Refined

Pastor Doug touched on one of my biggest fears on Sunday. I talked a little bit about this in my last blog post. I am scared to death that I will make the wrong decision when I have a big decision to make. I am talking about big decisions, not day to day things. I can handle normal everyday decisions and be fine, but when it comes to big decisions like whether or not I should change jobs or whether or not I should put my daughter in a different school, I tend to fret and fret over it begging God to give me a clear answer. Why? Because I believe that God has a unique and specific plan for my life. The thing is, I also believe that God is very concerned with making me more like Jesus each and every day. 

As I pondered this trying to figure out why I tend to fret so much about making the right decision, I realized that this has not been something I have struggled with all my life. In fact, this has really only become a problem for me within the last eight to ten years. I am choosing to continue with this story, hoping that you won’t judge me over the words to come. In the spirit of authenticity, here goes…

I had a really hard time getting pregnant with my daughter. My husband and I had decided that we wanted our kids to be about two or three years apart. God had other plans apparently as they are five years apart. It took multiple years of doctor visits, specialist visits, multiple medications, and shots before Little Miss finally decided to show up. If you know her, that probably doesn’t surprise you considering she has a tendency to only do things on her terms. I remember praying and asking God to remove the desire for a second child from my heart if it was not part of His plan for my life. I must have prayed that prayer a thousand times during those years, but the desire never left me. Then, in July of 2010, I got a call from the specialist while I was at work letting me know that everything had finally worked. We were going to have another kid. Fast forward to March of 2011, and God brought our daughter into our lives.

My daughter is absolutely beautiful and brilliant, and she has the biggest heart of anyone I know…when she chooses to show it. She has an incredible mind that is always taking everything in. She is incredibly observant and doesn’t miss a thing. She speaks her mind in every circumstance, even when she shouldn’t. And while I can’t imagine life without her, being her mom has been the absolute hardest thing I have ever had to do in my entire life. She challenges me in ways no one else can. She tests every part of my being almost daily, and I have questioned God many times over why in the world He thought I could handle her. I know that is a horrible thing to say and judge me if you will, but that is the truth. 

To say that my daughter is strong-willed would be the understatement of the year, maybe even the century, and parenting her has led me to some very interesting places in my faith journey. One night many years ago, she had a particularly large fit and proceeded to yell in my face and spit at me. All of a sudden, I was taken to those descriptions in the gospels of Jesus being yelled at and spit on as He carried the cross to Calvary. I remember beginning to cry and ask Him why He did it and how He managed to get through it. It was like I had a new respect for everything He had done for me on that cross. I am not saying that what I experienced in that moment with my daughter was anything close to what Jesus experienced that day. What I’m saying is that He used that moment to reach me in a way that He never had before, and our relationship was strengthened because of it. 

Some of the more difficult interactions with my daughter have often left me pondering why Jesus willingly came to die for people that had no intention of accepting Him. Over and over again He made the choice to empty Himself for people He already knew would reject Him. Why? How? I have also often wondered if He pushed back with God about this before coming to earth. If He was referring to what He was about to have to do on the cross when He prayed for God to take this cup from Him in the garden (Luke 22:42), it doesn’t seem so far-fetched to think that He may have argued a bit with God before coming to earth. Who knows? The point is that parenting my daughter has made me question God countless times. Did He really know what He was doing? Was a second child really in His plan for me, or did I push so hard that He finally just gave in? Why did He think I could handle this? And perhaps most often, why was I having to go through this?

Fast forward to the summer of 2017. My husband and I had just bought a new house, and he was let go from his job a week or so before our closing date. I had just been told by the new director that I was going to be demoted the following year, and I would have to take a paycut as well. Things were not looking good. Next thing I know, I get a phone call from Pastor Clay asking if I would be interested in taking over as director at Next Level Preschool. Despite feeling like I was completely unqualified for the position, I felt like this was an answer to prayer for me. After a week or so of me saying, “I can’t do this” and my husband saying, “Yes, you absolutely can”, I agreed to take the job. 

