Over and Over Again

Wake me up from my slumber, oh God

Take these shaking hands and hold them still

Wake me up from my slumber, oh God

Lift my eyes to Yours, where my help comes from

 

Over and over again, Your love and Your mercy begin

No matter how far, You find me where I am

~I Am They, “Over & Over Again”

 

 Over and over again.

Praise the Lord that He is there over and over again.

Praise the Lord His grace finds me over and over again.

Sometimes I wake up to realize that I’ve been trusting in my own abilities and living in a world of stress, annoyance, and fear. (it’s been happening less and less often)

In those moments, it’s easy to get more annoyed. I just can’t do this. I was doing so well. I was in such a good place.

But then I think through all of those statements again.

I’m right, I can’t do this. I’m going to mess up when I try and do this all on my own.

It’s a awe-inspiringly beautiful moment to be brought to my knees again and again with the realization that in spite of my failures and fear, He always finds me.

Over and over again, Your love and Your mercy begin.

Over and over.

Like an unruly child, I forget both the warnings and the promises of my Father too quickly.

When my fears chase my failures, oh God

Oh when heaven’s glow seems so far

Wake me up to Your glory, oh God

Draw my eyes to Yours, where my help comes from

I will find You

 Over and over again, Your love and Your mercy begin

No matter how far, You find me where I am

 The past few days have been pretty difficult – I’ve been pretty easily annoyed, on edge, and frustrated.

It’s been more than just stress, though.

I’ve been continually frustrated by my inability to make everyone happy.

Saying you’re a people pleaser sounds like a good thing. It’s like saying you’re a perfectionist when the interviewer asks you for your weaknesses – it’s the “nice” flaw that’s really more of an asset.

But being a people pleaser isn’t often really about the people.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m realizing that my desire to make everyone happy all the time has a lot more to do with me. Instead of being genuinely interested in others, it tends to be a result of my insecurity and my need to be liked and accepted.

I want people to like me.

So I people-please.

Unfortunately, I can’t make everyone happy.

And when that realization hits, I’m frustrated, annoyed and end up making no one happy with me.

Luckily, I’m not called to make everyone happy.

There is peace, over and over again, in His love and His mercy.

I am free from the approval of others and free from the weight of others’ expectations. Praise the Lord.

But greater than that realization, was the realization that He was teaching me this.

The past year has been such a year of growth and learning for me. Over and over again, I would find myself realizing that some situation I’d gone through or some pain I endured was being miraculously and mercifully used by my God to do some work in me.

This time, though, He blessed me enough to give me a glimpse into this work as it was happening.

Instead of letting this frustration and dissatisfaction grow and fester, I was beginning to see the potential in even painful situations.

I’m certain that my people-pleasing tendencies would only affect my life more and more in the future. How blessed am I that I serve a God who has such a long-term vision for my life that He reaches down into the intricacies of my life and uses them to make me more like Him.

Over and over again He finds me where I am. Over and over again, He is using everything in my life for my good.

Over and over again.

Deeper Waters

This week is going to be hectic.

I don’t think I’ve had a period this stressful and busy in a long time. This year I was careful to not get back into the terrible habits of my freshman year: sleeping a few hours a night, procrastinating on everything, alternating between eating nothing and eating terribly, and occasionally having a minor mental breakdown.

But this week sprung up on me totally unexpectedly.

My debate partner and I were unexpectedly asked to go to an additional tournament this weekend, right after having another tournament this last weekend. The turnaround between tournaments is often tight, but this time it’s only about three days, and I feel like I might explode from stress.

My petition for my Honors thesis is already two weeks late, I have a bunch of assignments due this week and next, and I started two online classes yesterday.

When I woke up yesterday morning after getting back from our tournament at 4:30 AM, I was immediately filled with the sinking feeling of stress and anxiety flooding in.

It’s so much easier to claim I trust Him with everything when everything isn’t all that much. It’s easier to think I have faith in Him when I also think I could handle this all on my own.

But when I suddenly realize I can’t do it all, that not everything is working out perfectly, and that everything is piling up, that’s when I really find out what kind of faith in Him I have.

