I should start by saying that it would be a lie to say these past 7 months have been easy… and while that’s not where this story begins… it’s where it currently is. It is a story in progress… a faith in process…
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How do you learn to cope with a broken heart? Who do you turn to when you feel as if you could never be put back together whole again?
The answer… is Jesus.
You see, I’ve had faith most of my life. I grew up with faith. I grew up in Church… literally, as the child of a music minister, I grew up in the church building… many of my earliest memories are being at practices and rehearsals there. Playing in the pews and listening to hymns and contemporary gospel.
But I didn’t really know what faith was until I was 14 or 15 and experienced my first true loss… and I retreated. I retreated into myself in a way that I hadn’t ever before. The loss was my Mammaw (grandmother to the non-Appalachian folks). She had cancer and it was a long and difficult battle. I’ll never forget that my Mom said she was playing piano when she passed… or that her favorite song was The Old Rugged Cross… or that we, her grandchildren, never washed our hands enough :). Her love left a mark… and it left a hole when she was gone.
“Love always leaves a mark.” - The Shack
And it affected my faith in a way that was inexplicable. When I retreated into myself, I lost part of myself. And I leaned into expressing my feelings and emotions through poems and music mostly… they were outlets to expressing deep emotions that my teenage self didn’t know how to…Now in my 30s, I still have those poems. But it wasn’t until I was on a bus heading back home from a youth work trip listening to Kirk Franklin’s “The Nu Nation Project” on my CD player… withdrawing and blocking out the world like I usually did. But something changed in that moment… almost like an awakening. In my mind’s eye, I envisioned a brick wall being knocked down and rebuilt brick by brick, mortar by mortar… my faith was being renewed and changed into something different; stronger, alive. It was my first true faith experience. Something changed within me and I became newer, more whole…
But at 14, there was still a lot of life to live and a lot of experiences both good and not so good. I graduated high school, went to college… met a guy there. A few guys… none of them worked out. But one relationship followed me. And I followed it thinking that I’d found my person. For 10 years I chased this relationship… refusing to believe that God hadn’t said “no” so explicitly. I fought him every step of the way.
And along the way I experienced more pain, more loss, more anger, more bitterness. Not just from that relationship, but all my experiences along the way… including those in the Church and how I felt about and saw myself and believed I was. By my mid-to-late 20s, I had fought so long and become so angry and bitter, I had pushed everyone that I loved away. Save one. And I remember one night sitting in my car and asking God, as I sobbed, to just hold me. And in that car seat I felt His arms envelop me… in a way that I’d never felt before. It’s rare in my life that I’ve called out to God and heard him or felt so clearly or so tangibly… but this was one of those moments… I’ve only had a few.
But it took counseling and consistently hearing who God told me I was… the truths he speaks over me every minute of every day for me to begin to understand who I truly was and to experience faith in a different way again… deeper. It took all these things for my heart to begin to soften… and for me to let go. You see, letting go takes a long time… and sometimes it takes doing it 1,000 times for it to start getting easier. And it did… with the help of those around me who loved me and reminded me who I was and who I was called to be… and hearing from God in a new way… I stopped chasing that relationship and moved forward. I gave it over to God who assured me He would be with my every step of the way… and He was. He still is…
As I entered my 30s, I was suddenly “alone”’again. I don’t know about you, but I’d always thought I’d have been married right out of college, find the love of my life there just like my parents. But, I’ve already told you it didn’t happen that way. It was a scary time for me… trying to rebuild my sense of self and establish new patterns and new circles of friends and to figure out what I wanted. Where I was going. It took me a few years to really find my bearings… to begin to establish new friends, new faith, and to see myself through a new lens.
The real change, though, happened when I got Quinn, my (now 4-year old) foster fail 6.5 week old puppy from the shelter. I officially adopted him at 8 weeks… and as he grew, I began to come out of my shell, to make new friends, and to find a new part of myself. I began to get into dog sports. I was already into volleyball. And volunteering at the animal shelter, obviously. I was going to a new church. A lot of things had changed. I had changed. I am still changing…
Fast forward to 2020, I had just started my dream job when the pandemic hit. The pandemic was probably one of the scariest times of my life. When your parents are not only older but one of them has multiple auto-immune diseases… well, life gets a lot more complicated. I had already struggled with losing her… I still do sometimes. But the danger was so much more heightened then that I was borderline panicky and I didn’t realize how much stress was actually affecting me until I realized I was literally pulling out some of my hair. I started counseling again. And during this time I was forming friendships with my people from work, leaning into the friendships I’d cultivated through Quinn (including now some of my closest friends), and trying to keep myself sane. I leaned into my faith. I journaled some. Though, if you know me, I’ve never been consistent or enjoyed journaling. God was growing me, whether I knew it or not. And I didn’t really. I was coasting by with my faith, calling out to God when I needed him, and ignoring him otherwise. My prayer life was inconsistent. I was angry about where the American Church was and how so many had aligned themselves with and even worshipped a man so vile that I consider him to be the complete antithesis of who God is. It sickened me and I was angry. And it was easy to avoid church during the pandemic, for obvious reasons.
