14 Reminders for Those Who Are Struggling
I’ve been on the struggle bus lately…really for the last 5 months! It started last fall when I recognized there was more work God was wanting to do in me—a stripping of some sort. I touched on it in a previous blog post if you want to check it out!
I was hoping, and perhaps thought, the chiseling would end sooner but, as I sit here this morning, I find myself very much still in the midst of it. I just knew spring would come and everything would be better! That has not been the case, though.
The trees and flowers are budding, but I am still in my desert place…wondering what God is up to!
I write this blog post in hopes of encouraging you in the event you find yourself in a similar situation.
Lately, work has been hard and I can’t seem to catch a break no matter what I do. I can absolutely see God’s provision, but it hasn’t quite shown up in the way I expected it to or hoped it would. I am constantly trying to figure out healthy boundaries in both work and life.
Just when I think I’ve got a good rhythm going, something happens that requires me to readjust again.
I’m trying to be there for others in their hard place while also trying to navigate my own hard place.
In doing so, I’ve neglected other important pieces of me that are good for my heart and soul and I feel as if I’m trying to find, or rediscover, myself all over again!
Then add in business growing pains! I am obviously grateful (and excited!) to take the next appropriate steps to be a better steward of what God has given me, but it’s been hard finding the time even though I’m not in a hurry. I am confident I’m moving in the midst of God’s will as I work behind the scenes on what’s next, but juggling sustainability and expansion all at once is leaving me tired.
In the wrestling and waiting, I have been doing my best to continue showing up and being present. I’ve been sitting alone with God a lot lately—sometimes for hours—trying to figure out what it is he’s wanting me to see in this current season.
My mind has been in a million places at once, and I lost my gaze. I am sad to say, during these last 5 months, I completely forgot that God is up to something good in me…all the while I am right smack dab in the middle of everything happening around me!
He is wanting to see something different in me—to keep me headed in the right direction! The “squeeze” I’ve been feeling lately is of great importance.
I have “the larger story” tattooed on my right forearm to serve as a reminder of the larger story God is writing, and here I am forgetting…again! I’ve been consumed by my smaller story and my circumstances…looking desperately for a way through (or out)!
As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve been demanding relief from God as if I’m entitled to it. I’m not.
Forgive me, Lord!
I think I get frustrated because I want God to get to the point already. I want to arrive—to learn this lesson and move on to the next one.
Too, though, if I am being completely honest here, I want to experience comfort on my terms.
That’s not how God works, though.
I know true change—lasting change—and transformation takes time, yet here I am trying to rush the Master’s work.
Am I willing to keep residing in this desert place for as long as it takes in order to draw nearer to God and inch slowly towards Christlikeness?
I find myself reminded of Jeremiah 18:1-7, “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, ‘Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.’ So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. Then the word of the Lord came to me: ‘O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done?’ Declares the Lord. ‘Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.’”
While I don’t know everything he is up to, I do know he’s getting to the root of who I am—peeling me back layer by layer to show me what I’m actually about and the pieces of my heart that are still far from him. He’s tending to the cracks in my foundation, so to speak, molding me like clay in the potter’s hand—slowly detaching me from second things along the way and reminding me of what really matters.
I am very much guilty of wanting to experience relief more than wanting to experience transformation. I really do want to be transformed, though!
The battle continues.
I know I can’t have both.
While sitting alone with God yesterday, I decided to read through one of my old journals that contained the notes I took at both School of Spiritual Direction and Next Step—week-long spiritual formation retreats hosted by Larry Crabb that I attended 6-7 years ago.
The timing could not have been more perfect!
While my circumstances remain the same, I found a lot of peace, encouragement, and hope throughout the pages of my beat up yellow spiral that I thought I would share with you in case you, too, are in a desert place.
These are reminders my weary soul desperately needed to hear in this current season of life, and perhaps you might, too!
Idolatry is taking a good thing and making it the best thing.
Every heartache is an opportunity to know God better and to reveal Christ to whoever’s watching.
Either we live to get a good we think we need, or we live to enjoy a good we’ve already been given.
We reduce God’s glory to his provisions, not his person.
God intends for us to lead unsatisfied lives in this world to deepen our thirst for the satisfaction only he can provide.
Sin is perverted passions; a passionate attachment to the wrong things (anything BUT God).
God is the answer to our deepest longings.
Out of the previous, the following flows. We often go on mission without even considering the foundations that MUST come before.
The Messiah has come to change us—to restore our souls BEFORE he restores our blessings.
God is honoring the deepest parts of our soul when he brings us suffering.
What God is doing in us now is far more greater than the life we think would be best.
God brings what is needed in our life to meet our longing to mature—God wants us to mature!
We define our greatest good wrongly every day.
God receives glory, maybe the most, when we refuse to quit.
As I read through these notes, I found myself reminded of the fact that God loves me too much to leave me where I’m at. He wants all of me and he’s not letting up. There is much more he wants (and needs!) to do in me!
I’m guilty of all of the above—idolizing and looking for satisfaction in second things (i.e. comfort, financial security, good health, etc.), living to get a good I think I need, reducing God’s glory to his provisions, attempting to rush God’s work in my life in preparation for what lies ahead, and taking suffering for granted.
Again…forgive me, Lord!
While I do still hope to get to a different place, I am not in such a hurry anymore.
Instead, I am choosing to find rest, peace, and comfort in knowing God is working towards making me a good soul. He is allowing exactly what is needed in my life to meet my longing to mature.
He is doing that in your life, too!
He is the answer to our deepest longings.
Can we trust that God is intentionally at work in this current season of life, in this dessert place, to make us new?
What will my response be, and what will your response be, if our situation continues to linger?
If we don’t know when this season will end or how long it will last, I wonder how can we step into it and trust God with the unknown?
With this new perspective in mind, my hope is that we can move forward with confidence knowing God is carefully reworking us into another “vessel” as it seems good for him to do.
He is writing a good story, and we can make him look good by the way we tell our story to others and live it out faithfully. Through everything, he is the answer to our greatest longing.
