Closing a Series, But God Is Always At Work
Well, this is it, the final week of our Pivot moments for this series.
I am sure God will continue to flip my world upside down to exchange the lies I have come to believe for His truth, but for the sake of this series of pivotal moments, this is the last… for now.
God Is Working a Masterpiece
Today, it will get dark again, before the light shines through the clouds, revealing a marvelous plan that God had all along, but that I just then began to realize was there.
That’s how it always works with God.
We tend to fret & stress & worry & fear, as if God doesn’t already have a plan to fit all of the pieces together, making a breath-taking masterpiece out of the messy “colors” we saw as chaos.
AND, He doesn’t leave it at that… He offers us comfort & peace & strength to endure the hardships that lead up to that marvelous reveal, as we lean into Him for it.
And that is how He worked as He led me through my struggles in both Guam AND Hokkaido.
God Was Working a Plan I Didn’t See
God was working a plan to show Himself to me in a way that I needed to see.
He needed me to learn that my gifting was simply His way of working through my life & had little to do with how much I may or may not have deserved it.
The Ugly Pride
First, I feel it important to let you in on the fact that I struggled (& still do struggle) with pride because of my gifting from God.
Because certain things oftentimes seem so obvious & easy to me, to see deeper insight into a situation to know God’s truth & how it needs to be applied or how someone is avoiding God’s truth in a certain area… I began to believe that it must be that I care more about God & truth than others.
I know, I know… it sounds arrogant just reading that.
But although I didn’t think of it as pride, but more that I felt alone in wanting to serve the truth, it just wasn’t true that my gifting was equal to my personal deserving of it.
An Undeserved Gift
My gifting was simply what it sounds like… a gift… from God. Did it make me more perceptive than some others? Perhaps. But I still had weaknesses where others had great strengths.
This particular area just happened to be MY strength, leaving me to need help from others with DIFFERENT strengths… the whole “body of Christ”/”body of the Church” idea. All of our strengths (“giftings”) WORK TOGETHER & are GIFTS from God—not earned or deserved.
Obviously, the more obedient & trusting we are to God, the more He will choose to work in & through our gifting, but the gifting itself is… just a GIFT.
All that to say, I obviously needed both a lesson in humility & a lesson in it being from HIM & not me.
Walking through the Valley
And to accomplish this pivot in my life, God chose to allow me to walk through hardship… namely, loneliness in Guam & a life of strain, where I had very little control, living in Japan, in an area with VERY LITTLE English.
Living in those two places brought me to a place of feeling like very little that I accomplished had anything to do with what I had earned or deserved.
I was mainly just trying to get through to the next day, only sometimes remembering to pray for the strength & peace & wisdom & guidance to navigate each day & instead, relying on television show marathons & food to get me through it.
And it got worse.
Starting to Have “The Talk”-About Depression & Potential Cries for Help
Near the end of those six years, I had to start having a lot of conversations with Jamie about my history with depression & that if it got bad enough, slipping by unnoticed until it consumed me, & if I admitted that to him & asked for help, that he needed to get me emergency help.
Luckily, it never reached emergency status, but I guess in a way it did.
Over time, in Hokkaido, the mental strain & stress of never understanding (pretty much anything) of the world around me began to take a serious toll on my mind.
I began having emotional breakdowns over the smallest things.
I felt BROKEN, like a person who couldn’t function like a normal human being.
Paper-Thin Patience
To better express the strain… if I dropped an item once, even a small, slip-through-my-fingers drop… it required a deep breath of resolve to just pick it back up…. But a second drop? The item would get picked up with lightning speed & chucked at the nearest wall.
Patience was worn thin every moment. I had zero patience.
I crumbled at the slightest aggravation or inconvenience.
I cried or screamed or cursed so loud that I didn’t care if the whole world heard.
And I felt broken.
Broken
I understood this wasn’t normal. I understood that the average human being can manage to pick something up that had dropped just twice without feeling hatred explode out of her.
But I couldn’t stop it. I felt like something in me had short-circuited & I could no longer filter frustrations through logic & calm reserve to try again.
I just immediately would snap, without even considering it first or thinking it through.
It scared me how little control I had over my own brain & how it reacted to even minor difficulties.
And yet, through all of that, I felt God’s hand on me… as if He was reassuring me that He wouldn’t let go… that He had me still.
God Wasn’t Answering MY Way, So I Felt Forgotten
But I eventually stopped praying.
I felt deserted by God because the pain only got worse & the control over my own emotions melted slowly away.
I was trapped in a mental typhoon that swirled everything together & knocked all sense out of my life.
I was exhausted & frustrated. I felt broken & no longer whole or “normal” & I saw ZERO way to repair or fix it.
Every attempt seemed to laugh at me.
My prayers went “unanswered.”
Bitterness grew into an angry, snarling, jaded voice that screamed for relief at every corner.
Streaming Curse Words
I saw God walking beside me, in a sense, feeling Him there… but He wasn’t making all the pain stop. He wasn’t repairing my mind. He wasn’t calming the storm raging inside me.
So, I cried. A LOT.
My second (inner) language became strung-together curse words, screamed inside my mind.
I couldn’t turn off the rage that was starting to consume me, like a rage monster tearing away at me from the inside, bellowing its fierceness from within me.
Professional Help, Please!
As I finally confessed this inner battle to Jamie, upon our decision-making to stay in Hokkaido or move on, I told him the truth, “Jamie, I am really struggling. Either I need a professional counselor, or we need to leave to go somewhere less stressful on my brain. I need help.”
So, we moved to Misawa, Japan, near an American military base & the stress began to recede.
Even With My NOTHING
God showed me that even WHILE I was feeling broken & unfixable, bitter instead of trusting, & barely surviving through my mental typhoon each day, that He STILL chose to work through my life to bless others through my gifting.
In other words, EVEN WHEN I did NOTHING to earn or deserve anything, He still allowed me to be a blessing to others through HIS gifting.
Ex Nihilo
I used to think that it was up to us to bring the best of what we have & to be the best at everything ALL THE TIME & be everyone’s EVERYTHING, & ONLY THEN can God do miraculous, wonderful things in & through our lives.
BUT… in my failing… in my brokenness… in my falling apart… when I felt I had nothing to offer Him… HE STILL DID Mighty things, through ME!!
Like He showed us through Creation… God can do AMAZING things EX NIHILO (“From Nothing”).
Not Us, But HIM, THROUGH US
My gifting & my ability to bless others how He chooses to work through me, is not because I have proven any better than other people… but because He is a Mighty & Awesome & LOVING God who does great things despite my unworthiness, because He loves us so incredibly much.
He can take our NOTHING & make it a MASTERPIECE.
His Grace IS Sufficient
Even if our “leaning into Him” is as a paralytic who cannot even hold themselves up, HE HOLDS US UP in His strength, His mercy, His love, His power, His goodness, His forgiveness, His saving, HIS GRACE.
If you recognize a gifting God has given you when you chose to put your faith in Jesus as the Master & Redeemer of your life, learn from my mistakes… bow them at His feet & thank Him for blessing you with a way to bless others, through HIS GIFTING.
And then lean into Him to best use that gift to honor Him & to bring Him glory, by making Him famous wherever you go, loving others to Jesus, through truth & faith in Him. He will help you as you lean into Him.
Shine HOPE, by giving Him the little you have & letting Him multiply it, even if it feels as if you have little to nothing to offer Him… by LEANING INTO HIM.
Coming Next Week
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Iris Earrings
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Artisan Information:
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