…A question you may be wondering so I will try my best to answer by telling you what God has been teaching me this past month. (sorry it’s quite longer than AIM tells us to post but I’ve processed a lot)
This past month a lost my mom and through this experience God has taught me a profound lesson in Faith. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that this truly shook my whole being, it made everything so real. That everything I live for is not just a belief, it’s either truth or not. Where is she? Heaven is so foreign to me. Is she hanging somewhere in the atmosphere? Is she high above looking down? Does she just cease to exist? I had to look at my life and see all the amazing things that the Lord has already done for me here. If He has kept His promises to me here on earth than why would His promise of Heaven be untrue? The reason for life on earth would have no purpose without heaven. I realized what is faith if you only have it in moments you don’t need it. Just like love, faith is a choice. A choice I have already made and have shaped my life around, and God has been way too present for it to not be evidence enough, that He is indeed real therefore His promises that He has yet to redeem are still true.
After I got the news, two days in to my second month, I went to my room and I prayed and asked God to comfort me like He has never before. That His physical presence would be so thick around me I would feel His arms as if they were human arms wrapped around me, that He would give me peace and wisdom for His timing. I did not get the former. I did not feel His presence around me at all but instead He chose to teach me about my great gift of Faith. A year ago I had taken a “quiz” to find out what my spiritual gifts might be, thinking to myself how will this quiz show me what gifts have been given to me by the Lord of the universe. The result was the gift of Faith. I figured the quiz decided Faith because I haven’t stretched myself or walked out of my comfort zone yet to really be able to distinguish my gifts and Faith is probably the “default” gift. The next day in my community group someone got a word from God for me. It was that I have the gift of faith and to know that that is a very special gift that should not be over-looked because it holds weight in the Kingdom. The Lord chose this time to reaffirm this again. He showed me that I have chosen faith even when I don’t feel Him present. I don’t need to feel Him to know that He is indeed there, holding me and walking through this process right here with me and has been there walking beside me preparing me for this very process.
That is how great God is. I learned something about a verse that has been a motivation to me throughout my life. That God never puts us through more than we can handle. I thought to myself in this situation, “Well this is BS or at least a catch-22,” because we can’t handle any tragedy without God’s strength to get us through. I had always looked at this as saying God creates us all with different levels of strength and the suffering we will endure on earth, will be only in according to the measure of strength God has assigned to each of us. However I realized that’s not what it was saying at all. God does not choose suffering to teach us a lesson but He does let evil in this world in result of giving us free will to choose him as our savior or not. (I do not think this was the doing of the devil) That being said He will not let you endure hardship with out preparing you enough to get through it. He uses everything in your life for good and He showed me how much of the pain I have endured in my past like my car accident, and my Mom’s brain surgery to name a few has prepared me to overcome my mom being gone. The knowledge that He will not let you endure pain without preparing you first shows me how much He loves me, how great His affections are for me that even through hardships His character is tender. Through this I know He is right beside me, weeping with me, and holding me in His arms. Even if I can’t physically feel him, knowing and seeing Him orchestrate my life is enough. He has taught me that neither feeling or knowing outweighs the other. I think He is walking me through the comprehension of my mother’s earthly death first because I can’t truly feel the pain of missing her until I understand the finality of it all. Once I can comprehend it, then physically missing her knowing that the feeling will no longer be quenched by her voice or her embrace is when God will meet me in physical comfort.
It is important to know that I am not angry. I was incredibly blessed by an amazing mom who taught me so much about life and our purpose here before heaven. Life is not about what you’re good at, what you accomplish, success even if it’s achieving happiness, no life is about how we glorify God through impacting the hearts of the people we leave behind. My mother understood the importance in making sure people knew how special they are, because we are. I realized most people walk through life not knowing this, but because my mom would tell me to the point of almost annoyance, I do. It’s because my mom chose faith in the face of pain through her life that I can also lean on my Father to choose faith in this moment now, because her life taught me how. I cannot be angry because my mom has now experienced the moment we all yearn for. She is face to face with Jesus and nothing could bring me more joy. I do not mourn her death but my future left on earth without her in it. So in this joy it is not to say I am not hurting, that I am not sad because this is the hardest thing I have ever endured but I have peace and I know that I will be just fine. Mothers are a gift from God. He places them in our lives like He does with every type of relationship, to show us the facets of His love and how intricate each facet is. He gives us mothers to show us His nurturing, supportive, unconditional, and gentle love. If God is the originator of mothers than He will fill her void better than she even could.
When I picture my mom now, I know that she is holy, complete and dancing in the presence of Jesus. I know that she has no pain and carries no burdens, even the burden of worrying about her children. She is not my guardian angel. I don’t believe that when people die and go to heaven that they play a part in God’s hand on this earth. I would hope that my mom would be to busy celebrating to be giving two shits about what is going on down here. I know that she can finally see the big picture and she already knew that the Lord has me in His hands before she left. She has always said that we belong to God not her. It doesn’t bring me sadness to envision her not caring about me but gives me peace that my hope of how unfathomably awesome heaven will be is true.
Even though I knew as soon as I heard the news that it was God’s timing, I needed to know why His timing was when I was so far. God showed me through how he has blessed me with such an incredible woman of Christ as a mother, that I had had the chance to recognize this before she had gone and let her know how much she was appreciated, that I had been preparing to say goodbye to her for the past 6 months due to this trip. That the last time I was with her, was having the pleasure to pray as a family together and we knew it was a goodbye for a while. Coming home and seeing how much she wanted to be involved in my journey by not just reading my blogs but reading all the blogs of my whole squad, other squads, stalking everyones’ facebook pages for pictures of me, and finding “kingdom Journeys” on her bed by Seth Barnes. I know she is proud of me. I know it was in God’s timing because after talking with her friends and ladies in her bible study of her transformation just in the month I was gone, they said she had been experiencing God in brand new ways (My exact prayer for her). They said that when she would talk of the things He was teaching her in her life she would beam and glow like they’ve never seen. That she was experiencing God’s love like she never had before, and with that I know that it was just time. God said there’s no reason for you to endure this broken world any longer and it’s time to come home. So on October 2nd 2012 she went to sleep that night and woke up in the presence of her Lord and savior.
I am now back with I-squad in South Africa continuing my World Race mission. Tomorrow we leave for Swaziland where we will spend the month on top of a mountain in ministry with orphans and doing construction. I am told that the stars are so amazing, they feel like you can just reach out and grab them. I pray that in this month I will be able to focus my attention on serving Jesus but letting myself feel every emotion that may come and having grace for myself during this grieving period.
(P.S. looking for the exact address of the verse "God will never put us through more than we can handle" I found that there is nowhere in the bible that says this, however in 1 Corinthians it does say that God will never let us be tempted more than we can bear, so maybe thats why He made me finally question the validity of this statment.)
