My heart was as shattered as my life felt, at the end of 2018. I felt hopelessly forgotten. I felt as though I was too lost to ever be found.
My boat was sinking and when I cried out, I heard no answer. No voice rang out silencing the waves. No hand extended to lift me from the water's suffocating grip.
I had truly been forgotten. I could not see my Maker gathering up my broken pieces. I had been blinded by my hurt.
In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis writes about how often we miss God working in our life. He says that after lots of toiling through all of our life's messes the Lord reveals to us what He has been doing. Then in sudden realization we wonder how we had missed it all along, but when we look back we are never able to pinpoint the moment God revealed to us what He had been making. I read this in the fall of 2019. By that point God had been working for quite some time, but it was in that moment that my eyes were opened to see it. Since the moment the shocking words like a dagger had rung in my ears and scraped across my heart, God had been working, weaving, modeling, mending, and creating. Creating something anew within my life and within my heart. In 2018 I could not see it. I could not feel it. I could not even imagine it.
The beginning of '18 played out the same as every January and February that had passed since the day I first felt that splinter of pain. It brought darkness, cold, and that lonely ache that comes when the weather reflects the heart. I was tired of mourning and longed for sunshine when I could pretend to feel light. When I could burry my pain in a book and my toes in the sand. When I could laugh my burdens off with my family and friends while the evening sun burned the back of my neck. I wanted the days to be long so I wouldn't have to dream of the community I had lost.
The winter months lagged by with little variation in days. Sunday was church in the morning and the rest of the day to long for the past. Monday held long hours of school then dance, yet I dreaded going, for my best friend often missed classes and the other girls gave me the cold shoulder. Tuesday I had school, but it was also the day I babysat my siblings while my mother volunteered at the local pregnancy resource center. Although to some it may seem a chore, babysitting on Tuesdays gave my life purpose. I was honored to be able to contribute to the work my mom was doing on these days and willingly stepped into the role of the needed one. Wednesday was more school. Thursday afternoon saw cramming of a day's worth of school into just a few hours due to morning occupations, and the evening held a highlight for the week; dinner with two girls so near and dear to my family's heart that they may as well be my sisters. Friday was school and a sigh of relief that the weekend had arrived. Saturday was the day of chores and then the day we dedicated to spending time as a family. Then it was Sunday again and the whole lonely cycle repeated.
Over the days hung a brewing cloud of depression, anxiety, and discontentment. I had not yet rested my contentment in the Lord, although I had tried so hard to. I yearned for something I would never get back, but while I was clinging to the past God had something even better in store for the future.
Ash Wednesday approached and we wanted to attend a service like we had in previous years. We decided to attend services at the Anglican church about twenty-five minutes away. We had been interested in this kind of worship for some time, but the unfamiliarity of it all and the struggle of visiting a new place had kept us from attending services beyond a few Advent visits. I had been to an Ash Wednesday service before and knew what to expect, however the burning of incense, the stained glass windows, and the warm glow of the overhanging lights created a peaceful atmosphere. One I was unused to, but gladly welcomed. I felt calm for maybe the first time in years. My muscles began to relax a bit. It was a welcome change, but it didn't last long. For when my parents suggested we begin attending Lenten services I was terrified. Terrified of being hurt. I didn't strongly oppose the suggestion, but I was troubled by the thought of feeling rejected.
Little did I know that the people worshipping in that church would be the very people God put in my life to show me how freely given was His acceptance.
A few weeks passed before we attended Lenten services at the Anglican church and because of the newness of liturgy and responsive worship my family attended a few times only. With Holy Week approaching, and a newfound glimmer of the depth of liturgical worship and the Holy Eucharist my heart was pulled by what I now know as God's strings of healing. When Holy Week arrived we attended every service. Day after day my parents and I worshipped in the truest way we ever had. We ate up the richness of the services, marveling in their beauty and rawness. Again and again tears formed in our eyes, as we realized how healing the liturgical worship we were participating in was and how much depth it contained. It was in these moments we knew we had found our home in the Anglican church.
Summer sped up and the months raced by. Trips to beautiful places with my beautiful family and friends were taken, yet during them I wrestled with loneliness, healing, and rejection. No matter what, I felt their underlying tides.
Slowly, ever so slowly, their pull lessened and, at what point I do not know, the waves of the sea where calmed and my vessel began to drift towards a haven I didn't even realize I had desired.
Since Holy Week we had become regular attenders of the Anglican church and my sister and I had become involved in the youth. These young people were ointment to my hurting heart. As we all began to get to know one another, that ache of loneliness began to dissolve. The wounds that pulsed with the constant pressure of reminders of past hurt slowly began to grow together. The crippling fear of being rejected began to dull.
