Tag Archive for: trust

Trust me.

/in , ,

I’ve been wrestling with anxiety over something I can’t control.

There’s really no statement that better describes my life struggles. It always comes back to this need for the illusion of control, to know the outcome before it happens, to be prepared for every uncomfortable thing.

Anybody else? I hear a chorus of “Amen!” Out there. Because life is a series of events that we don’t see coming and cannot often prepare for. Some of those experiences are breathtakingly beautiful and others are much more difficult, steal our breath away, leave us feeling like the shell of who we thought we were. And while we can often find pieces of beauty in life’s difficulties, it doesn’t always make it that much easier. Maybe for a moment. Maybe we feel a deep peace in the midst of the darkness, but the pain still comes in waves.

So it makes sense that life feels scary at times. I sometimes feel so attacked by the “what-ifs” that I actually freeze for a few moments of time, unable to function for fear of all that could occur.

But recently a still strong voice has followed my anxious thoughts. “Trust me”, it says. I know it to be God’s voice, the certainty is not my own. For no matter how much I stir up on my quest for Jesus. No matter how frustrated I may become with the old traditions and ways of thinking. I believe in a good good God. One who walks with us through this journey of life. I don’t believe he saves us from pain, I think He respects us more than to shield us from heartache. And while it often feels confusing and scary to me to serve a God who allows (as I see it in my limited understanding) the pain of this world; Something deep within in me just knows it all makes sense somehow. “Trust me”, He says. “For the love, just cling to me as the world falls apart all around you, as it all seems so scary and daunting. Feel your feelings, feel your doubts, but somewhere deep inside that wrestling heart of yours, “just trust me”.”

Why We Do Hard Things.

/in , , ,

I’ve wondered for as long as I can remember: Why do we have to endure hard things? Why can’t life be just a little bit fluffier, easier? Is it really necessary to suffer? I don’t presume to have all the answers, but through the years I have realized one thing: hard things are so necessary.

Yesterday Eric, Lilah, and I flew to Florida. No big deal right?

WRONG!

I hate to fly. I hate everything about it: the teetering above the clouds in a metal contraption, being stuck next to strangers in a small space, not being able to move around with ease, tiny cramped bathrooms. I’m a claustrophobic control freak. You do the math. Flying is not for me. And in case you don’t really believe it’s all that bad, I once got out of my seat during take off and demanded that the stewardess land the plane immediately (and no that wasn’t yesterday, I was 16 at the time).

This wasn’t necessarily a trip that I HAD to go on. It was a three day work trip for Eric, so it might seem a little odd that I would want to take my neurotic self and teething 16 month old to tag along. But something inside me knew I had to do it.

I knew it would be really really hard. I knew that I might have a million panic attacks, and maybe barely get through it. I knew it might be miserable. And deep down inside I just wasn’t so sure I could handle it. Especially with a baby. And I’ve been challenging myself to push back against those lies that I won’t make it through hard things. So here we are, in Florida. Yesterday felt like a nightmare, but we did it. We boarded that bare bones, possibly made of tin foil, aviation contraption, and we lived to tell the tale (I’m nothing if not dramatic FYI).

But why the hard stuff, right? Why the pain, the suffering, the adversity? If God was really good, wouldn’t He/She lighten things up a bit? There can’t really be a point to all this madness. Listen, I’m not going to get into the black hole question that is “why is there suffering”. But I think it’s important to note that without suffering we would be empty shells. The hard things are what teach us who we are, and who God is.

Anyone who really knows me knows that I believe in a complete correlation between knowing and loving ourselves, and knowing and loving our God. They work in tandem. And how do we really learn about ourselves and our God? By journeying through life’s ups and downs and realizing that we will make it, that God is with us.

Please hear me, I am not suggesting that this is in anyway easy. As someone who struggles with anxiety, depression, and has been an empath my entire life, I pray daily for “easy”. I still don’t want the hard. But when I take a deep breath and dig down deep, I know that it is the key to so much of what I am searching for in my restless soul.

What can you do today to embrace the hard? Can you let yourself feel sad, heartbroken, disappointed, angry, and still leave your hands open to what it is teaching? Can you take a deep breath and lean in, knowing that it might be the hardest thing, but you can do it. We will be more empathetic, more whole, more in tune with ourselves, more in tune with God and the world around us, because we have chosen to press into the hard.

Much love you on this journey my friends.

When God Lets Us Down.

/in ,

God is always good.

But it doesn’t always feel that way, does it?

God doesn’t always move mountains.

Sometimes we’ve been sitting on the rough side of rough our entire lives, praying faithfully, doing everything we can on our end and God doesn’t come through for us like we feel He should.

We may spend days on our knees in prayer, we may have the faith to move mountains, we may really need Him to come through for us in a specific way. But that doesn’t mean He will.

Sometimes God let’s us down. It’s true, we can say that.

His ways are higher than our ways. But sometimes, I think we fall into the trap that He has to heal us because He loves us. For reasons greater than we could ever comprehend, it doesn’t always work that way.

So then I wonder, what if we just trusted Him to love us in those ways we can’t understand, and trusted Him to take care of us in the deepest sense of the word.

For the past week I have been praying almost continuously for a loved one who is in more pain that I can even imagine. I pray for peace and strength. But above all I pray for healing. And I will never ever stop praying for healing. But today as I drove home from work, I realized that I don’t just believe that God has the ability to heal, I expect Him to. He has to, right? That’s His job.

But what if He doesn’t?

Then He is still good. And I will rest in His peace and His truth forever.

Life is so much bigger than what is going on around me. I have to trust that God is in complete control, and that He knows what He is doing.

Grabbing hold of faith, but letting go of expectations, letting things unravel as they may.

When God let’s us down it is only because our expectations are limited to what will be the least painful for us and those around us. We assume that is what God is after too. But what if He is after something greater, something more?

It is a relief to me that no one will ever fully understand the God of the Universe. That’s one thing in my life that I can’t even pretend to control. I just look up to God and say, “thank you for taking care of all this crap down here”. And then I rest in the truth that His goodness, though it may look different from my definition, is true goodness.