6/2/2023
What Story Will Your Pain Tell?This wasn’t the plan.
In an instant, life changed and I desperately wished I could hit the rewind button. But I couldn’t. This moment had the power to rewrite the rest of my story, and I could not see a happy ending. I suddenly felt like I was in a dream. Day by day, trying to survive but living in a fog. Walking in darkness. Alone. This would be my life, because I could not go back and change the events that happened. And I cried for the memory of what I thought my life would look like. Have you ever been here? In this moment? Perhaps you are right now. As my husband was typing his Bible study the other day, I couldn’t help but think about this. He finished his first page and in his tired state, he hit “no” when prompted to save his work. We aren’t tech savvy. This has happened to me before and I knew there was a solution, I just had to find it. I warned my husband not to touch any keys but he was somehow sure he could figure it out. And he kept trying. By the time I googled the answer, it was too late. His study was gone. How many times in my life has this happened to me? What I thought my life would look like, disappearing within seconds. And my heart left broken like an empty page staring back at me, the cursor hovering over nothingness. What do I do now? How often I have tried to figure it out in my own strength. Trying, trying but failing. Sadly, there have been moments that turned into years upon years of me trying and missing all God had for me. Crying way too often, because this wasn’t supposed to be my life. What do you do when the unexpected happens? When your life is turned upside down in a moment and you weren’t prepared for it at all. When the shocking trauma blindsides you, and there’s nothing you can do to change it? When this is your new normal and you are left with a blank piece of paper representing the rest of your life? I am here to tell you that I did all the wrong things. For years. I kept writing on that paper and erasing it and trying again. Over and over. Until the day I finally gave God the pen. Ladies, I know it’s not easy because I’ve been there. Trauma leaves scars. It’s hard. So very hard. But God is our God of the impossible. And my life felt like a happy ending was definitely impossible. So today, I want to encourage you with a few things I learned through it all. It’s okay to have all the emotions, but don’t camp out there. Bring them ALL to God. Too often we cry about how it isn’t fair. How we don’t deserve this pain or how we do deserve to feel all the negative that our hearts are experiencing. We sit there in that muck and tell ourselves that we have every right to be angry or sad, scared and hurt or even depressed. And then we’re stuck. Exactly where Satan wants us. And we don’t even realize that we are hurting ourselves day after day with these emotions we are justifying. We begin to write our own story on that blank piece of paper, but this is not the story God wants your pain to tell. These aren’t God’s words, they aren’t even our words and in those moments we don’t even recognize that they are Satan’s. His lies. We have handed him the pen. It would be so easy for me to just say Trust God. He’s in control. The end. But when the hard really hits you, you don’t know what trusting God looks like because you are human and you’re hurting. And it’s in those moments that we need God to remind us. He understands our emotions better than we do. Not only because He created them, but He also experienced them Himself. There will be days that you are angry and don’t want to read His words. There will be days when you’re hurting so badly that you can’t even whisper a prayer, and there will be good days when God is your lifeline and you know deep down that He’s got this. You know you can trust Him. So what does trusting God look like? It is all of us in our feebleness understanding that God truly is in control and we are not. We were never alone in the darkness. He was always with us and He always will be. It’s looking back at all His goodness and looking ahead to the goodness to come. He knew what was going to happen. He knew all the hurt and anger, fear and sadness you would feel. He knew and because He allowed it, we have His promise that it’s for our good and for His glory. Instead of asking why, ask God to open your eyes to the truth of that goodness. And in the mean time, I highly encourage you to write down every single emotion you are feeling. Those emotions could change daily, and daily you will need God’s perspective. Once you’ve written them down, do a word study of each one in scripture. Google works great for this, so does an old fashioned Bible commentary. Give God that pen and let Him fill that blank piece of paper. Ask Him to take each emotion you are feeling and wrap it in His promises. Once you have God’s words written down, read them to yourself over and over. God’s words are power. Let them shout over Satan’s lies. Each day is a new day toward a different narrative. You can choose to wallow in what happened and what could have been, or you can decide that you are going to live your best life. You can decide that Satan will not have the victory and that cursor hovering over all the nothingness will suddenly be moving across moments of time filled with promises of joy and new beginnings. I’m not going to lie, it will be hard but God knows the outcome. I can say with 100% certainty, it will be worth it because today I can finally look back and see God’s story and His goodness. When I chose to let go of every emotion and give them over to God, my happy ending wasn’t impossible because my God worked the impossible deep within me. His power changed everything. And He gets all the glory. What story will your pain tell? Hand Him your pen my friend. SCRIPTURE READING: Revelation 12:9 Hebrews 4:15, 11:1, 13:5 Romans 8:26, 28, 37-39 Proverbs 3:5-6 Psalm 23:4, 34:4, 73:26, 94:19, 139 Deuteronomy 3:18 Isaiah 55:8-9 Exodus 14:14 Nehemiah 8:10, Isaiah 41:10 Ephesians 3:20 Luke 1:37 Matthew 19:26 Philippians 3:13-14 Ecclesiastes 3:11 |
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