“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6 A verse that I probably had memorized before I was 10 years old. It’s familiar. But I don’t think I have ever really known what it means.
Recently, I heard this song called “Nothing I Hold on to” by Will Reagan. The song has lyrics such as “I will climb this mountain with my hands wide open, There’s nothing I hold onto, I lean not on my own understanding, my life is in the hands of the Maker of Heaven. I will give it all to you God, trusting that you will make something beautiful out of me”
When I first heard this song, I was in my host family’s home, praying and worshipping. The song actually made me mad, and sad all at the same time. I didn’t like what the song implies.
In this world, there is pain. Plenty of it. For me personally, my life has been touched with a deep pain. My mom died when I was eight years old. I know that God has done a mighty work in healing and in peace in this area, but like all healing, it comes in layers. And now I think it’s time that God wants to heal another layer.
When the song lyrics hit me, it meant that I needed to lean not on my own understanding. In a deep pain like this, it is hard to make sense of it all. We as people can ask the question all the time, where was God? Did He actually care for me? In my eyes, and the vision that I have, it’s so easy to say no.
“I give it all to you God trusting that you’ll make something beautiful out of me.” Something beautiful. In a wound like this, it’s near impossible to see beauty come from this. “Give it all you you, God.” All of it.
When there is pain in your life, or really when you just wake up each morning and live life raw, you silently ask the question. Is there really a good God who loves His people and graces them with good gifts? How can He be good when parents die too soon, children go hungry, marriages implode, and dreams are taken away by the wind? We can’t just look into that pain with a smile anymore. How do I fully live, when life is full of hurt? How can I choose grace, joy and beauty when I have to stay numb to pain that losses bring?
For years, we can ask these questions and come up so short. Maybe at one point, we had cupping of hands. Hands ready to accept all that The Lord has for our lives. But over time, our hands can become clenched tight, unwilling to accept what He has.
“No God, we won’t take what you give. No, God, your plans are a bleeding, gutted mess and I didn’t sign up for this and you really thought I would go for this? No, God, this is ugly and this is a mess, and can’t You get anything right and just haul all this pain out of here and I’ll take it from here.” -Ann Voskamp in One Thousand Gifts
I believe that satan’s biggest trick is to try to get us to doubt God’s goodness. In the very first sin in the garden of Eden, satan tricked Adam and Eve into desiring more. Desiring more than what God had freely given. He tricked them into believing that God was withholding something from us. That’s his ugly hissing lie: God isn’t always good and He withholds things from you. That’s why they ate of the fruit that God had commanded them not to.
Although sometimes I can hardly whisper it, I live as though God stole what was rightly mine. A perfectly good childhood, two healthy parents, a life that death could not touch.
I think of sick moms and broken, weeping fathers and a world dusted with pain and all the mysteries I have refused,refused to let nourish me. I may have said yes to God and Christianity, but in the depths of my heart and in brutal honesty, I have lived the no.
The pain in our lives can become like black holes. Our vision can become peppered with voids. All of a sudden, all we see are holes, lack, and deficiency.
BUT, from the very beginning, God has had a different plan for us. It’s hard to believe it sometimes and I have to remind myself of it constantly. I have to stare at the words to make sure they are real. “His secret purpose framed from the very beginning is to bring us to our full glory”-1 Corinthians 2:7. In John 10:10, Jesus said that “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” He desires to give us a new name. He wants to heal our soul holes and bring us to full glory. He wants to fill us with glory and grace.
But how, how do I give up resentment for gratitude, gnawing anger for spilling joy? Self-focus for God-communion, asks Ann Voskamp in One Thousand Gifts.
It’s easy to say, “If it were up to me, I’d write this story differently.” I shudder a little when I think that. It seems so unchristian. They seem like words I can’t dress up in my Sunday dress and cross necklace. But there they are, raw and real, without any religious cliché.
Living with losses, I may still choose to say yes. Choose to say yes to what He freely gives. Could I live that? To open my hands and receive. There is reason I am not writing this story and God is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means.
I wonder if the losses that puncture our world might actually become places to see. To see through to God. To the God whom we endlessly crave. Is it possible to see through the mess and to gaze upon His heart?
To live, to live full of grace and joy and to see beauty is possible, I know. I will see and testify.
Sincerely, Megs
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As I referred to in the blog, I’ve been reading the book One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp which has helped me to gather my thoughts for writing this blog
Here’s some pics from Honduras!