It’s like I’ve been wading around in the shallow waters on the coast, thinking I’m a really good swimmer.

But then a big wave comes crashing into me, and I realize I can’t handle the deeper waters.

In a weird way, it’s kind of wonderful when it happens.

It forces me to realize I can’t do this all on my own, and that the illusion I could was keeping me from holding on to Him as tightly as I really need to.

It forces me to realize how much I really need Him.

At first, I fight the big wave. I try to use my own strength to regain my balance, to fight the current and stay afloat. But the beauty is in the moment that I give up the fight, realizing that my own efforts aren’t going to save me. They can’t even get me through a stressful week.

There’s beauty in the surrender – to His plan and His peace. My plan is flawed and my peace is fleeting, but His plan is perfect and His peace constant.

It always bothers me when people say – “He’ll never give you more than you can take.” I love when He lets me experience more than I can do on my own – otherwise, I’d never find out how much I need Him. If I only ever experience what I can handle all on my own, He’d never get to show me how much He can do when I surrender to Him.

His power is made perfect in my weakness.

Which is why I love when I’m confronted with my weakness – I get to see how big my God is.

I can let down the façade I’ve carefully constructed of the perfect student, friend, and employee. I can take it down because I have no other options – the boards are starting to crack and the paint is fading quicker than I can repaint it.

When He gives me more than I can take, there’s no way to keep up the act anymore – I have to run to Him.

He gives me more than I can take precisely when I start to think I can do it all on my own – and I’m starting to learn to love it.

The waves come crashing in, and I think the time I spend thrashing in the roaring water is starting to get shorter – He’s proven to me how good it is to give up on using my own strength to make it through the roughest currents.

Yesterday morning, the dread and anxiety I was feeling only make sense when my To-Do list was mine to bear all on my own. I was stressed because I knew I couldn’t’ handle this all on my own. But my anxious heart gives way to incredible peace when I realize I don’t have to face the waves on my own.

You Will Make A Way

You brought me to the desert so You could be my water

You brought me to the fire so You could be my shield

You brought me to the darkness so You could be my morning light.

~”Make A Way,” I Am They

 

I serve such a Good God.

I have always wanted to be the one that could do it all on her own. I wanted to be the best at everything and be able to say that I got where I was all by myself.

I spent years living in the freedom my Savior bought me, but I wasn’t living like it.

It’s like I was standing on the starting line after the gun had gone off. I was free to run, but I was choosing to stay suck behind the line.

I serve such a good Father that He wasn’t willing to let me stay there.

I was comfortable behind that line. I didn’t know how dead I was, I just kept trying to manufacture life from successes, friendships, good grades, and religious rules. I was trying to bring life out of death, and it turns out there’s only One who can do that.

He had freed me from bondage, only to grieve my attempts at putting the chains back on.

It’s like C.S. Lewis said – I was splashing in the mud, unaware of the joy of real life I was missing out on.

But since my Father is so good, He let me experience the heartbreak of my choices. He let me feel the pain of trying to live up to impossible standards all by myself.

It’s easy for me to recognize the way that earthly parents demonstrate their love for their children by not giving them what they want but do not need. I can appreciate an earthly parent that doesn’t give in when their five-year-old wants ice cream for dinner. I can tell that they are protecting their child from what is not good for them.

And yet, it is so hard for me to recognize the way my perfect Heavenly Father protects me in this way.

I think it would be good for me to get what I want all the time. He has bigger plans.

I’d like to be wildly successful, but He knows that sometimes, that accolade draws me away from the greatest Good of all.

I’d like to never face the consequences of my mistakes, but He loves me too much to leave those mistakes unused.

He allowed my sin, my mistakes, my misplaced worship and idolatry to hurt me.

He lead me to the desert, to the fire, to the darkness.

He allowed some pain, so that He could be my Healer.

He let the natural consequences of my sin take their course, knowing that I’d come running back to Him.

I’d cross the starting line.

I’d recognize the mud around me for what it was.

He’s been teaching me this lesson, that His plan might allow some pain, but that it’s for a greater purpose than I could ever dream of.

But lately I’ve been realizing an even bigger lesson those trips in through the desert give me.

