As I sit here in my sun-bathed kitchen, I am quite content. My tummy is full from a nice breakfast of fried eggs and chocolate chip pancakes; and now here I sit contemplating so many scattered thoughts with my cup of coffee close at hand. Mornings are just lovely that dawn with the sun shining and sparkling, causing everything else to dance in its light. My little plants love to sit and soak in the sun beams because this isn't such a common joy up here in Eastport during the winter/spring months.
Oh, I have been trying to think recently just how to put into words all that the Lord is impressing and teaching my heart over the past few weeks and months. I suppose it is kind of like trying to catch bubbles with your hands or attempting to capture the scent of freshly washed laundry that is about to be thrown into the dryer or even trying to understand any mystery that befuddles us in this life. These lessons from the Lord are downright allusive! But I am set on capturing them the best I can because I do not want to lose them amidst life's constant flow and change.
I think the best way to show you where I am now, sitting here enjoying a lovely sunny morning with a heart at peace and filled with joy, is perhaps to show you where have been. My heart has been so low---in deep darkness. The past year has been one of the most difficult years of my life; not so much because of my apparent circumstances in life, but more the state of my heart. In many ways God has brought me face to face with all that I lack, all the ways that I am insufficient, all the struggles that I have in this flesh and He would not let me run away from any of it as I wanted to. I had no way of escape because God had hemmed me in.
You see without going into all the details, I will try to sum up a few things just to make things a little more understandable.
Last year started off with one of the loveliest days of my life because my dearest friend, Fidele Daile, officially proposed to me and asked me to be his wife! We had a little less than a month together before I had to fly back to the States and go back to my job in the Coast Guard. It was a lovely month with my family in Cameroon and my fiance, Fidele. Then began the waiting. I sent in all of Fidele's paper work for his visa in June and now almost ten months later we are still waiting. I also took on a new position at my church right when I got back as the Sunday School Superintendent. At work I was trying to get qualified as a coxswain (boat driver). My family was just as far away from me as my fiance and communications at this time was very difficult due to their location.
This is all to set the scene...
No more than three months later everything began to implode in my life. I was struggling with things at church because I had eagerly signed up for the new position, but I had no idea how to do it or accomplish the goals I had---and quite honestly, I felt a deep sense of failure because I didn't see myself making any progress. At work I felt the pressure of needing to get qualified, and yet at the same time, the awful fear of being qualified weighed me down. I felt like a failure and I saw myself as a failure; the worst thing to be, in my book. I was struggling with communication with my family and could not turn to them for help although they so graciously let me vent to them all my struggles. Skype and phone reception with Fidele was far from ideal, but by God's grace we were pressing on in our relationship, but the anxiety of waiting for Fidele's visa pressed against my heart and choked out my joy.
I felt alone...so alone. I felt like a failure. I had no place to turn and no way out. All these things seemed to happen at once and because of that I was stuck, and the only place I could look was up. At the time even that seemed useless because it was not like God swooped down and gave me the kind of help I wanted. No he let me struggle and fight and complain and finally---surrender.
Truly fear had swallowed my life. I realize now that once you give yourself to something like fear, even if it is just in one area---like fear of failing at work or fear that Fidele's visa would never come---it will spread to more and more areas of your life. Fear truly began to take over my life so much so that I could hardly sleep at night. God brought me to the end of my supposed sufficiency and showed me what I truly am. The Lord so creatively showed me just how much I need Him, and just as He knows me fully, He knew the best way to do that would be to show me my need through my failure.
As all this mounted in my life, seeds of bitterness also grew. Seeds of false expectations. Seeds of anger. Seeds of self-pity. I don't really remember when it was---probably over a period of time---but in God's quiet, powerful way He met me. In my failure, in my miserable state of fear, in the midst of the ugliness in my heart as bitterness and anger overflowed within me, as my false expectations of others caused me to pull away, God drew near. I sat in my self-pity but God called me out. I was in the mire of the pit I had dug for myself, upset and blaming everyone else for my problems but me, and even in this state God reached down in His time and set my feet upon the Rock.
I don't know that all of what I am writing makes sense, but I think if you have ever been where I have been it will, at least a little. I think I had become so consumed with myself that everything else in my life became so distorted, but God's love never wavered once.
So there I was, in the pit of self-pity, in the pit of bitterness and anger, in the pit of failure and fear...in the pit of false expectations that drove me away from all those around me. And God showed me compassion and kindness. I feared him. I feared what He would do to me and my family. I wanted Fidele's visa and I didn't like His plan of waiting. What else would he plan for me? I didn't trust Him. Where had He been as all this had overtaken me like a whirlwind. But as He reached out, I found myself surrounded by a love the I could not understand---and perhaps didn't even want to experience because that would mean I would have to let go of all the hurts and lies I had been clinging to.
