Don’t worry, there are only five parts. We can almost move on with life. 🙂
One of the biggest reasons I was looking forward to training camp was because for a whole week I’d get to forget that my friend Daniel was dead.
I can’t remember another time in my life when I’ve been that sad for that long. When my granddad died I was sad for an hour and then I just went numb and fell into three months of depression. This time I actually felt sad, and felt it for four days.
Then on the fifth day I stopped being sad and got angry instead.
I’m okay with being sad, but I HATE being mad. Sadness, I can curl up in and let it do its thing until it’s over. Anger, I shove away and refuse to acknowledge. So of course I jumped into packing so I wouldn’t have to think about it.
The first day and a half of TC was such a whirlwind of happy things that I kept not thinking about it. Until the second afternoon when we sat down to learn about grieving.
I tried to listen to the speaker, but couldn’t concentrate. Instead I opened my journal and word vomited onto the page with all the things I was angry about. And each reason on the list made me even more angry at myself for being angry.
That night at worship, the same speaker asked all of the leaders to go and pray over anyone they felt needed it. I told God, “I bet you’re about to send someone to me, but I don’t want to hear anything they have to say.” God laughed and let one of my squad trainers come up to me. But she didn’t start praying right away. She just hugged me, and I stopped thinking and started hysterically crying. Then she prayed, “God, Linda loves you. She needs you to let her know that you can handle all of her hurt, that you want her to bring all of her anger to you and let it go.”
I’d just met Jill that afternoon. I’d told her about Daniel but I hadn’t dared to mention the part about being pissed beyond belief and not knowing what to do about it; I’d never told anyone about that. This was so undeniably God speaking through her.(This is a whole story in itself because she kept praying more ridiculous truth over me and I kept breaking, but I’ll write about that later)
Fast forward to Wednesday night. We were learning about listening prayer, and they gave us a few minutes for us all to be silent and try it.
I took out my journal all ready for God to write me a whole page. But all he said was, “It’s okay.”
I knew he meant it was okay that I was angry, which made me want to throw my pen across the field. I was supposed to be learning how to be a good missionary, but all God seemed to want to talk about all week was me and my bruised up heart.
After that they had us stand in two lines, and everyone from the first line would pick someone from the second and listen for a word from God for that person.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and almost a full minute passed in silence before she said, “Cast your cares upon the Lord, for he cares for you.”
The third time really is the charm. As soon as I heard that, everything clicked.
God cares. And he’s more than big enough to hold all the pain I was still clinging to.
That whole week, I’d been so caught up in taking care of myself, making sure my squad wouldn’t feel the need to take care of me, I’d forgotten that it was okay to let God do it all for me.
He isn’t looking down at me with his arms crossed, waiting for me to apologize for being mad at him.
He’s sitting beside me with his arms open, waiting for me to come and cry in them.
And because God knows that I’m the most visual learner he’s ever created, I opened my eyes and Christina was holding out her arms. I hugged her so hard that it probably hurt a little, and cried until they made us move onto whatever was next.
I crawled into my tent that night feeling better than I had all week. I prayed myself to sleep, so happy that me and God were friends again…but still felt like something was missing.
Part 5 soon…
