Can you believe that soon I will be closer to thirty than to twenty? Thirty is such a grown-upish age and I know I can’t fathom that I really am approaching such a life stage. I do know this— I am as young at heart as ever. I love the charm of children and so have clung to childlike-ness in me with the tenacity of a Never-never Land urchin. Case in point: Just this past week I insisted on buying bows for my hair from the baby department in Walmart. Is this the action of a grown-up? I think not!With my fateful 25th birthday looming, I have been reflecting on the ways I do see that the past year has grown me. I have decided that God has synchronized the challenges I have encountered to tug at me from every direction. He is using them to stretch my heart like putty. I have been spread thin, burnt-out, and heart-broken; and somehow in the tearing the place in my heart that longs for the Divine has become larger.
So maturity has come this year in a surrender:
A week ago I had a waking dream. I stood suspended in time my past was to the left of me and my future to the right. I had my arms extended and my hands balled into tight fists. I heard the whisper of God tell me to open my hands and receive the life He created for me. I realized that I’ve approached my life with an iron grip on the story I wanted to live. Growing up I just pretended the story was true, then in college I tried to manipulate my family into joining my charade.
But inside the fist is empty. The story I want is a fairytale that can never be true.
Similarly I have a vision for how my future should be and I spend countless hours and tremendous amounts of mental energy to trying to manipulate God into making my life all that I want it to be. I told Him that He should give me a pain free life to show His generous love, intentionally “forgetting” that Jesus taught, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.[Jn 16:33]”
But I am clenching only air because I am not the Author of the Future. I cannot dictate what will be.
As I looked to my left I saw the scars on my arm and then saw my life until now, the mistakes, the joys, the failures. When I looked to the future I saw only questions and uncertainties. I felt God telling me to open my hands to the riches he had given and would give me. All the pain, all the worry, all the failure, all the uncertainties would form me for the kingdom work He is calling me to.
After the Saturday service at Revolution I said “okay. Okay, I am scared but I surrender. I need You. I need to know where you are in this.” I closed my eyes and opened my trembling hands, as this wave of certainty smashed my former hesitations. Of course I want what God wants. I want all of it. Pain, brokenness, and redemption…
This surrender is the first blossom of the plant that has been growing in me this year. By pain its’ shoots have pierced the soil of my heart and it’s roots have cracked the foundations of my dreams for myself. God has not forced my hand in this decision to let go, but He has surrounded me with broken and suffering people to help me see how His way is the way to lasting life.
In the words of Elisabeth Elliot “The will of God is never exactly what you expect it to be. It may seem to be much worse, but in the end it's going to be a lot better and a lot bigger."
It terrified me for so long, but now that I have actually done it I am surprised that Surrender actually excites me. Instead of assuming the absence of God in my difficulties or in the suffering I see in others' lives I find in me an expectation. Instead of asking God "Where are You?" I am more often asking "Where are You?" A small shift has changed so much in me.
