The Same Lesson All These Years Later

I have been very excited about starting this blog. As I've read my devotions in Jesus Calling, Jesus Today, and Dear Jesus all by Sarah Young, I've made notes of things that stood out to me. I worked out a structure for my blogs to follow: title, introduction, scripture, reflections, and maybe prayer. I organized all my notes in folders in Evernote on my phone and computer. I loved having that app on my phone so I could add notes, pictures, scriptures, or whatever was relevant wherever I was. I imported scripture in different translations and paraphrases from biblegateway.com. During this time, a testimony I gave for Community Bible Study came to mind over and over.

But none of it ever got on the blog. 

I had so much collected, I didn't know where to start. I tried to decide how often I should blog - once a week on a regular day, twice a week, how often?
I had organized God right out of this thing. I wasn't depending on the Holy Spirit's leading. I was trying to put my blog in a neat little package. Then this weekend, the readings in all three books said pretty much the same things to me. I went for a walk on the beach to clear my head, and this is what I heard, "Rest in God, live in His Presence, and let God lead me, get out of fix it mode and let go. Don't organize it till I've squeezed the Holy Spirit's leading out completely."

So, this morning, I sat down with those thoughts and started to write, planning to use one small section of the testimony I gave in 2009, but God had other plans. I opened up the testimony and started reading it, and I knew that this whole thing was the blog I was supposed to publish today. God has been teaching me this same lesson for YEARS. Everything He has led me to in the past several years has been about resting in Him and living in His Presence. You would think I'd have it down by now, but you would also think it must be pretty important if so many devoted Christians are writing about it, and God keeps bringing it up over and over.
I am copying the entire testimony. Debbie Nash is the leader of the Community Bible Study I was attending in Savannah. There have been some pretty big life changes since then, so I did change a couple of things to reflect that. Otherwise, this is what I wrote in 2009. If you are reading Jesus Calling or scripture or any other book about resting in God, you will find that God has been addressing the same things in my life for several years now.
They must be pretty important.

CBS Testimony

April 30, 2009

Debbie Nash and I have been talking about my testimony for months.  She knew I was living out our study of Hebrews, and she said I needed to give my testimony. Debbie and I thought my testimony started in September when 2 small children caught in the middle of a very volatile family war came to live with my husband and me, and I thought I had to wait till I saw how it ended before I could give my testimony. But, like so many other things I’ve thought I knew in the past few years, I discovered we were both wrong. A few weeks ago, Debbie was talking about Hebrews 4:11, "Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience," in her lecture. She said that “make every effort” meant to throw all our weight into trusting on what He has done for us through the cross and on His promises. When I heard that, I realized that I couldn't wait until I knew how the story ended to give my testimony. I needed to give a testimony about trusting Him while I still had no clue what was going to happen, while things still looked nothing like what I thought they were supposed to look like. I had been taking notes for weeks. I knew exactly what my testimony was going to be…until I actually got down to writing it out, and that’s when I learned that Debbie and I were not entirely right about that, either.

Many of you know Noah. He’s somewhat of a celebrity among the CBS leadership. He is my friend's 2-yr-old son. This story has nothing to do with him, but it has everything to do with him.

When he first started talking and discovered the power of the word “no”, I told him the rule was “You can’t tell Gramma Debbie no.” (Gramma Debbie is what my grandchildren call me, and Noah, among others, call me that, too.) When he would tell me no, I would ask him what the rule was. One day, he told me no. I forgot the routine and asked him, “Are you supposed to tell Gramma Debbie no?” The obvious answer to that question was “no”, and Noah caught the significance of that before I did. He looked at me quizzically for a second and said, “What’s the rule?”

That’s the way I feel I’ve been looking at God for the past few years, and that’s the question I’ve been asking Him.

I was the middle daughter of 3 girls, so that should be all I have to tell you about my misconceptions about where I fit in. My older sister was Daddy’s little lady. My younger sister was his baby. How did you compete with that, especially when you were loud, rambunctious, impulsive, clumsy, and only wanted to dress up when it meant playing cowboys and Indians? I felt I had to earn Daddy’s attention, and I did anything to get it: being the comedian, making honor roll, swinging on a rope out over the river and jumping, jumping off a barrel onto the back of my cousin’s horse as he sped around on 2 hooves. I was a daredevil. And I never understood until I was grown that I never had to do any of those things to get Daddy’s attention, because I always had it simply because I was his daughter, and he loved me.

