Caitlin’s Story: God Putting the Pieces of My Life in Place
Walking into Restore this winter, I was aware my gaze was fixed in the incorrect place. One of the first things we did as a small group was share summaries of our life stories and embedded themes. I was confident that God was in control and allowed me to have this broken story for a reason, but confused as how to make sense of it.
It felt like God had dumped a 1000 piece puzzle in front of me and was waiting for me to put it together.
To help you understand the roots of my story, those puzzle pieces were the themes that had run throughout my life. Throughout my life I have felt and cultivated a label for myself of a broken and rejected individual. I felt this was somewhat reliable, and always proved to be true, so I chose to live there and dwell in that. This caused a lot of shame, loneliness, neediness, and victimhood.
My perspective of God was that he was sitting back with his arms crossed, waiting for me to mess up yet again, perplexed as to why I had not yet figured it all out. I felt like a game was being played with me, and I could not for the life of me figure out the rules. I sat distanced from God, always crying out to him and knowing I was broken, but choosing not to accept his love or grace. I knew He could heal me; I did not think he wanted to.
Over the past several months, through direction and accountability, God allowed my gaze to be pointed towards him, my true healer, and he began to reframe my thinking.
Giving God My Burdens
When I began to think of our creator and how much bigger his universe is than my own small universe, the weight I had stubbornly bound to my chest began to dissolve. (though not forever and not entirely nor all at once.) Many times we speak of God carrying our burdens. He surely does this—but by reorienting my gaze he has shown me that what I insisted on calling 150lb weights were really on 10 lb.—they were only so heavy because I was trying to carry them alone. If you are weak enough, 10lbs is still a heavy reality, but to God it is not so overwhelming.
When I started to see the overarching narrative of God's roadmap I began to feel more intimately how much he wanted to be involved in my piece of it.
How God Restored My Soul in His Love
Through the read and abide times that are part of Restore, I was forced to do what I had been avoiding: sitting still in the Word. To engage in the lifelong process of setting down busyness , putting away striving, and simply being still when it is required and knowing that the creator of the universe wants to continue to shepherd me when I feel unshepherdable.
These times of rest have brought me the only source of peace I have felt in months, perhaps years. In those quiet moments I physically felt my soul heave a sigh of relief. Amidst tumultuous feelings that have overwhelmed me, I found solace knowing I had a place I could meet my Redeemer when those feelings inevitably arise.
Furthermore, by hearing the struggles and pains of others in my group I was slapped upside the head by the groundbreaking truth that I am not the only sufferer on planet earth. God used their grace and vulnerability to point me away from naval gazing and self involvement and point me closer to blessed self forgetfulness.
For many years I have felt God's call to love others around me who have felt as weak as I have felt in body and spirit. So I certainly have tried to do just that many many times all by myself and every time I have shown love and care but in the process have exhausted myself which has lead many times to burnout. Through this season God has shown me he's not transformed me over the years so that I can run off by myself and save others but to lead others to the one who continues to heal me, a still broken individual.
This passage from Isaiah we read as one of our read and abide times spoke to me on God's call to us to rest in him, and his place in our confused thinking.
Isaiah 55:1-3, 8-9, 12-13
Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters
and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk,
without money and without price.
Why do you spend you money for that
which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
hear, that your soul may live;
and I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David…
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts…
For you shall go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
shall break forth into singing,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the brier shall come up myrtle;
and it shall make a name for the Lord,
an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off."
Through this passage written thousands of years ago our creator showed me that my thoughts and feelings do not have the final say. He knows all of my confusion and at some times, neuroticism, and it does not surprise him. He even says that he will replace this death and mourning with life and singing if I chose to accept how he shepherds me.
