A Repurposed Life

This morning, while lying in bed and talking to the Lord, I thought I heard Him speak the words “picture frame pain.” Hmm. Maybe I misheard or was otherwise mistaken. Those three words, one of which didn’t seem to belong with the others, weren’t sparking anything for me. While still in bed, endeavoring to avoid waking my family, I reached for my phone and I Googled those three words. At first, I thought my search was a dead end. But then, somewhere near the bottom of the search results, I saw a link to a Trip Advisor page for something called Grievous Gallery, in Salisbury, NC. Art. Ok. Good. I am a maker and an appreciated of art. In fact, few things excite me as much as the prospect of making art. To me, art is life. But what does this gallery, located a very far cry from the Pacific Northwest (home), have to do with “picture frame pain?”

Then my eyes scanned the Trip Advisor attraction information for Grievous Gallery and read this: “The place where you come to ‘frame your pain.’ Throw bottles, dishes, and glassware to your heart’s content in our warehouse…Leaving your troubles behind. Our local artists then rescue your glass and make it into something new and beautiful, on display in our gallery. Let off some steam while turning negative energy into a new form.” Wow. Wow. WOW. The Lord pointed me to a place where you write your pain onto breakables and then proceed to demolish the very same breakables. He directed my attention to a place where the pain is acknowledged, framed, and then let go. A place of healing. Wow. 

But that’s not where it ends. Because at Grievous Gallery all of that broken glass and crockery, all of that released pain, is then collected and repurposed. Pain is shattered and its pieces are given new life in the form of art. Broken becomes beautiful. As I read on I learned that some of the shards even end up in building materials. They become someone’s strong and useful foundation. Wow, God. All the feels. This is beautiful. This speaks to me. I need this place. Oh, how I need it. Or something like it. I absolutely want to know more about this. I need to know how I can do this or something like it. I have a lifetime of pain to release. I need to heal. So. Bad.

To some, my response won’t make a whole lot of sense. It likewise won’t resonate with others. But this is God doing what He does, reaching into our tender places with an intensely personal and individualized touch. This is God, the One who made me and knows absolutely everything about me, loving me. You see, one of my personality traits and something that has always made me feel very different from others is an interest in the discarded. I am drawn to the unexplored potential of the things we throw away. I’m not Oscar the Grouch, but I like the leavings. I do. So much so that one of my oft-used online usernames is Gleangenie. I also once operated a one-woman handmade goods business called Plush Rummage. The image above is of a card I recrafted from more than 90% "rescued" materials. Yup. Yard sales and scrap piles are my jam.

God has made me to love making new from old. He has given me a mind that likes to work with discarded or overlooked (rejected) things, to transform them. And I’m only now beginning to see the elephant that has always been in the room. I, too, was rejected and discarded by my parents. As a quiet, deeply thoughtful and highly sensitive person, I am continuously overlooked in this life. What can I say? The world tends to cater to, and lavish adoration on, those who are louder, more conspicuous, more confident, and more willing to take up space. This is how it is, whether you’re talking about a child’s birthday party, a group Bible study, the school playground, or a department in any organization anywhere. Quiet girls who like shabby things aren’t generally treasured.

Because of the painful rejection of my parents, and living in a world that doesn’t care about people like me, I have come to believe I have no value. No worth. No beauty. No use. At the same time, I am ever seeking to make things of beauty from the broken down scraps and castoffs that I see everywhere. If I can do this with physical materials—repurpose and recreate—why can’t I do this with my own life? With my own self? 

It’s true that God made me a maker. A creative and a creator. I’m happiest when I waste nothing. But remaking or repurposing a human being is not the work of other people. At least not directly. It’s the work of the God of Heaven. The Master architect and artist. Oh, He’ll use other people to help Him repurpose someone, but the reordering and remaking is absolutely God’s work. As the person or the material in need of repurposing, my participation is required, but I can’t actually remake me. Only God can do that. This morning, as I continued to lie in bed I heard Him say “Follow.” And I, a fledgling in the faith, and a very literal thinker in many respects said: “How?” “Where?” I need the Lord to keep speaking to me about this. This is big. I need this. I feel it in my bones.

This much I know. God is faithful. He is the Master Repurposer. When life and the world have used us up, broken us down, or thrown us away, He is able and waiting to take us apart and reconstruct us according to His perfect creative imagination. I know He can be trusted. I know He wants to redeem and restore (the Bible clearly says so). But neither can be done without an unmaking and a remaking. 