We project our perceptions of our relationships with our fathers into our relationships with God. For most of my life, I thought I had to earn God’s attention. I thought I had to do everything. I figured if I did it all, I couldn’t miss the one thing He really wanted me to do. I firmly believed in being a “doer of the word.” I took to heart, “do not weary in well-doing.” I was always set on ready – ready to get my orders and take off on my own to accomplish the task. I had learned something else from my earthly father, too, and that was to look out for the underdog.  I spent my life doing that, trying to fix people’s broken lives. I worked at a camp for underprivileged children several summers, but I continued to see the children during the winter, too, taking them places, getting clothes for them, helping their families in whatever way I could. I started working at Bethesda in 1979 and spent about 20 years working in every position out there except Exec. Dir. and cook. My older son was born while we were houseparents at Bethesda. Both of my sons grew up in and out of the cottages while we served as relief houseparents, sometimes for weeks or months at a time. I helped start the school out there and was a teacher and then principal. I thought I would work there until I died, and I almost did, because I almost worked myself to death.

If nobody else would do it, I would. If somebody else wasn’t doing their job, they asked me to do it. I took on more and more. I felt I had no right to take care of myself when there was so much need out there. I literally felt guilty if I found myself not thinking about Bethesda – even on vacation. God meant it when He told us to rest, but I didn’t see that part. All I saw was the part that said give more than anybody asks you to. I began to have health problems. I was seeing several specialists. I lived with a knot of anxiety in the pit of my stomach for the last 3 years I was there. One day in the fall of 2002, I thought about how many years it would be before I could retire, and I literally thought, “I am too tired to live that long.” That’s when I knew I had to leave.  My last day was October 31, 2002. I thought it would be the hardest day of my life, but I felt nothing but relief when I drove out the gate, and I’ve never regretted that decision. See, I thought, because they needed me, that I was supposed to give my life to them, but sometimes God takes us places for a season, and then He moves us on. And sometimes, when we don’t listen, He makes it impossible for us to stay.

I spent the next 3 yrs doing consulting, tutoring, and coordinating the at-risk program for Oglethorpe Charter School. But I hadn’t learned the lesson God intended for me. I worked at those jobs exactly the way I had at every other job. I continued to have health problems. The anxiety grew tighter in the pit of my stomach, and in 2005 some family issues were the straw that broke the camel's back. ("Issues" that turned out to be some of the greatest lessons and blessings of my life) Sometimes, if we don’t stop, God stops us. I went into a major depression. I don’t even remember the better part of the next 2 years. I do remember that my life had turned upside down. The rug had been jerked out from under me, and everything I had ever believed came into question. I didn’t know if I could trust God. I didn’t even know if I wanted to trust God anymore. Up until this happened, I had been the one who believed when everybody else had given up. I believed that, no matter how things looked, if God wanted it to happen, He’d make it happen, and I had the joy of seeing evidence of that many times.

Now, nothing looked like it was supposed to. I had followed all the rules. I had trusted His promises. I had done what He wanted me to do. I had given my all. I was angry. I was hurt. I felt betrayed.

During this worst of this, in the fall of 2005, I began to keep 2 children who lived in a very unstable home. Their mother had left them for the 3^rd time when I started keeping them. They were like little wild animals when I first started keeping them. People who knew the state of depression I was in thought this was too much for me. They tried to discourage me from keeping them. What they didn’t understand was that Joshua and his little sister were part of what was keeping me from sinking lower. When you have a 2 and 3 year old, you don’t have to make decisions. The decisions are made for you. Taking care of and loving children came naturally to me, and their unconditional love was medicine for me.

Over the past 4 years, I have slowly climbed back up from the depth of that depression, and I have continued to keep Joshua and his little sister off and on. They think of my house as theirs. My house has been the only stable home in their short lives. For the past 4 yrs, their toys have been on the same shelves, and their clothes have been in the same drawers. When they come, they know exactly what they’ll find and what the rules are. They feel secure and happy here.

