” I told myself, “Where did she go?”

I remember it like it was yesterday. I bolted off the plane right before the doors shut, heard my dad sprinting behind me with our bags. I knew I had just made things harder for myself, but I had to try to get out of it or I’d never forgive myself.

Just days earlier my mom had broken down and told me they were sending me to a wilderness camp to get help. I immediately googled this camp, scouting it out, forming my own opinions. I knew I didn’t want to go there, but I didn’t want to disappoint my parents, so I tried really hard to accept their decision. That is until I stepped onto the plane to Atlanta Georgia with my dad. It all the sudden hit me that I was digging my own grave, and I just ran.

Once back in the airport my dad called a bunch of people on the phone, no doubt asking for advice on what to do with his out-of-control daughter. I was angry at him and at myself, so I told him that I would only go home with my mom. She arrived at the airport an hour later, she looked tired and sad, and I immediately felt the burden of guilt settle onto my shoulders.

When we neared our street, I became panicked that there would be someone waiting at our house to take me away. I leaned over in my seat and grabbed the steering wheel at the last moment spinning us into oncoming traffic. I could have killed us both.

Back at home I was inconsolable. I knew my parents had hired escorts to take me to this wilderness camp. These escorts are specifically for out-of-control children, to transport them to get help when parents can’t. I knew they were coming, and even though I had ultimately chosen that, I was terrified.

I remember my mom holding me in her lap like a baby, singing to me and speaking to me in soft tones. “you know I love you so much”, she would say to me. I knew she did, but I was so scared I couldn’t calm myself down. As the day faded to evening, the pain of the unknown grew overwhelming. I remember banging my head on the bathroom mirror over and over, anything to numb my pain. I saw my sister watching me from her bedroom, her sweet eyes so scared and confused. I wanted to tell her that I couldn’t help it, that everything was spinning out of control, but I didn’t.

When they finally came, I was sitting up in my bed waiting. There was a manly looking woman and a man with a beard. They seemed nice enough. She strip searched me before putting me in the car. I was too angry to say anything to me parents, we just drove away, tears falling down my cheeks. This was it.

At the airport I was obedient and polite. They even left me alone while they went to the bathroom. I prided myself on being better than their other “clients”. I slept on the plane and when I woke up,  we were there.

It was a hot and sticky April day in Georgia. We rented a car from the airport and drove for a long time into what I would soon know to be the Blue Ridge Mountains. When we pulled up to an old ranch style house, I somehow knew we had arrived. I got out, hesitant to leave the escorts as they had come to feel somewhat safe to me. They waved goodbye and were gone.

An older mountain looking gentleman led me into a small room where a woman was waiting with my new gear. There was a pair of hiking boots, 3 yellow t-shirts that were way too big, a few pairs of underwear, 2 sports bras, and a pair of pants that unzipped to shorts. In the corner was a huge pack which held my food for the next 2 weeks, 2 filled water bottles, a sleeping bag, 2 small tarps, a pad of paper, a pen, and a thin foam mat to put under my sleeping bag.

I was strip searched again before i dressed in my new clothes. I was then led into a van with the same wilderness gentleman who I had met before. He took me to a fast food place and urged me to eat, but I wasn’t even a little hungry. I would soon regret that I had turned down that meal. But for the moment, I was tired, scared, and desperately lonely.

As we drove farther up the mountain my panic thickened, and when at last we got out of the van and began to hike, I was sobbing violently again, tripping over roots and rocks as the tears clouded my eye sight.

We reached the camp site where 10 other girls were making camp for the night. When they saw me they immediately made fun of my tears and puffy eyes, calling me all sorts of horrible names. I ignored them as a camp leader who looked like Pocahontas led me to my area of camp. “You can’t talk to anyone for 3 days”, she told me, “It’s part of your initiation”.

Someone brought me dinner, but I threw it into the bushes in disgust. It felt like the end of the world, but I had no idea yet what I had gotten myself into.

to be continued….

this picture is from the end of wilderness (2 months later), my parents got to camp with me for a night.

We’ve all heard that sweet saying, “God never gives you more than you can handle”. But I have come to wonder about this. It sounds so nice and safe by worldly standards, but is that the God we serve?

Sometimes, I have found, it is more than we can “handle”. Can anyone really “handle” a terminal diagnosis? Or the news that their child is dead? Or the pain of abuse? Or even the day to day struggles that we all face? Can we really “handle” anything?

We are given more than we can handle all the time. So what happens then? What happens when you are given more than you can “handle”? What happens when your life seems to be crumbling all around you and people keep telling you that you can handle it because “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle”. What then?

That is where the beauty of our relationship with Christ comes into play.

I want you to take a moment to navigate from this page and read a blog post written by an incredibly faithful woman who is dying of cancer.

http://www.mundanefaithfulness.com/home/2015/2/10/if-i-tried

I read this this morning and immediately my wheels began to turn. I realized as I read, that this journey Kara is on is WAY more than she can handle. But thankfully we are not called to handle the pain that life has in store, we are only called to trust in our savior’s goodness and let him take the wheel.

