So I had a real rough go my first few months back in America. And looking back a few months removed from my last post I’ve got a whole lot of grace and compassion for that haggard heart. Sometimes you can't help how a season turned out. Sometimes you just can’t help how things kinda fell apart and how you got banged and busted a bit along the way. And I think the enemy hopes we’d feel shame about the things we can’t help- and he hopes that shame would paralyze us from the beautiful things God wants to do in and through us.
But if that season taught me anything it’s that shame is often times unavoidable. It can seep through the cracks made over a season of losses, and pluck some cords deep down in you that you had no idea were there. Shame has a strange and frightening way of telling you the wrong narrative. But what I’ve also learned is that shame, no matter how deep or disrupted, can always be worked through and made powerless - it's just that it doesn’t always happen overnight.
If the Easter story, the 3 days of Christ’s death and resurrection is our model for how new life springs from all the busted and broken, then you can count me out for Saturday.
If the Easter story was any bit of a reflection for how healing happens, Saturday just feels too weighty for me. Hopeless, sad, and unsure of the future. It’s the day no one seems to really talk about.
I’d rather dance right along from the despair and death of Friday to the joy and hope of Sunday. I’d rather turn my sadness to celebration cause I sure do like a good victory dance.
And I certainly don’t like slow processes- I’m a lets-fix-this-quick kind of human who wants a formula for how to get back up after landing in the dirt. So I get to the root of things, identify the hurt, feel all the feels for about 30 minutes, then uproot that sucker on outta there, slap a little Truth, Jesus and grace on it and move on.
But here's the issue with that:
I want to get over things, and God would rather I go through things.
For so long I thought identifying my issue, calling it out for what it is, and then hoping Jesus would fill in the gaps was enough to get me from Friday to Sunday. But there is no shortcut to joy. If Jesus had to endure Saturday, then I have to hand over my counterfeit Fast Pass and step into the hard and careful work of healing and taking the pen outta shames hand.
There just isn’t an easy fix to getting through the really hard stuff life hands us. We have to show up, dig deep, and do the hard work of walking through it. We have to allow each brave step to shed off a layer of control and self protection. And the wild thing about it all is that we don’t get to decide how long our Saturday will be; God might not take us out of the desert when we hope, but He will surely always meet us there. We just have to decide to commit to walking through Saturday while being certain that Sunday always comes next.
So this is my confession: during a season of Fridays I let my circumstance, a few failures, things done and words spoken to me have some power in my narrative. I started to let shame and guilt write a few lines in my story before I even knew what was happening. I even started walking around wide-eyed everywhere for confirmation that this new narrative was true. After a Friday season of deaths- dreams, expectations, a close friendship, and a relatives mental and physical health, I made the brave choice to step into Saturday.
And let me tell you there’s nothing cute about a Saturday season of wrestling with God, and intensionally mourning and grieving the death of things I held dear, then the tedious process of connecting dots and recognizing thoughts before reacting and responding— Nope, nothing cute about the process at all, but there is something really beautiful about it. In fact, I am seeing more and more glimpses of Sunday everywhere. For the first time in 8 months I’m starting to feel and sound like myself again and it’s really freaking exciting.
But don’t be mistaken, it’s not because there’s been a lull in life’s disappointments these days coming my way. Even as I watched yet another grand and exciting hope of mine dissipate into thin air just last week, and even though it felt like another really big loss, it just didn’t have power over me or speak into my identity like the enemy hoped it would. That's progress, and for that I’ll celebrate! Jesus is doing a mighty work here.
If King Solomon says that “though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again,”(Prov 24) then I can handle the next fall that comes my way. Because that's how it works, how full Joy is always found—there has to be a dying, some wrestling, and then comes rising.
I've got new eyes for those first few months transitioning back to America. That season was full of so many first for me that I chuckle to remember how us humans rarely get it all right and dandy on our first go at things. And that’s okay. But how brave we are to even try. And then after brushing off the dirt and then some, to try again. I know Whose I am, and I know the story I want to tell with my one little life, I just forgot for a season.
Our story is God’s story. Our lives get to point to something grand and magnificent and beautiful no matter how our days look on earth.
For the joy set before him He endured the cross.
His joy was us, and our joy is in Him.