Their mother has continued to leave them, and their father has continued to be irresponsible and unstable. The children have been drug from one woman’s home to another’s. My husband and I continued to provide damage control. We are the safe place. We did as much as we could to provide security for the children. There’s a fine line between helping and enabling, and we knew we were crossing that line time after time, but the bottom-line question, we felt, was always, “what’s best for the kids?” How did we refuse to help the parents when the kids were at risk? There was a couple, a very good couple, who would have adopted the children without thinking twice, and my husband and I just kept thinking that maybe someday the mother and father would get to the point where they realized they could not raise the children and would surrender their rights.

Last September, things came to a head. Everything looked like it was headed exactly the way we wanted it to. The father had lost everything, and the mother couldn’t handle the children emotionally or financially. The children came to live with my husband and me, and their baby sister stayed with her mother. We had no idea what was going to happen, and I began to realize that God had me right where He wanted me. I had to trust Him day by day, because I had no idea what was happening.

Over the past year, God has orchestrated several things in my life to lead me out of my pit of depression and anxiety and to trust Him again. The first step of the dance was reading C. S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed. C. S. Lewis was a self-proclaimed atheist who set out to prove logically that God did not exist. Instead he proved to himself just the opposite and became a Christian. He married late in life, and, after only 7 years of marriage, his wife died of cancer. A Grief Observed is the account of his journey through his grief. He was angry with God. He was hurt. He felt betrayed. He felt he had played by all the rules, but that God did not keep His promises. Sound familiar? All my questions were in his book. Then one day, he came to the realization that he had already proved to himself that God existed, so he couldn’t discount God.  Now he just had to decide what he was going to do with what he knew about God and what he was going to do with the knowledge that God was not who he thought he was and that he didn’t like what he now knew about God. In the end, he worked through his grief, realizing that things are not always going to look the way we think they should look, but, if we say we believe and trust in God, we have to believe and trust Him when things don’t look right. I moved a step closer to God.

The next step in the dance was the book Get Out of that Pit by Beth Moore. In the first few pages she said 2 things that grabbed my attention. The first was that you don’t have to do anything wrong to end up in a pit. I cried when I read that. During the worst of the depression, Christians were the last people I wanted to talk to. They made me feel guilty for something I couldn’t help. They told me Christians didn’t get depressed. They shamed me by saying Christians, of all people, had nothing to be depressed about. They told me I didn’t have enough faith. They told me they were worried about my spiritual condition. They told me I had unconfessed sin. They didn’t get it that I had no idea why I felt sad or hopeless and that there was no reason for me to feel anxious. They didn’t understand how guilty and ashamed I felt for feeling this way when I am married to the love of my life who loves me just as much, and I have 2 sons who love me and who are kind, considerate, responsible, hard-working – all those qualities parents always pray that their kids will have. I knew I had no reason to feel that it would be easier to just go to sleep and never wake up. So, Beth Moore’s words that I didn’t have to do anything wrong to end up in a pit endeared her to me forever.

The second thing she said was that, before God allows anything bad or hurtful to happen to us, he checks it over and over against the plumb-line to see if it the result will outweigh the hurt. Being a plumber’s daughter, that struck a chord with me. I could see God squinting down the line, making sure the end justified the means. Making sure that the joy at the end would make the suffering in the middle worth it. I took another step toward trusting God. By the time I finished the book, I felt I had reached the top of the pit.

A friend had been talking to me about going on the Walk to Emmaus for about 2 yrs, but I just wasn't interested. I really didn't want to be around that many Christians at that point. I hardly left my house for over 2 years without my husband or son. I had anxiety attacks if they got too far out of my reach. I knew I’d never make it through a weekend away from home with strangers. So the next step of the dance was sudden and unexpected. A different friend said she wanted to sponsor me for the Walk to Emmaus, and I found I wanted to go. The weekend was only 2 weeks away. People send in applications for this months in advance, but things suddenly started falling into place, an opening was available, and 2 weeks later, I was on the bus. That weekend changed my life.