Sometimes, many times, if I’m being honest, I feel as though I am the bottle that’s being hurled and broken into bits. And it hurts. Terribly. Each day I’m a new bottle, and I’m being shattered. But I need not fear being scattered. He wastes nothing. So what is He making? Can I let the Master take me all apart? Can I trust that in His hands I am a repurposed masterpiece in the making? 

And when can I hop on a plane to NC and the Grievous Gallery? I’ve got 46 years of pain to let go.

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Galatians 2:20 NIV

“On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Matthew 9:12-13 NIV

Only Jesus is Enough - My Testimony

This is my testimony of how, at 43, I became someone who follows Jesus. If you are agnostic, atheist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or subscribe to any other theology, and choose to read on, I love you and thank you for giving me this chance to share my story. It is my hope that anyone who reads this will find something in my words that speak of the truth of our shared humanity and common cares. And if you are active in the New Age right now, or know someone who is, then you are especially close to my heart for reasons you'll soon see, so I hope you’ll read on with an open heart and open eyes.

Three years ago I was wrong, and getting more wrong by the minute. I was surviving on a heady mixture of fear, self-hatred, ignorance, and pride, and it was taking me to terrible places. My focus was inward, on my very old wounds, on my wants, and on how to help myself into something better. And I was going to save myself if it killed me. I needed healing. Relational. Emotional. Physical. Mental. Spiritual. I felt the need for change. I had already tried changing things. I changed jobs every 2-3 years. I had changed my “station” in life, or so I thought, by educating myself into ridiculous debt. I changed the state in which I lived and then changed the city. I changed my hair, my clothes, and what I ate. If it was in my power to change it, I changed it. Yet that feeling inside of me, that inner-knowing that things were wrong, the fear, and the confusion, only grew. I read countless self-help books, met with counselors, and took workshops from life coaches. In truth, the more I looked inward, the more focused I became on me. And you know what they say. No matter where you go, there you are. There I was, and I was miserable.

In the three years leading up to this time, in mid-2010, I’d reconnected with a person who I will describe as spiritually “open.” This person connected me with a very spiritually open church, with yoga, and with other people involved in all manner of New Age practices. Now, before you think I’m trying to pass myself off as being somehow unaware of the New Age before 2010, I’m absolutely not. I was well aware. I mean, I’m from Eugene. I grew up around a plurality of “theologies” that were not based on Jesus, Judaism, or Islam. I had even dabbled in New Age practices of various kinds throughout my twenties but felt more confused by them than committed to them. 

But in 2010, in the interest of changing my life, in seeking something “better”, in wishing to feel I had more power over my circumstances, and in searching out belonging, I sank my teeth into the New Age. I engaged in divination (tarot, runes, angel cards, animal oracle cards, pendulums, etc.) and sought divination from others. I bought and “worked with” all manner of crystals. I used chakra sprays and engaged in chakra meditations. And more and more, I started inviting the unseen (ancestor guides, spirit guides, “angels”) into my life. I listened to CDs by Eckhart Tolle. In truth, I became addicted to those CDs. My anxiety was so severe that I depended on listening to Eckhart Tolle’s hypnotic voice to get to sleep at night. I played The Power of Now and A New Earth while commuting to work. I would tell myself that all of these things were helping me. That I was feeling stronger. That I was gaining mastery over my situation. New Age, among other things, is all about human potential, self-enlightenment, and self-empowerment. But I was telling myself a lie. The more I became reliant on inviting unseen things into my life, the more I sought my own god/dess within, the more anxious and unbalanced I felt. But I was prideful. I was stubborn. I was ignorant. And I believed I could help myself.

So there I was, in the second half of 2015, up to my ears in New Age practices, barely sleeping for anxiety, seeking healing, power, and let’s be honest, personal perfection, from all of my crystals, cards, “energy healings,” chakra meditations, and potions of various sorts. I thought I was getting “better.” I thought I was expanding. Ascending. Surely, my efforts were leading me somewhere good. Somewhere higher. Right? But ask anyone who was around me during that time. I was going somewhere, alright. And it was not good. Things I could not explain were beginning to happen to me. Dark things. Scary things. Only my ego and confusion seemed to be expanding. And the people closest to me were concerned. I left all of my spiritual doors open and a lot of darkness accepted the invitation.