Those first few years as director of the preschool were anything but easy. I had to make incredibly difficult decisions, including the decision to let someone go that I considered to be a friend. I had to have extremely hard conversations and had to endure untrue accusations from parents and staff members. I had to sit back and stay quiet as people called me names behind my back and said things about me that were terribly hurtful. There were times when I would sit on my couch in the morning and cry because I just did not have the energy to deal with everything I was going to have to deal with when I arrived at work that day. There were multiple occasions where my husband told me to just quit because it wasn’t worth me being miserable, but God would not release me from this place. 

I had prayed and prayed about whether or not I should take the job in the first place and felt like this is where He wanted me to be. Now I found myself praying and asking God why I was having to walk through this. I remember thinking that I must have heard Him wrong. All of a sudden, I no longer trusted my ability to hear God’s voice. I felt like I had made the wrong decision. 

It’s funny because I look back at those years now and I can see God in the midst of it all. Yes, I had to do some really hard things, but He never abandoned me in those moments. I look back at those years when I would cry on the couch in the mornings and realize that I was getting up super early in the morning, before anyone else was awake and spending quality time with Him each and every day. I can’t say the same now. I remember my early morning quiet times being like a drug for me. I couldn’t wait for them, and I absolutely could not live without them. God was drawing me in. He was using those mornings to strengthen our relationship. It was during those years that I learned what quiet time with Him should look and feel like, and I will never be the same because if it. 

So, why am I so afraid of making the wrong decision? Because I don’t want to have to walk down those roads again. I don’t want to experience the pain of it. These are only two examples. There is another one that happened in 2020, but  since this post is long enough already, I will spare you the details of it. I will, however, share what I have learned from all of this pondering I have been doing. 

Sometimes the choices we make lead to suffering and/or disappointment, even when we feel like God lead us to those choices. Things don’t always turn out the way we thought they would. It’s hard to remember in those moments that we can’t see the whole picture. Only God can. In those moments when things get hard, it can be easy to forget that God is always working, and not only working, but working for our good (Romans 8:28). Yes, suffering sucks, and disappointment sucks. We all can agree on that. People don’t typically go looking for disappointment and suffering, but disappointment and suffering don’t have to be all bad either. 

The movie, I Still Believe, was on TV yesterday, and two quotes jumped out at me. The first is, “I’ve learned that suffering doesn’t destroy faith, it refines it.” I can’t agree more. I have learned so much over the past eight to ten years through the stories that I shared with you. My faith would not be where it is today if I had not suffered through those incredibly difficult days with my daughter and endured those awful years when I first came on as director of the preschool. Don’t get me wrong, I have had the most wonderful days with my daughter as well, and I had some amazingly fun times during those first few years at the preschool. They weren’t all bad, but how much do we lean into God when everything is going great? I know for me, historically speaking, I don’t learn near as much in the good times as I do during the hard times.

The second quote is, “...my life is not full in spite of the disappointments; it’s full because of them.” Again, this is so true. My relationship with Jesus is what makes my life full, and my relationship with Him has only improved with every disappointment I have faced. It is through my suffering and disappointments that I have finally come to understand what the apostle Paul was talking about in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10. God’s strength and power was displayed in my life during those moments. I didn’t particularly enjoy those moments, but I don’t think I would trade them at this point. I became stronger through them because my relationship with God was strengthened. He is the source of my strength, so when my relationship with Him is strengthened, so am I. 

Life is not always going to make sense. We have no idea how the choices that we make are going to turn out. They may lead to great and wonderful things, or they may lead to disappointment and suffering for a bit. Regardless, one thing will remain constant and true…God. God will be there in the good times and the bad. He can be hard to find in the bad times and easily overlooked in the good times, but He is there. He is always there, constantly working to strengthen our relationship with Him and make us more like Jesus, and for me, that makes all the hard times worth it in the end.