Ah, the enemy never rests; but neither does God.
I haven’t written a lot lately about the battles of my heart. It is much, much harder to do when you are among the people who will be reading it. When I was overseas, I didn’t have to come face to face with questions or comments on what I wrote. If somebody said something that was hard to hear, I had the luxury of dealing with it at a convenient time and from a distance. Now, I risk putting my heart out right in front of the people who may choose to stomp on it. Oh the joys of personal growth.
So it has been quite a rollercoaster ride since I have been home. Some of the things I thought were going to be really hard ended up being a real blessing. It is the things I did not expect that have thrown me for a loop. I had really high expectations about how things were going to work, and I have had to readjust my perspective many times.
Always nagging in the back of my mind are those same questions I have always faced. Am I enough? Can I really do this? Am I welcome? Am I valued? Am I wanted? I can’t even write these things without my chest tightening and tears streaming down my face. I know in my head that these are all lies dealt to keep me from becoming who God intended for me to be. I know that they are the enemy’s words and they are not truth. I know this; yet my heart is still wounded and struggles to believe that it is good.
I find myself confronted with many of the emotions that I have been through in the past. The things that I somehow pushed away and moved forward, but never dealt with. I never allowed God to give me the true answer to those questions. I feared the answers, so I didn’t listen for them.
I’m not going to lie. I’m feeling pretty beaten up right now. I am discouraged because my support isn’t coming in, and I feel like I don’t have what it takes to do this. I feel alone. It seems that the people I once knew have moved on with their lives and I’m just not a part of it anymore. Few people seem to even care that I am here, and the ones that do care are busy. This is not a criticism of them, I would probably be the same way. I’m just sharing how the devil twists these circumstances in my head to attack my heart.
As much as I hate where I am right now, I believe that is exactly where I need to be for this moment. I believe that God has to bring me back to these places, these wounds, and these questions so that He can finally give me the answers He has been trying to tell me all along. That, I am worth everything. I can do anything if I do it with Him. I am precious to Him, and infinitely valuable. I am not only welcome, but He is pursuing me, even to the depths of my pain and sorrow.
Then I remember that Christ was rejected and sent to the cross by the same people who praised and honored him at His triumphal entry. He was denied by His closest friends, who abandoned Him it the time of His greatest need. Nobody ever believed that He was who God said he was, they always doubted Him even when He proved His divinity with miracles. His own family rejected Him, and doubted His ministry even though they knew how He was born. His life was not easy by any means.
So, though it is painful, I rejoice in this suffering knowing that God is doing a work in me greater than what I can see. I am beginning to trust Him with my heart, and that is a BIG step forward even if it doesn’t look like it on the outside.
