Are there hurdles in your marathon?

Once upon a time I was visiting my grandma in the nursing home.  As we exited the home,  my family was in front of me.  My sister opened up the door on the right,  my dad opened the door on the left and my brain said I'll just walk out the middle like a movie star with "people" that pave the way and.... BAM, like Emeril Lagasse, with a special ingredient,  I ran right into the post in the middle.   

Have you ever been walking through your day feeling like you're making progress and BAM someone throws a hurdle in front of you that you didn't quite expect?   Kind of like a door post you could swear was not there a second ago!?

I started a new Bible study last week and I can't wait to see what the Lord has in store for me through it.  The study opened with some preliminary questions.  Basically, what do you hope to get out of this study?   One of the questions had me thinking about what keeps me from fulfilling my calling.   I found myself writing down names.  People that apparently I felt like are hurdles in my marathon of life.

 It didn't take long for me to hear that voice that speaks silently to my spirit.  I heard God say that a hurdle in my calling will never be a person.  He will never set a goal for me that another person can stand in the way of.  No person can get in the way of God’s goal for me.  

Basically, you can picture me minding my own business and running my race when I see a hurdle, so I jump.  Often, the jump is unsuccessful and as I lay on the track with road rash, I look back and unlike the door post, the hurdle did not actually exist!  So what do I do with those feelings that someone is standing in my way? I need to figure out what I'm believing that isn't true.   Either the path that person is blocking is not the path I'm supposed to be on or they aren't really in my way.   That does not mean no one will ever hurt me or that someone else’s sin won’t affect me, but it does not have to keep me from all that God has intended.  That was a big lesson for the study having not even started!!! 

Hebrews 12:1-3 NIV

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."

Each day I learn more about my God and that he really can meet all my needs and I pray that each day I learn to believe it more.  Does that mean that I will be able to successfully leap effortlessly over all the hurdles in life?   I guarantee that will not be the case.   

Immediately following slamming my body into a door post,  I looked up and saw that no one in my family saw my blunder.   I could've kept it to myself,  pretending like it never happened but it was an opportunity to create a memory with my family that we laugh about to this day.  I pray that whatever obstacles (or door posts) that are in my path, whether I'm able to leap gracefully or trip and fall on my face,  that I run the race God has laid out for me fixing my eyes on Jesus.

The Wedding Planner

I love weddings!  I love all the details and planning and flowers and music.  I would love to be a wedding planner.  If my Saturdays weren't already filled with soccer games and basketball tournaments, I would love to help people pull together the mass of details and decisions that it takes to pull off a beautiful wedding.  I work at a church, so I get to play wedding planning on a very minor scale.  I enjoy thinking of things that other people haven't.  I find that being a part of someone's big day makes me feel very special.

This past fall I was thoroughly enjoying the Bible study Chase by Jennie Allen with some precious ladies.  Each Wednesday evening, we met and discussed David and how his sin filled life intensified his own awareness for his need of a Savior and continued to draw his heart toward his Lord.  There was a particular activity that she had us doing that became very special to each of us.  She had us fill out a T chart.  One side asked the question, "who is God?"  The other side basically asked "and what does that mean for me?"  It became my favorite way to start the day.  Lord, who are you today?  Each time I asked (and didn't jump ahead a page and fill in my own answers) but sat quietly waiting for Him to respond, He answered in such a personal and unique way.  Often the answer we received was something none of us would ever have thought of on our own.

One Thursday morning,  my frustration at work came to a boiling point.  Things were not going as I planned and it seemed other people's agendas were getting further and further from the direction I felt like we should be headed.  I did not do the right thing.  I did not respond in love or even go to the Lord in prayer and yet, He was gracious to me.  I grabbed a listening ear and somehow ended up in the same room that we meet for Bible study.  I whined and complained until I was sure I had made my point and somehow the conversation turned towards my current study.  I immediately shared about this very cool tool helping me to ask God who He was and what that meant to me.  Almost mid sentence I was reminded of the last answer I had received to that question.  I had all but dismissed it the day before without giving it much thought....it just sounded too silly.

I shared it with my listener that day and want to share it with you today, even if it is just so that I never forget the message.  He said, "I am the bridegroom.  The church is my bride.  And we do not need a wedding planner."  My first reaction is to grasp at anything that I think cannot be done without me.  I want to be needed because that makes me important, worth more, right?  I enjoy being the driving force behind progress.  When I realized how desperate I was to find my personal worth in what I do, I heard my whiny inner child voice saying, "but then I'm not needed for anything".

Don't despair, there is a MAJOR silver lining here!  If I let this new reality sink in, (not like an indent on a squishy bed, but really sink in, like the fruit pieces that are way down into the jello salad, fully immersed in cherry goodness) I feel relief.  I am no longer responsible for the way other people live their lives.  Since I have no control over this anyway, I feel a huge weight lifted off of me. And just like the infomercial - Wait!  There's more!  God chooses to allow me to be part of His plan.  Not for His benefit but for mine!  He doesn't need me to accomplish anything, but He often places me in the path of His plan.  Each and every time that happens, I am blessed.  In fact, I think our own agendas are often foiled so we can't take credit.  It is in that moment that you realize you were just along for the ride.