And through all that I was doing, I actually believed that I was living in cooperation with God and His angels. I thought I was “right” and even “righteous.” I was a “good” person. “Nice.” But that was a deception. I was deceiving myself and I was being deceived. If I had bothered to open a Bible I would have seen some things I really needed to see. For starters, I would have seen that Satan is referred to as the “deceiver” (Rev. 12:9) and the “father of lies,” (John 8:44) who ultimately seeks to "steal and to kill and to destroy" (John 10:10) each one of us. I would have seen that there was a war in Heaven and that Lucifer (Satan) was once an angel. He took 1/3 of God’s angels with him when he was judged and cast down. So the next time someone you know tells you they “talk to angels,” you might want to ask them, “really, which ones?” If those angels aren’t talking about Jesus, they’re not the ones you want to be talking to. I have lived this. I know this to be true. 

The one upside to me leaving all spiritual doors open is that I also left the door open to God. In my desperation to right an upturned and out of control life, I started to pray with my grandmother, a woman who loves God. For protection. For peace. I still wasn’t really acknowledging God, but I know He was listening to our shared prayers. That summer I also found myself tuning in to Christian music on the radio. It lifted me up when other music felt like it was tearing me down. In my car, the signal for the area K-LOVE station was almost always strong. Things in my life and my health, in general, continued to spiral downward, and while my heart was hard to God, I left that door open to Him, and He was working on me. So when things got so dark that I began to hear things I couldn’t explain, and the spiritual overwhelm and exhaustion finally overcame me physically, culminating with me being transported to the ER, I started talking to God. I asked Him for help. 

At first, I didn’t understand what I was asking or even how to ask. I didn’t understand that I was sinning. A lot. To sin is to transgress or violate divine law. God’s law. And God’s laws are all about loving God and one another. They’re all about being other-centered and not focused on power, self, and gain. They’re about humility and dying to self. They’re about life. I didn’t yet understand all of this, but I did know that living for me and focusing on myself, by trying to be my own god and inviting the spirit realm to side with me, was leading to darkness and ruin. I understood that I needed divine help.

I had gone to Sunday School as a child and I knew a couple of Bible verses. I knew John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” It turns out that’s the one Bible verse I really needed to know. Jesus is God, come to earth, to show us how we’re all meant to live. Humans, no matter our good intentions and noble plans, are unable of our own power and will to be true and to be right. We are flawed because of something that happened a long, long time ago when we thought we could do better for ourselves than the God who made all of heaven and earth ever could. It’s insanity. But it’s our way. So God came to be with us. To show us His character. To love us as we all truly need to be loved, because He made us for that love. Jesus. Fully God but also fully human. He took our sin and shame on Himself in order to reconcile us with God the Father, once and for all. This verse, John 3:16, tells us what we most need to know about who God is, and who we are to Him. Precious. Priceless. Beloved. He loved us enough to die for us. Every. Single. One.

What I had been doing, and the selfishness with which I was doing it, was deeply offensive to God. And it hurt those around me. But God’s love is unconditional and eternal. No one of us can boast this about ourselves or each other. But God can. God is referred to as the “great I AM.” Do you know why? Because He is who He is. Always. He isn't ever not himself. No human, other than Jesus, can make that claim. I am who I am as much as I can be, but sometimes I’m someone other than that. What I mean is, there is the "me" who is Sophie at her best, and then there are a number of other “me”s who show up when I’m hurt, when I’m sick, when I’m frustrated or angry. As much as I’d like to think I’m 100% dependable, kind, loving, forgiving, etc., I am none of those things all of the time. Neither are you. God IS. And He showed his love for me in countless ways, even as I continued to sin and deeply offend Him, going against His will for my life.

He showed His love by sending people to pray for me and to invite me to pray with them. He showed His love by settling His incredible peace upon me when I’d given up on ever feeling peaceful again. He showed me His love by sending people to lovingly, but firmly, show me that I was deceived. To care for me, lift me up, and be a family to me. He continues to do that, actually. And most importantly, like a good and loving parent should, God showed me His love by ever so tenderly beginning to peel back the layers of deception I had come to believe about myself over my lifetime. He then earnestly began the work of showing me who I really am. And this takes patience, people. So much patience. More patience than I or anyone reading this will ever be able to muster. God is so patient with our crazy. Believe this.