But just as Nebuchadnezzar was restored as king after seven years of living as a wild animal because of His pride and defiance...after those years of eating grass like a cow and living away from people, he suddenly turned his eyes to heaven and acknowledged God as the mighty creator and the almighty Lord of all. So in that moment of His hand rescuing me and setting me upon the Rock, I also turned my eyes to heaven and surrendered to the Lord once again. I surrendered to His plans and His will. I surrendered to His love.
Sometimes I wonder if I had turned off the way and that is why I had to go into the pit...but I don't think we can live life like that wondering such things...all I know is that God so beautifully wove all of this into my life to show me how He is sufficient for all that I need...He is the one who Loves me when I am at my lowest...He is the one I am to live for...I am not to live for the expectations of others (and especially the ones I conjure up in my mind) but for the Lord Jesus Christ...He alone is the one I must serve.
God has walked with me and helped me as I have been weeding out the bitterness and uprooting the anger in my heart. He has taken every step with me to face my fears. He has walked the path of failure with me and shown me that with Him I shall do valiantly. He has taught me humility where once only pride grew. He has revealed the roots of self-pity and gently begun to uproot them from my heart so careful and tenderly. And now as we continue to walk this path He has begun to reveal to me the false expectations that have caused me to nurse bitterness in my heart for so long and caused a gulf between others and myself. And little by little He is teaching me how to deal with it. He is teaching me forgiveness and He is teaching me to live free. How do I live free from others expectations and the expectations that I often times assume others have of me? Right now I am doing it by freeing them from the expectations I have of them. By loving them and not holding them to live a certain way or expecting them to treat me a certain way or expecting them to do what I want them to do and be what I want them to be.
O these lessons are not easy to learn or even to grasp! But little by little God is teaching me and leading me on heavenward. The peace I have from surrendering to God's plan is lovely! Instead of acting like a spoiled child, throwing a tantrum when I do not receive what I want, I am learning to wait with joy for Fidele's visa. I see now that God is so kind in not sending the paperwork yet because I truly would not have seen it as the blessing and gift it is from Him if He had sent it when I wanted it. I would have looked at it as my due that God delayed in giving me and my heart would still have been full of anxiety and worry for the next step. Now however I am waiting and learning to wait with joy and I think that when I receive the letter about Fidele's visa I will be filled with thankfulness to the Lord for how He has worked on our behalf, and a certain trust and assurance that He will see it through the rest of the way until Fidele makes it to the US.
God is teaching me that He is my Father---my loving Heavenly Father---and that I am His child whom He loves deeply! He does not spoil His children---He loves them.
So now here I sit in lovely peace. I have my "gift journal" by my side, which I write down all the gifts that I capture at the moment from my Heavenly Daddy---I am on 115 working my way to 1000 like Ann Voskamp (her book is amazing by the way, and a must read: "1000 Gifts"). I have my memory verse cards that I am working on and filling my mind with instead of fear and worry. I am working on 1 John 3 which so beautifully shouts to me that my Heavenly Daddy loves me and has shown His love by the Love of my Heavenly Lover, Jesus who died in my place to save me!
Perspective changes as one looks at life through the eyes of the Creator. Instead of seeing things as so common and normal, my eyes are awakened to the daily grace of my Heavenly Daddy. Each new breath is a gift from Him and the life of this new day is not something to take for granted. The sun shining is absolutely lovely and it is to be enjoyed just as the clouds that tomorrow may bring are also a gift in there own way. I am to enjoy each gift for what it is and for what purpose God has blessed me with it. I am to enjoy and thank the Lord for the sun and the clouds, for the peace and the storms, for the joy and the sorrow for they are all gifts given in their proper time. This is a hard thing to swallow, but surrender is beautiful because it is a wonderful thing to just sit and surrender in my Savior's arms.
Oh how I struggle and strive in this life, but day by day I am learning these lessons---learning the freedom and beauty of thanksgiving. What a sweet gift the Lord has given us in thanksgiving! Without it, joy surely would be impossible! But by His grace God has given us THANKSGIVING which transforms every day into a beautiful array of blessings and gifts from the Lord...each day into a new opportunity to live moment by moment in His blessings. I think to learn this lesson one must experience pain.
I suppose this touches slightly on the things God is doing in this heart of mine. I know these things are so scattered but maybe it will touch someones heart. I know it helps me just to sit and write these things down as I reflect upon God's great faithfulness to me.
I will end with this last thought...one that my fiance, Fidele, wrote to me yesterday...always remember that God will make a way. Like that wonderful song that we sometimes sing at church: God will make a way when there seems to be no way...He works in ways we cannot see...He will make a way for me...
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