The person sitting in a quiet corner of our church, listening to my frustrated heart was along for the ride that day.  God allowed her to be in the right place at the right time, but not because it was her calling to point me in the right direction.  When our heart is in the right place, sometimes we get a front row seat to watch what God is doing in someone else's life.  That is what I want to think about each morning when I decide if it's worth getting out of bed.

I am not an unemployed wedding planner.  Instead, as part of the body of Christ, I get the perspective of a perpetual bride.  I watch Him place people, including myself in the best possible place to see His love for us.  This is a beautiful thing!  When I take details into my own hands, even when I have the best of intentions, that's when I become Bridezilla!  So, let's focus on knowing Him and let Him take care of the details.

The Joy of the Lord is My Strength

Almost eleven years ago, I was a naive young newlywed, anxious to become a mother.  I probably should have purchased stock in a pregnancy test company as I took them almost monthly.  When one day, the test came back positive, I could not have been happier!  As disgusting as it sounds, I could not throw the pee ridden test away.  I kept looking back at it trying to convince myself that it was true.  I told my husband and we carefully planned how we would announce it to our families.  It was Easter Sunday, 2004.  We had purchased adorable frames with baby decor and inserted a sign, "to be filled Nov. 24".  Everyone was thrilled...almost as thrilled as me.

Each day I would take a mental inventory of things I was waiting to happen.  Are my clothes fitting any tighter?  Am I feeling nauseous?  I excitedly made my first doctor appointment and couldn't wait to soak in every prenatal experience.  As I lay on the table in the exam room, waiting for the Certified Nurse Midwife, fear clenched my heart.  It was taking too long.  Tears started running down my face and she told my husband to come stand next to me and hold my hand.  More tests confirmed, there was no heartbeat.  My world crumbled around me.  My husband had to almost carry me out to the car as my legs felt like jello.  We just sat there, holding each other crying.  We made a few phone calls, but the dark cloud closing in was the only comfort I felt.  That might sound strange.  I didn't understand it for a long time but I know that I grabbed the black hole that I was sinking into and used it as a blanket to try to shut out the world. There is a song by Natalie Grant titled Held.  I have had a bit of a roller coaster type relationship with the song but one particular line I feel describes this time in my life so well.  "This hand is bitterness.  We want to taste it and Let the hatred numb our sorrows." 

I closed myself off in my bedroom.  Along with having medical complications that week, my grandmother also passed away. I cannot put into words the grief in those days.  I actually don't have a whole lot of memory from the days and months that followed. I know that eventually I went back to work because that's where I was when I received a call saying that an old friend that I loved had just tragically lost her five month old son.  I locked the door at work and sat crying in the bathroom.  The pain that I had begun to just live with was overwhelming once again.   I wanted so badly to be able to go and hug my friend but it was more than I could bear.  I was too empty to pour anything into someone else's life.

I believe it was September, 2004.  Each day I would wake up, I went through my routine but I was not really living.  I attended a wedding reception of another old friend.   The bride's sister was my friend that had lost her precious son only a few months earlier.   I saw her across the room and wanted to talk but didn't know the words to say.   As I watched her visit with friends and relatives,  I could not take my eyes off of her.   Could it be that she had joy?  I was stunned.   I had to know if that was really what I was seeing.  I made my way to her and failed at small talk.  I cannot quote the conversation but I can tell you that it rocked my world.  It was not that she was not still in the midst of unspeakable grief.  She had not "recovered and moved on".   She knew God in a way that I had not allowed to happen.   The joy of the Lord was her strength and I WANTED IT!  Up until that point,  I was hanging onto that security blanket so tightly that I didn't let God minister to my broken heart. Right then and there I felt a burden begin to lift.   I'm not going to say that my grief disappeared over night. I will say that I do not believe that the existence of joy does not mean the absence of sadness. Charles Spurgeon said, "A further source of joy is found by the Christian, who is living near to God, in a deep sense of reconciliation to God, of acceptance with God, and yet, beyond that, of adoption and close relationship to God."  Once we come to the realization that God is a loving father that wants us to lay all our burdens on Him,  there is joy, unspeakable joy!   

May 26, 2005, almost one year exactly to my miscarriage,  I had a son.  Along with motherhood, comes fear.   You watch your infant breathe praying for each new breath. You create a bubble of sanitary toys and make friends wash their hands before, after, and during their visits.   By themselves, these are not bad options but when driven by fear, your actions are no longer under your control. You are allowing something else, an emotion, to dictate your actions and reactions.   Each time these fears would arise,  my very personal God spoke to me and said "your greatest fear came to fruition and I still had everything you needed". 

And He was right.   December 2006, I lost another baby.  This time,  I didn't hold back my heart from my loving father.  I still grieved but not without the peace that truly surpasses our understanding.  I'm sad to have lost two sweet little lives but I relish the relationship that I now have with my Creator. My children are in His arms and can you think of a better babysitter? 

So, what happens when your worst nightmare comes true? You find out that Franklin D. Roosevelt was wrong.  Not even fear is worth fearing.