My testimony ends, then, in a much better place than it began. It ends with a lot of people praying for me. It ends with me asking Jesus to come close and Him performing a soul-rescue right then and there. It ends with me discovering, finally, that I have a God who loves me, who wants good things for me, and who is doing the work that I could never do, to heal my wounds and free me from bondage to anxiety and fear. He is doing what no self-help book, no crystals, no guru, and no person, can. We are all born with eternity and a desire for more in our hearts. We are made in God’s image. He made us for more. But what we need is more of Him. NOT more of ourselves. 

I post this testimony not so that anyone will feel judged for things they have done or are doing. On the contrary, I post this so that you can see that whoever you are, wherever you’ve been and whatever you’ve done, you have a friend in Jesus. What’s more, you need Him. That itch that you just can’t scratch. That thirst that you can’t quench. That “better” that you endlessly chase, in myriad comforts, nicer things, travel, fitness, success, popularity, social media affirmation, technology, substance use, risk-taking, and any number of other possibilities, it won’t satisfy. It can’t satisfy. The reason enough is never enough is because each of us was made for eternity. And we get to choose if that eternity will be in the presence of the God of all creation, or if it will be in the presence of eternal suffering. I choose to surrender to the One who knows me more than I even know myself. He loved me enough to think the world needed me. And I need Him. Oh, how I need Him.

I had to let myself be brought very low indeed before I reached up and asked for help. I had to do it the hard way. Don’t be like me. If my words stir you even a little, please don’t try to distract yourself by clicking somewhere else or to numb that feeling out. If something in your soul is saying yes right now, please trust it. Don’t wait as long as I did. Look up, behold the One who holds you, and run into His arms. And if you need someone to come alongside you while you do that, call me. 

I post this testimony so that, if you’re ready to let God do the heavy lifting, you will know you can simply do so. Right now. Acknowledge Jesus and your need of Him, and He will NOT let you down. Can you say that about anyone else? I post this testimony so that, if you’re in the New Age and you’re looking to get out, you will know that I am an ally who will pray for you and help you if I can. I post this testimony so that, if you are even just a little bit curious about learning more about Jesus, you’ll know you have a friend who will try to answer your questions. 

I post this because God’s love IS FOR YOU. It is. He wants to give you LIFE. And you are NOT alone.

It Is Finished

I don’t know about you, but almost none of the work I pour myself into ever feels finished. And let’s face it, modern (post-modern?) life seems to be all about work. Oh, we tell ourselves that every gain in technology is also a gain for our free time, and therefore a boost to our leisure. But is that true? I would say that evidence to the contrary is far more abundant than evidence that supports this widely held belief. Kind of like the somewhat related  belief that more is better. Does anyone still give any credence to that old chestnut? In truth, more is simply more. More choices. More money. More square footage. More belongings. More friends. More family. More work. More demands. More headaches. More rat race. More to lose. More. I would venture to say that maybe the only more that may be better, at least to me, is more free time. Well, that and more sleep. And the MORE Gathering for Women. And absolutely more quiet time with God. But more is not what I’m here to discuss. I digress. 

My work is never finished. I’m never done. And, as previously mentioned, developments in technology haven’t helped to move me any closer to finished. From the time I rise until the time I hit the pillow, I am working, and, mostly, not finishing that work. I will grant you that I am in a very specific and also very hard season of life and work. It’s the season of motherhood. And I got a (very) late start. My days begin early and end late. The work to which I put my hands, mind, and body, is both varied and monotonous, but always highly demanding. And never finished. I may wash a sink full of dirty dishes but they’ll never actually be done. I may expend many minutes each day picking up food that my daughter drops or spills or smashes into the carpet, but that she will recreate that work for me again and again is a certainty. Laundry? Bah ha ha ha ha! Never finished. You know what else in motherhood is never finished? Paperwork. Oh there are just mountains of paperwork. So much more than a non-parent will ever comprehend. By the time my daughter was four, the amount and bulk of records and paperwork I had on her was almost half of that of my own records. What? Yes. The paperwork of parenthood is staggering. It is also never finished. Not only is it hard to finish a particular form, since frequent interruption of all thought and activity is certain, but finishing one form just means that you’ll soon be graduating to the next stack of paperwork for your child. What about thoughts or sentences? In my house, with my highly verbal and strong-willed child, my thoughts and sentences are only finished when she’s not home or asleep. Not finished. 