By the fall I could look back and wonder at the work God had done, but little did I know I was turning a new chapter in my pages of healing. Not long after the beginning of the school year church classes on Thursday evenings begun. Our youth would dig deep into God's word and share in the joy of receiving the newly discovered truths God had revealed. The enemy did not so easily give up on making me a victim of rejection and he, right when I thought I was beginning to see the glimmer of an abundant future on the horizon, implanted in me anew the seed of distrust caused by past hurts and rejections.
As the first youth meeting began we pulled out chairs into a circle. A circle. In middle school, at the church of my childhood, we would gather in a circle. I sank slowly down into my chair trying not to dwell on the fact that all my hurt from the past few years had been affiliated with circles of community. I smiled trying to shake the cobwebs of the past and clear my head to focus on the lesson. I thought I was being attentive till I tried to recall what our leader had said. I strained hard to not only hear, but to listen to what our teacher was saying, but my trembling prevented it. My eyes diverted to my folded hands squeezed together tightly in an attempt to prevent them from shaking. I looked past my crossed legs and over at my feet. My right leg was crossed over my left and because of this it dangled above the ground, glancing down I realized my foot was shaking beyond my control. I tensed my muscles silently pleading for the voices echoing inside my head to stop and for my muscles to still, but nothing happened. It was then I realized that although I had traveled far, I still had not yet completed my journey of healing. It was then I realized that my whole life I would be fighting the same fears. They may subside, I may even learn how to fight them, but they were my thorn in the flesh. Unless God chose to eliminate them, I would have to rely on His strength to carry me through, I would have to make the choice not to live in fear. I would have to spend my life healing and bettering myself in preparing to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.
When Advent arrived I was challenged with another opportunity to fight fear and lean on God for His strength or to turn down the challenge and hide in my weakness. I was asked to participate in the readings and was presented with the honor of reading from the New Testament. Fortunately, I chose the first option and accepted this challenge. When I say I chose, I mean that is what I did. I did not want to do it, I was in a way forced. My choice was to obey God's call or to disobey it. With all my heart I wanted to obey God and this gave me the strength to push through and say yes. Mustering up all the courage I had. I showed all the bravery I possessed.
Bravery, my friend is not as beautiful a thing as it seems. True bravery looks like fear, it looks like tears, it looks like trembling, but it also looks like doing the right thing despite the fear.
Yes, I cried when I thought of reading in front of the church. Yes, I trembled. Yes, Wanted to back out, but I didn't and that is what made me brave.
By the end of my four weeks of reading I had taken a grand leap in conquering my fear of speaking, which humorously is part of the ministry God has called me to do. At the end of Advent I knew that I was completely accepted by my church and always had been, but I also knew that human acceptance didn't matter. In fact, in doing God's will, there will be many times that I am rejected. What mattered was that I was doing God's will and in doing His will I was proclaiming His word. In proclaiming His word I could not fumble. I could not speak ineloquently. I could not sound silly or unprepared. I was reading God's word and nothing can stop God's word from reaching His people.
By the end of 2019 I had an overflowing heart full of the joy of seeing His promises being fulfilled, full of thankfulness for my God and His faithfulness, and on fire for the Lord who I desired to serve with all my being. I was reminded of my calling again, but instead having the willingness without the strength, I was able to look back and see the steps I had taken in it. The painful steps I had taken towards it and the ways God had prepared my heart for it in the past year.
When I looked back on the year before I was looking back on a barren dessert, but the ground I was standing on was a green pasture and I had my tribe around me.
As I was writing that last paragraph I was reminded of a dream I had years ago right after we had begun to walk into the thicket of church hurt. It was a dream that I held as a promise since the moment it was conceived and placed into my burdened mind. In the dream my family and I were in the dessert, angry clouds loomed above us, dark and menacing. The ground we stood on was rocky and looted with deep ruts waiting to swallow me up. Thorns and brambles lined that hard narrowing path we were traveling. They tore at our flesh and ripped our feet to shreds. They caught in our hair and crowned our head, trickling with blood. Wild animals raged on all sides. They were hungry and thin, desiring the pleasantness of a full stomach. Their teeth bared against us and growls flooded our ears as they readied to pounced. As they crouched low and leaped toward us in eagerness to devour they were startled to encounter an invisible barrier keeping their gnashing teeth from permeating our flesh. As we struggled on, the same scene repeated and the same hope lured us to continue. Our hope lay on the horizon. For it was there that we saw a white picket gate, no fence just a gate. On the other side lay a hill clothed in emerald and blossoming with growth and newness. On the hill were a group of people bathing in the golden light of their ever-present sun, they yelled and cheered and beckoned us. Waving they encouraged us, giving us the strength to go on. They felt like family, but yet they were strangers. I know now that they are my church. A couple months ago I was confirmed, officially renewed my life in dedication to the Lord, and becoming an Anglican.
Comments