I am engaged. Yes, engaged to be married. For some of you, this will come as a complete random shock while others are thinking ‘Its about time’. Both of these are accurate and my own thoughts include these perspectives while also encapsulating ‘If you would’ve told me a year ago that this is where I’d be…’, ‘It all makes sense now’, and ‘Sneaky Jesus!’, while feeling covered in His perfect peace.
There is a story here. It’s a story I hope to hit the highlights on below, a story most people know bits and pieces of and a story that really has very little to do with either me or him, or any other human. It is a story with God firmly in the center as the main character in the story He is and was and has always been writing through my life. Let’s go back…
January 11, 2016. I know the exact date because I’m going to quote the devotional that changed the trajectory of my life. (Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost for His Highest).
“If we obey God, He will look after those who have been pressed into the consequences of our obedience. We have simply to obey and to leave all consequences with Him. Beware the inclination to dictate to God as to what you will allow to happen if you obey Him.”
Boom. My life shattered around me.
At this point I had been in a serious relationship for 6.5 years. We started casually ‘hanging out’ the summer after our high school graduation and having been raised in the church, I had spent most of the follow years dancing on the outskirts of a relationship with God. I wasn’t sure if I was “supposed to” be with my partner and I didn’t trust God’s goodness enough to seriously ask. Instead, I prayed in generalities, “God if you want to help us… help him see this… comfort me through that… fill in the spaces and cracks that I can’t yet figure out how to fill in myself”. And despite a lack of faith, of confidence, of the ability to look Him in the eye, in HIS love and faithfulness he took every little inch I gave.
To be honest, the past 6.5 years had been hard. There were good times, bad times, codependent tendencies, struggles to find and maintain mental and emotional health – basically just a LOT of human brokenness rubbing up against each other to cause pain, leave scars, build residual resentment and hardened hearts. Yet, side-by-side, we grew up. Sought counselors, attended more church, started widening the little cracks into bigger slices of life that God could have a ‘say’ in. We talked a bit about marriage and it started looking plausible and from a worldly perspective, expected. We liked our jobs, shared a nice apartment and pets, shouldered familial responsibility, and loved on our nephews and our godson. Despite our weaknesses, we had cobbled together a healthy dynamic, good friends, and fun weekends. As a team we had both faced and overcome more barriers and complications than outsiders would ever know about or understand.
But as I read Oswald Chambers’ description of obedience, I felt my spirit quicken. The World Race flashed through my mind as something I had been wanting to do for years. Yet, each time I went to apply the timing felt off and instead of realizing God had a slightly different plan, time, squad for me, I would quickly recount all of the reasons I couldn’t just ‘leave.’ As a Social Worker, a friend, a girlfriend, a dedicated cat mom, etc. I felt a weight on my shoulders that I both resented and took pride in. Having overcome years of anxiety that manifested in irresponsibility and apathy, the fact that people whom I deeply loved and cared for both respected and depended on me felt, well, good.
The other sneaky suspicion in my heart was that God couldn’t have something as big, bold and beautiful as an 11 month world trip in the plans for me. I had already made a life for myself and although I knew God loved me, I also assumed he was disappointed in my choices but was willing to help me ‘make the best of it.’ And nobody wants that sorta coaching attitude in their corner.
“We can disobey God if we choose, and it will bring immediate relief to the situation, but we shall be a grief to our Lord”.
That caught me. I was living in a world of immediate relief and short-term plans and my God is a God of neither. Through surrender and depth he created and redeemed the universe and eternity and as long as my heart was set on the opposite – I was causing grief to the one was actively showing me He wanted my best – He wanted to give me the world and through that gift, give me Himself. Not only did he want MY best, but the best for each person around me. If He was calling me to obey him and leave on this trip, He fully understood the consequences of that action.
“If we obey God, He will look after those who have been pressed into the consequences of our obedience. We have simply to obey and to leave all consequences with Him. Beware the inclination to dictate to God as to what you will allow to happen if you obey Him.”
“Do you really think they need you more than they need me?” As I reread the book, I heard this question echo deep in my heart. My minds’ eye skimmed through dozens of faces. Family, friends, clients, my partner. Individuals who deserve so much more than I can offer, who’s chance to connect with their creator and lover was being c-blocked by my need to be needed and feel important. Foundations of relationships shaped cyclically as we temporarily filled each other’s bottomless needs – only to awaken a day, a week, a month later much too consciously aware of our own emptiness.
Long pause … “Umm… no?”
“You’re in my way. You’re in the way of what I want to do here. It’s time to go”.
And with that (plus more prayer, planning and support), I left the country for 11 months. I left my relationship. I left my friends, my job, family on both sides, everyone who “depended” on me when they could’ve been learning their dependence on Him and reveling with full joy in their universal eternal satisfaction in Him. There is abundant life available even on a Tuesday afternoon when work is hard, traffic sucks and your closest relationships are hurting more than helping. As I swallowed my pride in that moment of correction I felt complete trust that the consequences of leaving for myself and for my boyfriend of 7 years, were completely in God’s hands. Turns out, there’s no safer place to entrust a precious thing.