 

If You brought me this far, if You brought me this far

You will make a way.

If He can use pain, sin, and idolatry to draw me closer to Him and accomplish His perfect purposes, He can certainly use anything.

He’s blessed me with beautiful examples of the plan He’s working out in me. He’s lead me through the desert to be my water, but also to show me that He will make a way. If He can use my own resistance to the freedom He offers, there is nothing on this Earth that will prevent the way He is making for me.

Wherever you lead me, I know you won’t leave me

Wherever you call me, You will make a way

Wherever we’re going, I will be holding

To the promise you have made

You will make a way

What peace there is in knowing that I serve a God that will never lead me only to abandon me.

I never need to fear His leading, because if He can use my sin to work out His purposes, He can surely use my trouble following directions.

There is incredible peace in His promises, because He has taught me to trust Him. I can trust that He will make a way, even if that way is not what I envisioned. Which (this is beyond exciting) means that in the midst of whatever craziness is happening, I can rest in knowing that this is the way He is making. I may have trouble following directions, but He always charts the best route.

Gold Star

I crave recognition.

I had the chance at having a guarantee of it, and I willingly gave it up.

And I regretted it.

It started eating at me.

And I couldn’t figure out why it was hurting so much.

I slowly realized that I think it scares me.

Giving up my shot at being recognized hurts, but following the trail of why it does could hurt more.

Why do I crave it? Why do I need to feel recognized for what I do? Why do I need to feel important and special and significant?

Craving recognition is the insecure little girl inside me crying out for someone to tell me I matter.

It’s the part of me that’s terrified that I don’t.
It’s the voice in my head that tells me that the only way I’ll know for sure that I’m appreciated, loved, or respected is if I have a title or a gold star.

It’s exhausting.

It’s exhausting trying to be recognized all the time.
It’s exhausting feeling like I need to remind everyone of the things I’ve done, the awards I’ve gotten, the value I have.
It’s exhausting being terrified that if someone doesn’t know that I matter, I won’t.

That’s really what it is. I think that if my worth is anonymous, it doesn’t count.

Luckily, I serve a God who sees it all. And better than that, there is nothing I can ever do to impress Him.

I take pride in my words persuading, encouraging, or inspiring.

His words created life.

I used to find that kind of thinking discouraging. I used to find it depressing that everything of importance I’m striving to do is dwarfed by what He already did.

But then I realized that it’s not discouraging, it’s liberating.

What beautiful freedom there is in surrendering my striving for His peace.

Grappling with the truth that I won’t ever save the world is liberating when it comes from a knowledge that He already has.

If I’m trying to life more like Jesus, I guess I need to get used to being unacknowledged for what I do.

It bothers me even now.

But thankfully, I don’t even have to change my attitude all by myself. I can’t even take credit for that. He is working in me, and I have faith that as He makes me more like Him, I will continue giving up my hold on illusory accolades.

Part of a Celebration

I have no fear.

I laugh at the future, for I know my God will not lead me anywhere to abandon me.

There is a reason for every season, even when I can’t see it.

They’re all easy things to doodle in my journal or offhandedly reassure a friend with. As words, they’re easy to sprinkle like confetti on a conversation, a blog post, a journal entry. Lightweight and sparkly. But applying them is another story. Confetti doesn’t hold up well in a storm.

Thankfully, those words have power when they come from a place of genuine trust in my Lord. They’re harder to act on, but I’m not doing it alone.

Thankfully, I don’t serve a God that gives me nice words and then expects me to will them into action. I can do nothing good apart from Him.

He doesn’t just teach me the words; He showed me what they looked like in a real life.

He doesn’t just give me platitudes; He climbs into the trenches with me.

And best of all, He’s been faithful. He’s shown me how steadfast His love is.

I can have no fear because He’s kept His promises.

I can laugh at the future because He’s been faithful in the past.

I can know He won’t abandon me because He says He won’t, and I’ve learned to trust His promises.

There is a reason for every season in my life, because sometimes He blesses me with a glimpse of how He’s used the ones I’ve already fought through.

I don’t have platitudes, I have promises I’ve seen fulfilled.

These words might be confetti, but they’re just a part of a full-blown celebration.