I may not have been writing, but I’ve been thinking.
Processing. Growing. The truth is, it’s been a hard a couple months and I’m
ready to share some of it with you.
Do you ever wonder why you are here in this particular
generation? Why God chose you to be on earth for this time? What is your role
in your family, people circles, job, church, community, world? I have. I’ve
been wondering that a lot lately. Not because I don’t think I have purpose, but
because I know I do, I know we all
do, and I desperately want us to be living out that purpose. I don’t think
there’s a soul out there that doesn’t desire to feel valued and know that their
life is intentionally designed for an intentional purpose. The difficulty can come in understanding what that looks like.
And so I process. I bring it before God. I ask the hard
questions and listen. But what are we to do when we are answered with (what
feels like) silence? This is my wrestling.
I recently read (most) of Restless by Jennie Allen in which she encourages her readers to
take the quest of finding their calling by digging into their passions, their
past, their dreams and their hurts. There’s homework involved that walks the
reader through how to do this-uncover our unique gifts and what God is calling
us to do with them. This book has been timely because it has been just in the
last year that God opened my eyes to see clearly a great calling He has on my
life. This book affirmed much of that and awakened me to dig deeper and see
fuller, richer, life-giving things about how I am made and how God has worked
together my past to use it for the future; for His purpose. After
reading the book I was ready to go! I mean seriously, my horse was saddled and
I was like, “let’s lunge forward with two feet in God! I’m ready! I get it. Let’s
roll!” I was pumped and excited and ready to take on all the things He had laid
before.
And then He pulled back.
“Rest and retreat
my daughter. Rest and retreat.”
Not exactly what I was expecting. Six months ago He
burdened my heart that our family theme for the summer would be rest and retreat but after all the
excitement of this new direction He was leading me I figured maybe I had heard
Him wrong at worst OR He would tie the two together at best. In the
deepest parts of my soul, I wasn’t surprised-I saw it coming. Even still, summer
came and He pulled back the reigns and here I’ve been sitting wondering why. Wrestling with what in world He is
trying to teach me. Why would He get me so excited for the things He was laying
out and then ask me to pull back and not live any of it out. At least not right
now.
I’ve felt burdened, confused, frusterated, desperate to
understand, even depressed at times. All the while I’ve known His plans are
always to bring himself glory and this time is not wasted. I just don’t always
like the quiet, growing seasons. I also tend to want to have the growth
overnight, being full of wisdom without the patience to grow into it. Jake
often reminds me that it doesn’t work that way. He usually says something like
this… “Honey, today He is preparing you
for what He has for tomorrow. And tomorrow He will prepare you for what He has
for the next day. You can’t skip any of those days or you won’t be ready for
what’s in store. You have to stop expecting to be a 100 year old oak tree overnight.
Learn to love the process of growth.” What a wise man I marriedJ He’s right and I know
it and I find comfort it in, even if it’s hard to swallow.
I’m starting to come up for air and my processing is
bearing fruit in the way of being able to put to words the things God is
teaching me. One of those things is that when I don’t know what the future
holds, I need to focus on what I do know. When worry and doubt and anxiety and
fear threaten to take over, we must choose to speak life into our own souls
through the truth of God and the practice of reminding ourselves of
what we do know to be true.
These are some of those things for me right now…
I know that right
now God has us planted in this town and He desires us to bloom here.
I know that God
rejoices over us with singing (Zephaniah 3:17).I know when the time comes He will do a new thing, prepare a way in the wilderness (Isaiah 43:19).
I know that I am a stay-at-home mom in a season of little ones and that is Kingdom work.
I know that His plans are always for good (Jeremiah 29:11).
I know that I am a
nanny for my precious niece for the summer and I have the honor and weight of showing her Jesus daily.
I know that my
husband is employed at his current job and God has intention in that.I know that I am surrounded with wounded women that need the message of hope and love.
Oh I am seeing the danger in not finding joy and
contentment in my present place. I can easily spin myself in circles until I
feel discontent and unfilled which leaves me searching and questioning and just
plain weary. I’ve come to believe that one of Satan’s most potent tools is
distraction. He’ll use whatever he can to take our eyes off of God and put them
on ourselves and the world around us. I’m sure you can already see how I have
battled this recently. I desire so much to walk in the will of God and His
calling for my life that in all of my searching and questioning I have taken my
eyes off the place that God has me right now and the work that is right before
my eyes.
A willing heart to go has to be just as willing to stay
or the will can distract from the purpose. Try reading that again and allow yourself to process what that means.
I'm finding that the more I focus on where He has me, the more at peace I am. I’m still excited and willing to go to the places I know He’s called me. I’m still dreaming big with Him and tuning my ear to His voice so that when He tells me to move, I move. But for now, I am praying that I live intentionally in the present. Loving and serving the people God has placed in front of me. A very wise woman from church recently told me that we don’t need to go looking for hurting people, we need to love the ones God has placed in front of us.
There’s one more thought I want to share with you. In all
my wrestling I realized that I’ve feared if I wasn’t walking out the new calling
He’s revealed to me then I was doing insignificant work and not doing enough
for His Kingdom. I heard the lovely Beth Moore speak at a conference recently
and she said something that struck me. She said, “It’s never enough. We can
never reach too many people with the gospel. We can never show love to too many
hurting people because God’s work isn’t finished until every person on earth
has heard the gospel or Jesus comes back.” I urge you, and me, to never let the
devil convince us that our gifts, our current places, our dreams, our people
circles are ever too small or insignificant. God’s work in us is vital and His
work through is intentional whether you are in a season of rest and retreat or a season of “GO!” It matters. We are reaching people, touching lives, doing the
good work in all seasons of our life. That is a beauty of the way our great God
works. There are times He may pull back on certain areas of our lives that seem
big and important because He has bigger more important work to do in the quiet,
still places of our souls. But don’t be fooled, even in those quiet seasons, He
is doing a mighty work. Blessings abundantly,
Chels
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