Believe me when I say that I could enumerate the many ways that motherhood insures I will not soon finish much of anything. To do so would belabor my point and would also sound like ingratitude. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to go there. Motherhood is a very full place. And God has designed it in such a way as to infuse it abundantly with grace, awe, and wonder. Motherhood is an awesome mystery. There is plenty of (tired and frequently shabby) beauty in motherhood. And joy. But it’s a hard slog. Easily the hardest thing a person will ever do. You see what I did there?

For some moms the not finishing can be particularly hard to bear. God gave each of us unique temperaments, attitudes, and personalities. But there are those of us, and we know who we are, who are more apt to struggle with incompletion. You might call us Type A personalities. But you’ll know us by our focus, our diligence, our propensity to feel stress and emotional overwhelm, and our need to finish what we start. Oh yes. We are finishers. Or at least we strive to be. And we think we have ourselves pretty pulled together. On the whole we don’t procrastinate. We employ lists so that we can keep track of and cross off the things we need to do. We tend to set our alarms and abide by them. We are seldom late. We are efficient perfectionists and planners. We are busy, thank you very much. So very busy. We love solving problems and consider ourselves good at it. That means we don’t like to depend on others or to ask for help. It also means that managing to be still in the midst of a problem or trial is counter to our vary natures. We are frequently guilty of walking toward a purpose, rather than purposing to walk. We tend toward incredible inflexiblity in our thinking, and therefore struggle to understand the choices that others make, and the roads that others take. All of this can mean that we are proudly self-sufficient, and, at times, stunningly unmerciful of others who fall short of that which we mistakenly assume everyone is capable.

Before I was a mother, I thought I had it all together. I was a hard worker. I was diligent. And I was proud. So very proud. I was proud of always being on time. I was proud of being able to efficiently direct meetings so as not to waste others time. I was proud to be able to work independently and with minimal mistakes. I was certain of my own abilities to do a lot of things. This was especially true in the sphere of employment. At home I was proud that I knew how to cook, bake, preserve, and clean. I was proud that I’d learned how to make many things from scratch, and enjoyed using my hands to create things, from start to finish. Handmade soap. Handmade paper. Handmade cards. Handmade crochets and knits. Sewn quilts and napkins. I had these two hands that God gave me and I was able. And I finished what I started. Or so I thought. Oh yeah, and I was proud. Only I didn’t think I was. 

For the last five years, God has been walking me through places where things are very seldom finished. He’s taking me into places I never would have willingly gone. I am a parent. My child is gifted, but she also has special needs. She challenges me on almost everything all day long. She frankly flies in the face of all of my previously unexamined assumptions about what it means to have a meaningful life. She forces me to look into my own eyes and notice that I’m a mess inside. All of my best laid plans and efforts to manage and contain the things going on around me don’t really have a chance. These are my long-held ideas and beliefs. They are my mental constructs. They are not reality. They are not truth. And, as much as it pains me to say this, these qualities of mine, over which I felt such pride, are not much needed. And that hurts my pride. Which feels bad, but is actually good. All the ways I thought I was prepared, I’m not. And all of the ways I need to be prepared, I am likewise not. In this newer reality I am nearly always late, no matter where I go. Things that used to take no time at all take all day. Plans that I enjoy making and treasure contemplating fall through. Much of my work is for nought. But that’s just it. When I don’t try to partner with God the work is just mine. And if parenthood has taught me anything, it’s that I don’t know nearly as much as I thought about nearly everything. I am being humbled repeatedly nearly every day.  

I think that God wants me to completely let go of the idea of my work being finished. I think He also wants me to let go of the idea that anything is actually “my work.” I think he’s inviting me to see that it is His work, and ultimately “our work” if I’m willing to come to Him and invite Him into the mess of motherhood and life more broadly. God, His Holy Spirit, and His fully human-fully God son Jesus, are the only ones Who have ever and will ever be able to say with authority, that Their work is finished. I am fooling myself and, worse still, inviting myself into endless disappointment, if I persist in thinking that the work is mine and that I can finish it. Only God can do that. 

So what if I can’t seem to finish much of anything? Motherhood has been my unmaking, but if God’s promises are true, and I know they are, motherhood will also be my remaking.

What kind of unfinished work are you wrestling with in your life? How would it make you feel to loosen your grip on that work and just give it to God?