My entire year was a test, a dare, a challenge to walk out repeatedly and fully the answer to the question “Am I enough?” And God continually demonstrated, proved, loved, and breathed into me so continuously and entirely that my every exhale became “Yes Lord, you are enough.”
Folks love to quote Job 1:20 “Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” I grew up singing the classic lyric “He gives and takes away” with gusto while silently pleading in my spirit “please don’t, please don’t, please don’t”. A God who takes away stirs up the same image as a parent who pulls the rug out from under their kid. A parent who ‘takes’ from their own flesh and blood, from a weaker, younger, and dependent child is a parent who is either forgetful, vindictive, sadistic or stupid.
A good parent doesn’t ‘take’ from their kids. They discipline as Proverbs 19:18, 23:13, 29:17 and others point out. Discipline, I would argue, is effective when authority to do so is agreed upon by both parties. A child who doesn’t understand or doesn’t agree will repeat the behavior, sneak out, spread slander and live in rebellion against all forms of authority. You see Job flounder for the entire book because he doesn’t understand what’s happened until God’s ultimate response includes, “Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up their dominion over the earth?” Job 38:33. He is the authority.
Because, that one piece of one verse ‘… the Lord has taken away”, spoken in worship but also in confusion and grief is not a theology to build your life upon. It holds a small space in a big Bible overflowing with tales of God’s generosity, abundance, riches and everlasting life. If you read the story of Job in full you see John 10:10 played out in narrative form, “The thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly”. I don’t think God set out to discipline Job. I think He redeemed the evil to strengthen his son and to bring glory. The enemy, the thief, the devil, the world – whatever you call it today – it takes, it steals and it destroys.
God doesn’t take away; He does ask. Gently, softly, with open hands and for our benefit. He promises to bring us closer to Him, He promises a life filled with His glory, He gives us the faith to believe it and the strength to step into it. Accepting His ultimate authority meant agreeing with a measure of discipline for the death my life had created. He asked for it all back. At the time, I thought God wanted to take it away because I had the wrong guy and the wrong life and I had done it the wrong way and that’s discipline. Now I see that He asked me to empty my hands so He could fill them to overflow with something better. And THAT is discipline.
God didn’t want to ‘make the best of it’. He wanted to dismantle me completely. He was tired of fitting in the cracks I selected and was brimming with the creative power, passionate love and eternal vision of a relationship founded on Him, rooted in Him, blooming and bearing fruit that looked, smelled, tasted, fed, blessed and multiplied HIM.
For months on the race, I refused to really think about what I had left behind. My relationship would come to mind and I’d immediately think, “God, you’ve got that. That is yours. Do what you will.” I shared my testimony with those traveling the world with me so that eventually the story I thought of as riddled with shameful human mistakes was shared with almost every person on the squad. God repeatedly reinforced that my story wasn’t for me or about me and when I took my eyes off myself and put them back where they belonged, anxiety and shame evaporated under His gaze. How freeing.
As I fit into my rightful place under His authority, God was working with me on the condition of my heart. Those bruised, protected and hardened parts were again surrendered to His nurturing hands as he brought life, forgiveness and healing. I started getting reports from home about what God was busy doing there for all of the people I’d left. To be honest, God was showing off a bit and I was first confused, then in denial and finally thrilled to let Him awe me with his good, good work. Eventually, with my worship, He started inviting me into the work He was doing, prompting me to pray for specific people at specific times for specific things. As a creator, nothing give him more pleasure and glory than to see his creation functioning the way they were meant to. As His sons pray for each other and share in the work we were designed to do, life comes to each and every part of the body. How beautiful.
It’s hard to overstate how many miracles God did this year. In my life and in the life of my partner. But that story and those details belong to him and to God. One day they will be shared and probably encompassed in a NYT Best-Selling book. The story is that good.
On the field, months of trusting God, surrendering everything to him and walking with the knowledge that He is all I need, started shifting. Through dreams, prophetic words, prayer, scripture and continual confirmation, it became clear that things I had given to Him, well, He wanted to give them back. Not as it was, not as it had been before, but a new future with the same face. A new relationship with the same person. A new home with a solid foundation.
Jesus spent a year filling up our jars with water and now He wants to turn it into wine. Jesus’ first miracle, recorded in John chapter 2, is his mother saying ‘I see who you are, I know who you are meant to be and I need it to happen now.’ In faith, she pulled the future into the present. Delighted and moved by her command of faith, God agrees and reveals his glory in turning their water into wine for the party to share and enjoy. In verse 10 the master of the banquet reveals just how God gives to those he loves “… but you have saved the best till now”.
“God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work” 2 Corinthians 9:8
“You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand” Psalm 16:11
“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” James 1:17