I don’t want to believe that I am never given more than I can handle. That is meaningless to me. I want to be given more than I can handle constantly so that I am always in need of Christ in the deepest way possible. I don’t ever want to fool myself into believing that I can “handle” it without Him.

-Psalm 23:4-

“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

Something about this time of year always reminds me of those months in the spring of ’07. Maybe it’s the smell of smoke rising from chimneys in the houses around ours. Or the the numbness of my fingers and toes in the cold winter snow. Or maybe it’s the fact that I am currently reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed.

For those of you who have never heard of this book, it’s about a young woman who spent a summer hiking the PCT (a trail on the west coast), healing from deep pain, and pushing herself farther than she ever thought she could go.

I have a tendency to read books like this and develop a deep desire to follow in the author’s footsteps, to be an adventurer just like them. Last night as I read further into Wild (no spoilers, I’m still not finished), I felt that desire rise up in my chest. But that’s where it stopped, because, you see, in many ways I have done what she did.

There used to be a show on MTV (I think) called brat camp. Messed up teens went to live in the woods for a few months to shape up instead of doing hard time. I remember seeing commercials for it on TV and wondering how anyone could do something like that, live like an animal in the middle of the woods.

Not long after, I did that. In the spring of 2007 when I was 16 years old I flew to Georgia (against my will) to go to a wilderness camp there for a few months. I wasn’t going in place of Juvi, I was going in place of dying. At this point in my life everything was upside down. I wasn’t eating, and spent my days skipping school, staying up all night watching crappy TV and drinking wine out of the box in our fridge. I wasn’t a bad kid, but I was a mess.

When I got to the camp, I was more terrified than I ever had been before. I was wearing cargo pants granny panties, hiking boots, wool socks, a cotton sports bra, and an ugly yellow T-shirt they had given me in exchange for my own belongings. I sat on my sleeping mat by the edge of the campsite, and cried for days.

As days went by, I started to eat, and laugh, and enjoy the world around me. But it was never easy. Some mornings I would wake up with snow covering my sleeping bag. When it was too wet to make a fire, I ate cold beans out of my pack. I’ve never learned so much about myself, about what I’m capable of enduring.

And Jesus spoke to me in my tent. He came to me in my brokenness. He didn’t bring me out of the woods, like I kept praying that He would, but he walked with me through it.

-Psalm 91:10-
For you have made the LORD, my refuge, Even the Most High, your dwelling place. No evil will befall you, Nor will any plague come near your tent. For He will give His angels charge concerning you, To guard you in all your ways.…
 

Life often reminds me of the ocean waves. One moment you’re floating in the salty coolness of calm waters and the next minute you’re holding your breath as a wave crashes over your head, or worse, tumbles you into the sand below.

I’ve always been very sensitive to other peoples emotions, at times it has felt like too much. Like if only I could just focus on myself and block everything around me out then It would be good. But oh how boring my life would be.

My journey of carrying others emotions began, I believe, in the womb. I think I came out knowing deep inside my little self that people were hurting and I couldn’t stand it. Over the years the burden became greater and greater,  my knowledge of things too  overwhelming for a little girl. I resented this “thing” that I had. My dad used to tell me that It was my gift and my curse.

When you carry the burdens of others while ignoring your own needs it doesn’t take long until you collapse in physical and emotional exhaustion. By age 8 I had collapsed straight into an anxiety and eating disorder that would carry through to my college years. I still believed I was strong enough to fix everyones lives, even as mine fell apart.

I wonder sometimes about suffering. I used to roll my eyes when people would tell me that “God’s path was greater than my own”. It seemed ridiculous, preposterous. Whose perfect plan includes a 15 year eating disorder among other things? It made no sense.

I look around me and I see people suffering in every direction. Some bear pain I will never understand. Some bear pain that seems minor to me, but rocks them to their core. Suffering, is a part of life. Suffering, is a part of who we are in Christ.

-2 Corinthians 4:8-12-

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;

persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 

We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 

For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 

So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.”

-Romans 5:3-5-

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

And my favorite, Romans 8:

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 

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For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 

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For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 

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that

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 the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

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We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 

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Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 

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For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 

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But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

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In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 

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And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

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And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who

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 have been called according to his purpose. 

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For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 

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And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

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What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

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He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 

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Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 

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Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 

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Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 

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As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;

we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

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No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 

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For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,

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 neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 

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neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

There is really no way to say it better. Suffering is such a gift to those in love with Jesus Christ. Suffering is our connection, our gateway, to being more like Jesus. Through suffering God is giving us our life. Without suffering we are an empty shell, less than who we have been created to be. We are missing out. 

To just taste of what Jesus is, I would endure any trial. And in many ways at 24, I have endured many. But there’s a difference now. All trials I face in the future, will have perspective. While I may be screaming and kicking and fighting it in every way I know how, I will be looking straight into the face of Jesus, drinking in his peace and goodness in a way I would never have known without great suffering.

And so I urge you sweet friends, to face all trials looking straight into the face of Jesus. Suffering is a gift if we take it and give it back to Him. It’s not easy, It’s not “safe”, It’s not “normal”, but it is oh so sweet.