When God disappoints
There are secret thoughts that marinate in my mind long before they ever make it past my lips. They sometimes push their way into a blog if I've found any perspective on them, but often I find that fear keeps them inside. They are hidden behind those thin places stretched delicately over my heart. To allow them to be seen, to be touched, is to risk tearing them away leaving the rhythm of my life exposed.
It has been nearly a year since the lies first settled over me. Again and again I would hear them sing their terrible song. "You are not enough. You are not wanted." They interrupted my thoughts while I was on a Skype call with the pastors from our missionary organization. They had been counseling my husband and me through the difficult decision of moving back to the U.S., and the reality of where we were heading was not where I wanted to go. It was becoming increasingly clear that we would be leaving Nicaragua.
We had worked so hard to get there, and God had walked us through every difficult step of letting go of our lives that I couldn't imagine one year was His plan for us. Tears were streaming down my face when I said it out loud, "It feels like God is rejecting me."
All I could think in that moment was that I loved Him so deeply that I had given Him what mattered most to me, and He didn't want it.
He didn't want me.
The problem with expectations is that they lead to disappointment. We make one-sided deals with God. In faith we place our time, our money, our health, our loved ones, and our futures on the sacrificial altar before Him, and when life doesn't turn out the way we imagined we feel rejected and betrayed.
Suddenly, God is no longer faithful. God is no longer good. He is cruel, careless, and unloving. We expect, at least on some level, for people to fail us. But God? He is supposed to be perfect. He is the author of truth. He is the giver of love. We find ourselves facing the difficult task of reconciling the knowledge in our heads with the deep hurt in our hearts.
It was Jesus who hung there on the hill with His surrendered arms stretched wide. Behind the cross was a life marked black and blue with rejection, loneliness, persecution, and hate. And beyond the cross was a grave. The Son of God was fulfilling His purpose in perfect obedience while the misunderstanding world looked on. They shook their heads shouting, "This is not how kings conquer kingdoms. This is not the way to save the world." But through the death and defeat of Jesus there arose the ultimate victory.
We try to put the pieces together and explain how we can write a better story than God. We play the author in our own minds, but we never have the benefit of seeing all of time that has transpired before us, nor the vastness of time that stretches beyond us. Our finite minds cannot comprehend the plans of an infinite God.
Our lives will never be about what we can do for Him, but what He can complete in us. Success to God is not the ripple effects of our obedience. Success to Him is found in the full surrender of our hearts. We must nail them to the cross, their thinness stretched wide to the point of death, and allow Christ to raise them back to life.
A few months after that Skype call, we walked away from Nicaragua and into an unknown future. We were homeless, jobless, and directionless. The shadows laughed at our backs whispering the ugliness of failure, disappointment, and hope-filled futures that never came to pass.
I don't know that I will ever fully realize God's "whys" of moving us to Nicaragua. There are mysteries under heaven I have yet to uncover and truths that I do not fully understand. I have been rewarded with window glimpses of others who have been affected by our move there and back again. And I am seeing how it continues to change me. Those gifts are more than I might ask for, and far more than I deserve.
I might have written this chapter with a different ending, but I am not the author of my life. And this, this is not the end of my story.
It has been nearly a year since the lies first settled over me. Again and again I would hear them sing their terrible song. "You are not enough. You are not wanted." They interrupted my thoughts while I was on a Skype call with the pastors from our missionary organization. They had been counseling my husband and me through the difficult decision of moving back to the U.S., and the reality of where we were heading was not where I wanted to go. It was becoming increasingly clear that we would be leaving Nicaragua.
We had worked so hard to get there, and God had walked us through every difficult step of letting go of our lives that I couldn't imagine one year was His plan for us. Tears were streaming down my face when I said it out loud, "It feels like God is rejecting me."
All I could think in that moment was that I loved Him so deeply that I had given Him what mattered most to me, and He didn't want it.
He didn't want me.
Suddenly, God is no longer faithful. God is no longer good. He is cruel, careless, and unloving. We expect, at least on some level, for people to fail us. But God? He is supposed to be perfect. He is the author of truth. He is the giver of love. We find ourselves facing the difficult task of reconciling the knowledge in our heads with the deep hurt in our hearts.
It was Jesus who hung there on the hill with His surrendered arms stretched wide. Behind the cross was a life marked black and blue with rejection, loneliness, persecution, and hate. And beyond the cross was a grave. The Son of God was fulfilling His purpose in perfect obedience while the misunderstanding world looked on. They shook their heads shouting, "This is not how kings conquer kingdoms. This is not the way to save the world." But through the death and defeat of Jesus there arose the ultimate victory.
We try to put the pieces together and explain how we can write a better story than God. We play the author in our own minds, but we never have the benefit of seeing all of time that has transpired before us, nor the vastness of time that stretches beyond us. Our finite minds cannot comprehend the plans of an infinite God.
What we fail to realize is that God doesn't need our sacrifices; He already owns them. He simply wants us. He wants our love, our obedience completely abandoned to Him. What we let go of is one step in our journey to give Him all of us. And just because He doesn't use it how we might imagine, does not mean it was wasted. It doesn't mean it wasn't wanted.
Our lives will never be about what we can do for Him, but what He can complete in us. Success to God is not the ripple effects of our obedience. Success to Him is found in the full surrender of our hearts. We must nail them to the cross, their thinness stretched wide to the point of death, and allow Christ to raise them back to life.
A few months after that Skype call, we walked away from Nicaragua and into an unknown future. We were homeless, jobless, and directionless. The shadows laughed at our backs whispering the ugliness of failure, disappointment, and hope-filled futures that never came to pass.
I don't know that I will ever fully realize God's "whys" of moving us to Nicaragua. There are mysteries under heaven I have yet to uncover and truths that I do not fully understand. I have been rewarded with window glimpses of others who have been affected by our move there and back again. And I am seeing how it continues to change me. Those gifts are more than I might ask for, and far more than I deserve.
I might have written this chapter with a different ending, but I am not the author of my life. And this, this is not the end of my story.
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