Made it through 2020 and started into 2021… we were still very much in the middle of the pandemic and most of my friendships were still the ones I was growing with friends at work. We bonded over various things, bantered over random topics, and in general, enjoyed each other’s company. One guy kind of stood out in our work groups because he was genuine and funny…To be clear, my humor is an acquired taste, but so was his and he made me laugh with his comments and insights so it all worked out. We were often the odd ducks in chats laughing about something obscure or that we only thought was funny. We were becoming actual friends.
In October, we started to talk more regularly. We bonded over our dogs and developed a mutual trust and respect for one another. By January we were talking almost daily and one day, for some reason, I brought up my faith. It was honestly unprecedented. I’d never done that at work and didn’t really think it was appropriate for work chat. But we had developed a trust and I needed a friend. I confided in him that I was in an odd place right now with God, angry that so many of those who had professed Him were with open arms accepting so many things that were hateful and absent of the Gospel. I was questioning… And he confided in me that he too was in the same place. It felt nice to know that I wasn’t alone in those feelings and that struggle. It deepened our friendship even further.
By the end of January, he’d asked me out and we were in a relationship. Something that neither of us has been in for quite a while even though we’d both been looking the whole time. And we’d both agreed that we were made for each other in a way that was surprising… especially, as I mentioned, that we were both a little different… but we matched each other’s different and saw each other and loved each other. We laughed so much and the friendship that we’d built just made things that much sweeter. After a few months… we went through a rocky patch. It was a really tough one. I’d been really sick, we hadn’t been communicating well, and he had gotten home from traveling to find his home in need of some major repairs. The stress was at its peak. And long story short, he called me one afternoon and broke my heart… Without explanation… and to be honest it didn’t make much sense. It still doesn’t…
And I broke. I am still broken. Some days my heart still feels like it’s shattered into a million pieces and that it’ll never fit back together the same. Sometimes I worry that it never will heal completely. But that’s another story.
So these last 7 months have been me leaning into faith in a way that I’ve never done before. God has been teaching me so much about myself and about the things that I’ve carried for so long that he is allowing me to let go of. He is showing me how closed off and judgmental I have been. The truly amazing part is when God shows you how much of a fool you’ve been as you consider yourself so wise and loving and kind and then the truth comes out and you’re not nearly as good as you thought you were. In fact, I’ve learned that for someone who has thought herself very unselfish, I am extremely selfish. He is growing me. He is growing me in a direction that is new… and scary… and requires faith and openness and trust in the promises that He’s spoken over me.
I have followed his ways and done what he has asked me. Not always perfectly, certainly, but in good faith and trying to listen well. There have definitely been times when fear has overtaken me… and I was too scared to do what he asked of me. In one particular instance it spectacularly blew up in my face. Lesson learned. In others He has been faithful beyond belief. So much so that I have seen my prayers answered in small but meaningful and tangible ways. He has reassured me and worked miracles that have no other explanation but Him. I wake up every morning and speak with Him first… and He reassures me that He’s working still.
There are times (many times) when I doubt myself in what I have heard or what I have seen… and God is often quick to send me a message that tells me He has done what he said He has done. Some of them have been “drop your fork” stunning. Jaw on the floor type stuff. Others more mundane. But still Him.
This season has changed me. But at the beginning of it all He told me it was a season of growth and reflection. And now He’s telling me that this season is coming to a close… slowly but surely.
My heart still aches… that hasn’t changed. I miss my best friend… and I still don’t quite know what happened. But I have entrusted to God my heart and His plans for my life and in that I can find peace… He knows my hopes and my dreams and he bends his ear down to hear my prayer. He welcomes me into the throne room and invites me to sit with him… sometimes it’s on the throne room floor sitting cross-legged, others it’s him holding me, even still others it’s sitting huddled beside him for comfort or reassurance or him holding my hands in his. He is deepening my faith little by little and teaching me that I still have a long way to go.
In the past two weeks or so this Scripture keeps popping up all over the place… and I’m still considering how He wants to use it… but it is this:
“Above all, love one another deeply, for love covers a multitude of sins.” - 1 Peter 4:8
I am far from perfect… and I know that at times my love has been self serving. But I also know that He covers me in those moments and is able to redeem them and help me to see my errors and my own selfishness.
I recently read a book by Bob Goff entitled “Everybody Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People”. Spoiler alert, we are all those difficult people. But in this book he talks about living out your faith in a meaningful way. All this to say, I enjoy Bob Goff. And I’ve never been one to enjoy “Christian literature” or fawn over people I consider to be seen as Christian celebrities. I’m cautious and a skeptic. There, I said it. But Bob is genuine. And he practices what he preaches. He also said this:
“In God’s economy, nothing is ever wasted. Not our pain, nor our disappointments, nor our setbacks. These are tools that can be used later as a recipe for our best work. Quit throwing the ‘batter’ away.”
I suppose it’s akin to a saying that I believe based on my own experiences.
“Out of our deepest wounds come our greatest gifts”
I don’t remember where I originally saw it or read it… but I know its truth. God has used some of my deepest wounds to bless others in my life who are experiencing the same things I did. He has used those times to speak hope and life into people.
He is deepening my faith… and I am praying for an answer to his promises over my life. Until then, I’ll keep diving down further with Him as my guide. I don’t ever want to go back to living without Him by my side. I need him, and I know it.
