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Monday and Tuesday find me writing, sobbing, and pouring out my heart to the Lord. I’ve let the ache build, and I keep stuffing it down inside. Turns out vulnerability with the Lord is not so hard if I just show up. What I thought I was writing for you is now a treasure of truth between myself and the Lord. But I am using what I learned to write to you today about finding God in the ache.
The beginning of the month finds me at church Sunday, Wednesday, Friday daytime, Friday nighttime, Saturday at a church person’s home, and Sunday for our missions conference.
I love all things missions and missionaries. Yet you probably would not know it necessarily. I also hate missions week, because I am confronted each year with the fact that I am not a missionary, and I thought I would be one. It causes an ache of longing, and the ache reminds me of my call.
At 19, I feel called to ministry. Around 20 or 21, I feel the call is specifically to missions. Age 22 finds me falling into a pit. At age 23, I am in total darkness. The journey out of the pit is long and arduous. Age 24, I begin the long climb out of the pit. Before I’m about to be 27, I’m getting married. This same year my dad dies. Before long, I’ve become a mom of 3 children and find myself completely out of the pit by age 33 or 34. Grace brought me new life and freedom, but with grace came the unexpected longing to be living the call of 19-year-old me.
The Sunday of the missions conference finds me listening to a sermon about wasting my life – there are many days that I already feel that somehow or another I am wasting my life, but I am especially aching and vulnerable and prone to tears during missions week because I already worry that I am not living completely as God designed me to live. I know that the ache is supposed to bring me to God and Jesus and lean into to help give me courage to do whatever the thing is, but I am confused.
After the conference is over, I begin to pour out the words, but my heart is blocked, and I stop. I try to pretend and push past the ache, but I can’t.
The following Sunday finds me asking the Lord – do you love me? Do you hear me? Do you answer my prayers?
The pastor speaks about the Great Emancipator which is ironic considering I find myself telling the Lord I don’t like His boundaries two days later on a Tuesday (I feel those good boundaries as chains). He speaks about praying and praying and never receiving, and it is not lost on me that just before I’d asked the Lord that very question. I hear His quiet and gentle whisper – do you trust me?
If I am honest, sometimes the answer is no. I don’t like the way He has hemmed me in. I don’t trust His goodness in doing that. I don’t feel like the limits in my life are leading me Home, where is Home is deeper into God.
Tuesday, I am raw – heart fully spilled out before the Lord. I recognize the places of failure where I’ve tried to harden myself, to not push through the fear, to not feel this ache. I see the way I am not fully present in the life He has given me, and I know that it is not good.
But, He meets me in the messy places. As much as I, in my confusion, want to push Him away, He is gentle and kind to me. He is ever near me. This day has orchestrated me to sit in the home of a woman older than me, whom I perhaps will never see again. He uses her to speak kind and gentle words to me, to show me myself, and to be with Him in her. I hear Him on the radio in multiple ways. He comes in my inbox in words by Emily Freeman and Jeff Goins (who both just so happen to be writing about calling and purpose), and I know this ache is leading me home – leading me more into His arms. Emily Freeman leads me to Larry Crabb, and well, Larry Crabb’s book, The Pressure’s Off, had a big part to helping me open my heart to grace in the first place and find healing from striving Christianity, just five years ago, so my hardness and longing begin to soften. I know without doubt God sees and cares about my ache.
My heart whispers, “I do trust you, Lord, I do.” Even through these tears and the ache of longing, I know that it is well with my soul. I move toward the Lord in surrender.
I think of the things my soul loves to do and how it loves to minister. I think the time is too short to lament about all the things, such as a missionary, I am not, but that God is good and gives me time to process these things according to the way He made me. I must let go of the idea of becoming a missionary some day; I must grieve and let it go. I have walked the path of loss before, and I know that like Jacob, I will forever walk with a limp.
But, I will live this one wild and precious life as best I can, and hopefully as I walk along the road, my call will be made sure as I love Jesus and others along the way.
It seems as if oue lives are echoing each other. The only prayer I have been able to cry out the last 3 months or so is I believe; help my unbelief. Thank you for sharing I love hearing your honest heart.
Thank you, Amy! It is a rough patch to be in when you feel unbelief and doubt, but God is good. I am praying for you.
Triple the echo. Only I’ve finally just quit praying. I’m just stuck at unbelief.
Perhaps He is still calling you to be a missionary right now, right where you are. We so desperately need missionaries right here in the good ol’ USA! Regardless of where you find yourself, there are people who desperately need to know Him. With your gift of writing you could also reach many outside of our borders. Maybe pray about this. Maybe that is why you still feel the ache. Sometimes we get a sense of what He is saying to us but we are not clear on the details. If you carry that burden, then it must be His will even right where you are; still, pray. I will be praying for you too!
Thank you for being a friend, for sticking with me in my blogging and reading what I write. Thank you for praying for me! I do try to be missions minded in the way I interact with others, but it is definitely something I think about – is my heart really trained to missions if I don’t think this way, you know what I mean? What I need is to keep persevering where I am.
oh, how i know that ache & know it well. (not for missions, in particular, but for ministry for sure.) in fact, i had just penned the words, “deep ache,” to a friend just moments before heading over here. and i wrestle with it, jamie — whether i need to loosen my grip & trust, or hang onto it in hope b/c He is able to do the seemingly impossible, or some mysterious combination of the two. hope deferred makes a heart sick, and when you’re in the ache you don’t know if it’s a case of a deferment or a no. it’s hard. my heart leaps out of my chest with ministry longing, but the Lord has, at least for now, called me to this dark cave, with Gideon, thrashing wheat. day after day. thanks for trusting us with your ache.
You hit on so much here – to loosen my grip and trust or to hang onto it in hope because He is able to do the seemingly impossible. I have to say I keep trying to make choices that would free up the possibility, so even though I don’t do them in a way to manipulate, somehow I have to keep trusting and putting one foot in front of the other instead of saying “what if, …then,” know what I mean?
For you my friend, I think your ministry (and mine) simply looks a lot different than we both anticipated. God is good – cave or no cave or desire or no desire.
Thank you for your sweet encouragement.
I have spent a year away from blogging, from speaking, from writing. I have wrestled with God over my desires and His plans. To read your words was a comfort for my soul as I step back into writing minus the speaking, minus the traveling that my heart was longing for. I know He has great plans for me. I know He molds us even if, in the end, we are left with a limp. Thank you for speaking out bravely. It gives me courage to do the same. Much love and blessings, Michelle
In our weakness, He is strong, so our limps are not without purpose. I am so blessed to know that you were encouraged and even inspired to speak bravely. He does have great plans for you. So glad to have you here!