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February 17 - July 8, 2023
Bob whispered one final thing: “It’s already done.” I don’t know exactly what he meant, but I know what my soul heard. God has already caught me. His goodness and love have pursued me and won me. I just need to jump into that reality.
Lord, You are teaching me so much about trusting You. Fully. Completely. Without suggestions or projections I’m choosing to embrace the very next thing You show me. I’ll take this first step. And then I’ll take the next. I finally understand I don’t have to fully understand each thing that happens for me to trust You. I don’t have to try and figure it out, control it, or even like it, for that matter. In the midst of uncertainties, I will just stand and say, “I trust You, Lord.” I visualize me taking my fear of rejection from my incapable clutches and placing my trust in Your full capability.
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But in the end, one-sided views make for pretty flat-looking works of art.
People who care more about being right than ending right prove just how wrong they were all along. Lord, let me end this the right way.
At this point I’m compelled to reach across this page, grab your hand, and say, “Bitterness, resentment, and anger have no place in a heart as beautiful as yours.” I say it, because I need to hear it too.
Bitterness, resentment, and anger have no place in a heart as beautiful as yours.
just as with any secret treat, just because no one sees you eat it doesn’t mean the calories don’t affect you.
Ephesians 6:12, and it seemed to fit: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
She may very well be the cause of some hurt in my life, but she’s not my enemy. And I may very well be the cause of some hurt in her life, but I’m not her enemy.
We do so by remembering our job is to be obedient to God. God’s job is everything else.
We must speak with honor in the midst of being dishonored. We must speak with peace in the midst of being threatened. We must speak of good things in the midst of a bad situation. We must be obedient to, trust, and believe God and let Him boss around our contrary feelings.
Because all of a sudden, the rest of my planned-out life was aflame. I wasn’t just losing a boyfriend today. I was losing the connection to all those dreams for tomorrow that now would never be.
I like stability. I don’t like getting caught off guard. I like feeling known. I don’t like feeling thrown away. I like for people to believe the best about me. I don’t like being misunderstood. I like feeling that my presence draws people close. I don’t like feeling that they saw me but pretended they didn’t. I like to be liked. I don’t like to be left out or walked away from. I like feeling that this person is my person. I don’t like knowing this person was my person but is not any longer.
I don’t want my normal to be snatched away.
If their absence was caused by death, you would grieve their loss. But when their absence is caused by rejection, you not only grieve their loss but you also have to wrestle through the fact that they wanted this. They chose to cut themselves out.
What do you do with the things that have no place anymore? We built a life together, and now there’s no more together. There isn’t a place for that in my mind. What am I going to do?”
I ball my hand into a fist as the words, “how dare you,” form in my mouth. The needed justice is sweet to my tongue and satisfying to my palate. I start to develop a craving for malice. But God. He’s there. The One whom I proclaimed is good. Good to me. Good at being God.
I can’t continue to fully embrace God while rejecting His ways.
Grace given when it feels least deserved is the only antidote for bitter rot.
Looking at these boxes helps me see the horrible in bitterness and the honorable in grace.
The more I drink, the more I crave this taste.
“Not now” grace soon turns into “right now” grace.
I’m the one who was hurt, and now I have to be the one to be the bigger person?
But seeking what’s fair never cracked the world open to reveal the beautiful reality of a Jesus-loving woman. Only a pure heart with space for grace can do that.
We prove that not everyone in this world is vicious and selfish and cruel. And we even dare to pray for the thief, friend, father, and teacher. For at some point in their lives, someone took from them and left them screaming on a sidewalk.
To love God is to cooperate with His grace. And since I’m so very aware of my own need for grace, I must be willing to freely give it away.
Each hole left from rejection must become an opportunity to create more and more space for grace in my heart.
The more she hurt, the more she learned how to help others who were hurt.
She gave to him out of her own lack, from the empty places in her heart that God so graciously filled.
I’m stunned by how well Abigail lived this. I find myself trying to resist grace in her story. After all, her first words to David seem so beyond what my own feelings would have allowed in this situation: “On me alone, my lord, be the blame” (1 Samuel 25:24 NASB).
Though Abigail is bowed low, grace gives her the upper hand. She refuses to be a victim of a circumstance she can’t fully change. Instead she changes what she can.
With victory in mind, she bows low before David and, with great courage, allows the mantle of blame to be placed on her shoulders. After all, she’s the only one strong enough to handle it.
Humility can’t be bought at a bargain price. It’s the long working of grace upon grace within the hurts of our hearts.
If writers don’t show me their struggles, I can’t trust their advice. I don’t want theories that smell like a library; I want advice to smell like it has some real life in it.
Relationships don’t come in packages of perfection; relationships come in packages of potential.
“Me too” puts us on the same team. It says, “We are in this together, so let’s attack the problem, not each other.”
saying “me too” must come with three guidelines of what this is not meant to do: It is not a tactic we should use to steal the spotlight.
It is not something we should use to one-...
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And lastly, it is not a validation of their actions that spring from their feelings.
By stating that folly goes with Nabal everywhere, she made it clear that Nabal’s foolishness wasn’t just directed at David.
“Me too” communicates to a person she is understood. “You do belong” communicates she is accepted.
Acceptance is like an antibiotic that prevents past rejections from turning into present-day infections.
when someone of great significance in our lives makes us feel like our belonging is more of a question mark than a security blanket, we become very sensitive to even the slightest hints of rejection.
Nabal’s dismissal of David conveyed: You are not known. You don’t belong. You aren’t important. You are not valuable. You are not secure.
No amount of outside achievement fixes inside hurts.
“Please forgive your servant’s presumption. The LORD your God will certainly make a lasting dynasty for my lord, because you fight the LORD’s battles, and no wrongdoing will be found in you as long as you live. Even though someone is pursuing you to take your life, the life of my lord will be bound securely in the bundle of the living by the LORD your God, but the lives of your enemies he will hurl away as from the pocket of a sling.” (1 Samuel 25:28–29)
You are a fighter of the Lord’s battles. (You are known. You matter to the Lord.) The Lord has a plan for your dynasty to last. (You are important.) Someone is pursuing you to take your life, but God has a plan to keep you safe. (You are valuable.) Remember what God did when you hurled that stone from the pocket of a sling toward Goliath. God was faithful that day and is faithful this day too! (You are secure.)
In counseling terms this is called “the corrective experience.”
Isn’t that true of most of us? If we react with more emotion than is appropriate for an isolated incident, it’s probably not so isolated. The escalated emotion of this situation is probably an indication of painful ties to the past.
“Me too” and “you do belong” are powerful words.