The Ball Won't Unravel

I’m going to be honest. Transformation is difficult. It’s also messy, fraught, and — remember, I’m being honest — downright painful. Most of us are creatures of habit. We are drawn to the familiar and the comfortable. Our lives take on a certain static or stable quality that can be hard to transcend. Not that most of us want to transcend our comfortable kingdoms, however modest they may be. Nope. Our comfort zones are havens for safety and predictability. And that’s good, right? Right? 

Except that our comfort zones are also traps that keep us stuck: physically, emotionally, cognitively, spiritually, socially, etc. Staying in our comfort zones often comes at a cost—to physical and emotional health, to our growth and development, to our spiritual walk, and to our willingness and ability to reach out to others. You may be familiar with the following internet meme:

It’s a simple little illustration that rings with truth. How can anything new happen when we’re doing little more than getting our collective fingers in the air to test the wind? What if the walls we have built to keep out the unsafe are actually little more than prison walls?

The thing is, I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been drawing the walls of my comfortable kingdom (prison) ever closer. With each passing year I feel more and more anxious, more threatened by things that are not…just so. I’ve always struggled with anxiety. At times and in seasons it has been quite severe. But if I practice pausing in my routine to take physical stock of what my body is telling me, more often than not it is telling me it’s stressed, anxious, and even fearful. I’m struggling. My depressive thoughts are also at an all-time high. I need to be surrendering all of this to God. I need to be moving in step with Him. But that means leaving my comfort zone. You know, that place that is getting tinier and more angst-filled by the moment? I need to cry out to Jesus and then run for my life out into the fresh air. But that’s very hard to do. It shouldn’t be. But it is.

In the Spring of this year I felt the Lord call me to reclaim writing, something I used to do prolifically in my late teens and early twenties. So I built the bones of this blog, intending to get cracking. Planning to pick up writing once more. Well, today is December 17, 2017. More than 6 months have passed and I’m just now writing what I hope will be my first blog post. I fully intended to write. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. For starters, it has been a very long time since I’ve dusted off the keyboard. I’m also a mom to a 4 year old with a few special needs. That means I’m squeezed for time and energy nearly every moment of every day. But frankly the largest impediment, the thing that has held me back the most, is resistance.

In her fascinating article, Information Overwhelm Creates Resistance, Johnna Wheeler, an Eating Psychology Coach, discusses the uncomfortable truth that breakthrough and growth begin at the place of maximum resistance. And that maximum resistance must be overcome if we are going to be awakened from our sleepy, snug retreats. As Harvard Psychologist, Professor, and author, Robert Kegan puts it, “All transitions involve leaving a consolidated self behind before any new self can take its place.” Let’s think about Kegan’s statement for a minute. Transition or transformation necessarily involves the un-consolidation of who you are in order that you might re-consolidate into something new. Something more. So in order to transform, a person needs to go from a state of consolidation (unity, strength, solidity, intactness) through a state of un-consolidation (disunion, weakness, permeability, vulnerability). Put another way, before we can be established anew, we must be disestablished. Like I said. Transformation is difficult

Life will keep happening at us and to us. We will continue to be tugged by the current of the life we’re already living. Resistance will happen. The people around us will create resistance. They, too, are used to things being a certain way, and, like you, they depend on it. You can be sure that if you endeavor to grow, develop, or transform your life in any way, the resistance of others will happen to you. Spiritual opposition, particularly if the change you are attempting will bring you into greater alignment with God and His will for you, will also happen. And often spiritual resistance will happen to you with blunt force. But, at least in my experience, the resistance that happens inside of myself is the greatest resistance of all. Let me repeat that. My greatest source of resistance is me. When I want to change something about myself, I will be opposed, by me. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m terrified of coming undone. I want my pieces in place, please and thank you. I want to seem to others that I am holding myself together, and my sense of self is so fragile, and so undervalued by me that I can’t stand the thought of letting my old seams come undone. I don’t want to break open. But what if there is something really good inside that needs to come out, for God’s glory and for my good? What if the old seams are just far too constraining, and they are keeping me from breathing, let alone living the life God has called me to?

You may have noticed what I named this blog. The Ball Won’t Unravel. They’re words of encouragement that the Lord gave me during a time of quiet prayer. If you ever doubt that God is a personal, loving God, who cares about every last detail of your life, it’s time to stop. He is. He does. 

