It's weird how many times in the last several months that I have been faced with questions that require me to search my soul in one way or another. The kinds of questions that make you look inward to discover a little more about who you are...what makes you tick...how you thrive in this thing called life.
It's almost 3 a.m. and I have no idea why I can't sleep or why I can't get this off my mind. I mean, I've written on this blog all of like 2 times this entire year...you'd think another day passing, of not taking the time to jot down my thoughts, would fall right in line with how I've operated every other day of this year! But the nudge this time is strong...it's a nudge that's keeping me awake...so I figure, if I can't sleep...I might as well write. Tomorrow (or today, really) I might be sorry...but for now, my head is full...so we'll give this a go.
This year has been an absolute mess for me. It has taken me to places I thought I'd never be and I've arrived there just beat to crap...and it's only the end of September. I'm kinda ready to call it a year. Have you ever had a year like that? A month? A week? Where you survive it...but you're so bloodied up and bruised that you have no idea how it was even worth surviving? There's growth in pain...I know this. God has taught me well. And sometimes I feel like maybe it's a lesson we could go ahead and move on from, you know?...and yet, here we are...yep, still here...still learning...still in pain...still growing.
My year started out with unexpected and intense devastation. I wrote about it back in April. I lost my job January, a job I had had for over 11 years. The job that brought us to Oklahoma and the place where I found and established much of my identity. By April, I was in a good place...I had clarity and was full of gratitude for what I could see that God was doing in my life. I can honestly say today...that I'm not feeling so grateful. I'm working on it and I know that the peace and joy that God desires for me is attainable outside these walls of ungratefulness. But I don't think it's as easy to find, in all seasons of life, as we think it is during those particular seasons where it just shows up.
I'm thankful for God's goodness and that His mercies are new every morning. Those things are foundational for me...they don't waver with my seasons and my situations. Even in the most intense pain and devastation, I don't question God's goodness and sovereignty in my life. Here recently, those very things are the things that get me out of bed each day and keep me mucking on. I'm not on this Earth for the things that work well for me. I'm not here to live out my dreams or to conquer all that I set out do. I am here to be the hands and feet of Jesus...to open my life up willingly in order for His purpose to play out for my life. I don't get to pick and choose the pain or the successes He has for me. If I did, I can promise you it would look NOTHING like what it has. It's His, not mine, and I'm ok with that.
He does Kingdom work with my life. He does the kind of work that only He can do...the kind that knows the beginning and the end and purposes things in the middle, strategically and very specifically so that, in the end, the glory is His. He is gracious to give us glimpses of His purpose...of His plan...the unfolding of the inner workings of the miraculous...but I think often times, we end up bloodied and bruised wondering how the hell we even got here. Sometimes we do get to see pieces of what He is doing...other times, we don't. That's the way things go, this side of Heaven. It shouldn't be a shock, but sometimes it just is.
I've had battles and demons around every corner since January of this year. Ugly ones. The kind that make me question who I am, what I'm doing, and how I could ever be worthy of Kingdom work. The kind of battles where you freakin show up the loser, and then you just continue to get pounded. Every second of every day, dealing with doubt and fears that try to convince you that you weren't chosen. The kind of defeat that tries to convince you that Christ didn't die on the cross for you that day....that there is no way His blood could cover you...everything you've failed at or the disappointment that follows you around like a shadow. I'm not sure there has ever been a year that I have felt more inadequate or incapable of being someone worthy enough to be called wife, mother, friend, daughter, sister.....
I literally thank God that my worth is not defined by me and my feeble-mindedness. I'm thankful that my feelings aren't facts...they are wayward, difficult and fleeting and they hold no defining authority on who God says that I am.
So, to all these questions that keep coming up this year that are causing me to look inward and discover things about myself...on a very simple survivalist level, they have led me to realize...I am a bull in a china shop. I am destructive to anything and anyone around me. I am destructive to myself. I face battles and demons that I have already conquered, but that are crossing my path again. Don't put me in a corner...don't make me squash the power, control and independence I feel that allows me to survive. Don't throw things at me that require more than what I'm capable of and expect positive results.
As Merriam-Webster says it:
The beauty in this realization is that all I have to do, is let that go. All I have to do is surrender my thinking...surrender my control...to turn my eyes upward instead of inward for answers to questions that I don't know. I am honestly in this season of life and I don't know who I am. It's a fog...a haze of missteps, confusion, intense disappointment and regret. It's a season that feels stuck in a cycle that I am so ready to be done with...I'm ready wave my white flag, bloodied and bruised and beg for a way out.
Sometimes the next step is to simply shift our thinking from inward to upward. Sometimes it's to choose thankfulness and joy when it all starts getting too heavy. And sometimes the next step is a two-step...it's when someone graciously hands you that white flag...and encourages you to wave it.
I won't ever be a delicate flower...it's just really not my style. I cuss a little too much and have a rebellious streak that will likely keep me pretty grounded on the bull side of things, but what God does...that's different. The bull is who I say I am, but I can't wait for the day when I get the opportunity to see who God was in me.
~Whitney
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