While sitting in the car yesterday after deciding to run away from school for the weekend, my mom turns to me and asks me “How do you deal with shame?” Man. That question kind of hit me for a moment and the only way I could answer her was “well, first by bringing it to the Light. Nothing that lives in the Light can bring me darkness.” The past week I have been processing through some weighty shame. Shame that stemmed from events on the Race. It is real and raw and vulnerable for me to be sharing this with you all, but I find freedom in bringing these things to the Light. In order for you to track with me, we have to take it back a couple months…
March of 2018 on the Race. Heading into the Philippines. I had some big plans of my own going. I was thriving. Making moves, putting myself exactly where I wanted. Emphasis on the ‘I wanted’ part of that sentence. It is funny to look back on and reflect on my prayers for the future in those few months of the end of the Race. None of it was “God what is your will here?” Most of it was “Hey God, I want this, yes or no?” And God went a little bit radio silent there at the end in a few aspects of my life. One being college decisions…
Which brings me to Welcome Week at Belmont University. First thoughts on campus where “How the heck did I get here?” “What am I doing here?” “Why the hector am I here?” And those continued to be questions I asked myself over and over and over again in the first few months of school. My story of how I got to Belmont is quite the interesting one. And honestly one that has been a weight on my shoulders for months now. I am embarrassed by it. It brings me shame because it reflects my weakness. I will spare more intimate details of exactly what got me here, but I will tell you it came from me bending a knee to Satan and allowing desires of my flesh to cloud my view of the Lord. That has been hard to admit and move forward from. I allowed Satan to grab hold of that piece of my heart and run with it for weeks on end at school. Lies filled my head like “I don’t deserve to be here… this will never be ‘my school’… I shouldn’t thrive here…”
The lies became so overwhelming that I was contemplating switching schools, dropping out, going back on the Race for the next forty years. Instead, I just ran away to Iowa for the weekend to be with family and get some perspective. This weekend God got low and in my face and brought all the lies with him. He identified them exactly as they are. Lies. “Emma, I don’t care how you got here. I will still use you. You will thrive. I am still working in your life. You carry My Authority with you wherever you go. You are not identified by your past.” Friends, God is still using me. I cannot even begin to wrap my mind around the fact that God is so faithful to me that He would use my mistakes, my moments of weakness to bring Him glory and to bring His Kingdom. My mistakes will become my testimony. They are not weights of shame to be carried through my life. I am holding onto my mistakes with closed fists while He has already forgiven me. He doesn’t ask me to carry the weight. If you are someone who is at a point in life where you are reaching the questions of “How in the world did I get here?… I never thought this would be me?… Could this be the biggest mistake I’ve made yet?” There is freedom for you. The freedom comes from shifting perspective from “I really messed this one up” to “my mistakes carried me here, but my God will carry me from here.”
Here I am today. Flying back to Nashville, Tennessee. Somewhere I really never wanted to live. Somewhere I still really don’t want to live. But it is somewhere that God has given me purpose in, “I will use you here. You see now that you don’t have it all together. You don’t get to make the plans. Your plans are so much less than mine. So we will go back. But we will go back with some real heightened awareness.” One illustration that God used on the Race to get points through to me was mountains. There is a song lyric that says “I will climb this mountain with my hands wide open.” God put that on my heart months and months ago while I was wrestling through ministry on a mountain in the Philippines. There were a few weeks there in the Philippines that I wanted to run away from that mountain. God said no. He said get low, gritty and find purpose here because it exists. And by being on that mountain, simply existing with my hands wide opened I grew so much and learned so many lessons from the Lord. A few weeks ago a sweet friend of mine at school told me that Belmont means ‘beautiful mountain.’ How ironic. I’ve arrived at another mountain in life. One that I wanted to run away from and God said yet again, you will climb this beautiful mountain with your hands wide open. Stay. Find purpose. Seek my will in this place. I am not sure what that completely looks like yet, but I know it is there. I have seen the glimpses of it in friends, opportunities, professors. Be free from your shame friends. I release it in the name of Jesus. You don’t need to drag it up this next mountain with you.
This is my ‘end of the Race’ blog, but looking at it it’s really not about the end of the Race at all. But that is okay. For me, the end of the Race wasn’t really the end. It is going to be something that I process and reflect on for years and years probably. So my end of the Race blog is just a continuation of that process. While the World Race may be really, really done, my life is not. My God is not. I am looking into the next season with real anticipation of the big things God is going to do on campus and in my life through and to me. I am still at Belmont University, I am a social work major now! Ask me about that, it is absolutely amazing and I am so on fire for the work God is doing through that part of my life right now. College is hard and I have some commitment issues to it right now but that’s just because they want me to be in one place for four years (hah and I am learning I get a little bit restless)! Just another part of the processing… I am so beyond thankful for those of you who have followed my journey, poured into my life, prayed for me, prayed for my family, all of the things. God’s blessing in my life blows me away day after day. For the last time from the World Race blog, sending all my love from Nashville…
Emma