There are examples of His goodness and His love as numerous as the stars, but here’s one of them. Prior to parenthood, and, as it happens, prior to giving my life to the Lord, I worked a lot with yarn. I crocheted. I knitted. All to my own glory back then. But God gave me natural abilities when it comes to working with yarn. Yarn was, and is, a language that I understood. It’s a language that I read with my fingers. Yarn also became a strategy for taming anxiety when it came. It enabled me to just sit still, with a hook or needles in my hands, and through the repetition of simple movements, and the tactile sensation of the yarn moving over and through my hands, zoom my awareness in to those simple, sensory inputs. Yarn allowed me to block out the chaos from other places. Even my own chaos. Except when the ball of yarn unraveled. Except when the ball I’d been working with went rolling across the room, or into my cup of tea that I left sitting on the floor, or down the center aisle of a dirty and overcrowded metro bus on my way home from work. Then I was back into the chaos. Then I’m chasing the ball and trying to keep as much of it intact as possible, trying to save myself the trouble of having to completely re-wind the ball, from the beginning. Starting from the beginning is harder. It’s messier. I have many, many tangles to contend with. I might have dirt to wash away. I might have to gather a giant and garbled mess of yarn onto my lap, and carefully comb through until I find the beginning, and then commence the laborious process of rebuilding, and re-winding, that ball. 

Chances are, in doing so, the yarn might stretch a bit. More than likely the ball will not come together in exactly the same way that it held together before. But it will come together. With time, and patience, and work. And it can be made into something useful as well as something beautiful. 

For a long time I didn’t understand a whole lot of what the Lord was telling me with those four words. I knew He was telling me that He is big enough to hold the whole ball of my life. I knew He was asking me to trust Him with that ball. I won’t lie. I struggle each and every day to trust Him. Not because He isn’t trustworthy. But because of childhood trauma. Because of man’s inhumanity to man. Because my trust has been broken for a very long time. But that broken trust is like a ball of yarn. And it’s pretty beat up. It needs the most tender of mending. It needs to be scooped up off the floor by the most gentle of hands. It needs to be untangled, washed, and mended in the places where it has separated and the plies have unraveled. It needs to be lovingly and painstakingly rebuilt. Recomposed. And where the unraveled plies were rejoined, there is strength. It may not look like it, but those fibers will hold. They will move through the fingers of the knitter and come together as a useful, and beautiful finished product. 

Over time, and, honestly, as I write this, I’m beginning to see even more of the love and care of the One who holds me. If I gaze at myself with honest eyes, I can see that I haven’t been letting God take hold of this ball of yarn that is me. I’ve been so afraid of falling off the couch of my life, of being submersed, with shock and surprise, in something new and different, of the chaos and utterly uncontrolled feeling of careening down the center isle of an overcrowded space, feeling so small and easily stepped upon. 

God is calling me to step out in faith and in trust, into healing and transformation. But transformation is difficult. My life, as I am living it with those around me, opposes transformation somewhat. The enemy of my soul opposes it even more. But I am the one offering up the greatest resistance to lasting change, in the name of fear. I am afraid. I don’t want to expose my tattered self to even more damage. But fear is the opposite of love. 1 John 4:18 says:

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.
The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (NIV)

Real love is built on trust. The stark, but also beautiful truth is that the tighter I hold on to my ball of yarn, the more I hoard it from God, and the more I waste it. The more I try to control this ball of yarn, the more anxious and out of control I will feel. And so when I do fall off the couch, or, when I’m met with an unexpected but painful and impactful event, as really happened a few days ago, I can see that my comfort zone was never mine. I can see that it was a temporary reprieve at best. I can see that life will keep happening and that my attempts to control and contain it are feeble. Sad. I can see that I need to grow and transform. I can see that I have been a slave to fear. I can see I’ll need God’s help to take that fear and replace it with something much better.  

I can see that the ball might well unravel, but that if I leave it in the hands of the One who made it in the first place, He will love it, care for it, and reestablish it in ways I never could. I can see that I need to let that happen, as painful as it may be. God was good enough to think that the world needed me, and so He made me. He has stood at my side for almost 46 years, never leaving, even when I opposed Him, and made a bigger and bigger mess of my life for the majority of those years. He knows everything about me and loves me enough to use a language I will understand, the language of yarn, when comforting and encouraging me. He gave me, and every other person, Jesus, because His love for us is that great. Honestly, how can I withhold me, that tattered ball of yarn, from Him any longer? How can you?

What is just one way, and trust me, there are countless ways, that God has shown His loving and tender posture towards you? Would you share it in the comments so that others will also be encouraged?