A few yrs ago, a therapist told me that there was a little brown-haired girl who was me standing in the middle of all my family chaos wondering who was going to take care of her. I was amazed, because that was exactly the way I’d always felt. That weekend at Emmaus, in the middle of some song we were singing, I suddenly saw that little girl…and I saw God kneeling down next to her, and I realized that He’d been there all along. I realized a deeper truth, too, that, if I hadn't been in that chaos, I may not have realized my need for Him.

Two other things changed my life that weekend. One was hearing a speaker say that she had learned that she wasn't worthy because of what she did; she was worthy because she is His. I’d spent my life trying to prove my worth by what I did, so that hit me where I lived.

The other thing was realizing that the thing I needed most to surrender to God was control. For the first 2 days of the 3 day weekend, I kept thinking that I was going to spend the whole weekend there and miss the most important thing God wanted me to gain, because I was too afraid of losing control. It finally hit me that that was exactly what God wanted me to gain – the freedom that surrendering control would give me.

So, by the time the kids came to live with me last fall, I had found my footing with God again. I had realized that life is not always going to look the way I think it’s supposed to, but that, even when it looked the most out of control, I had to trust that God was in control and that He has a master plan for everything. That what others mean for evil, He means for good. That His thoughts and ways are beyond my comprehension, and that this life is a blip on the screen compared to the eternity that He has planned for me. That THAT’S the reality, not this life.

My husband and I agreed that we only felt called to be a temporary place of stability for the children. We have never felt called to raise them. We have considered it several times and have come close to making the commitment, but each time we realized that was not what God planned for us. So, we had no idea why the kids were living with us or where this was going. I kept trying to make it fit into some neat little package, but every time, it turned out very differently from what I thought it was going to.

My older son couldn't understand what his dad and I were doing with these kids. He kept asking us why we were letting the parents take advantage of us, why we didn’t let the kids go to DFCS, and the big question: what were we getting out of this? We just kept telling him we didn't know anything except that we felt it was what God wanted us to do right then.

One night, not long after he had questioned us again, Noah spent the night with us. I lay down with him at bedtime and read to him and then sang to him for a little while. Then I just lay there watching him as he fell asleep. Just before he did, he put his hand in mine. Then he put his arm across me and drifted off. I lay there with tears in my eyes and thought, “This. This is it. This is what we get out of it. This is our reward.” 

At night, with Joshua and Starla, I was teaching them to say their prayers. At first, I had them repeat after me. Then I started asking them to thank God for one thing that had happened that day. Then I started having them think of one thing they wanted to ask God to help them with. One night, Joshua asked me if God was dead. I said, “no, baby, God has always been alive and always will be.” He said, “but people have to die to go to Heaven,” and then I understood his confusion. God is in Heaven, so didn't He have to die to get there? We talked for about an hour about who God is and why Jesus came and how he died for us on the cross and how God wants us to love Him and to spend eternity with him in Heaven. Several times, Joshua waved his hand and said, “Oh, I’m always going to believe in God.” Just before we finished, I said, “Joshua, you know it’s not enough to just believe in God, because even Satan believes in God. We have to believe that Jesus died for our sins and ask him to live in our hearts if we want to go to Heaven.” He immediately sat up and said, “Do you want me to pray that right now.” I was taken aback. I didn't think he even understood enough to know you needed to pray that. He bowed his head, and I lead him through a prayer to accept Christ as his Savior. I know he’s only 6, but, by the time I was 6, I knew that I was supposed to be God’s, so I know God has His hand on Joshua.

In December, he began to understand Christmas better, and he began, completely on his own, to pray this prayer every night, “Dear God, thank You for letting Jesus have His birthday on Christmas and for letting Him die on the cross and for letting Him live in my heart.”

In December, their mother took them to her alcoholic mother’s house and left them to go meet her boyfriend who was getting out of prison. She didn't tell anybody where she was going, because her boyfriend is a convicted, registered sex-offender. Nobody knew where she was for several days. Her kids spent Christmas without their mother or father at their mother’s former boyfriend’s house. You can see the pain and fear in their eyes in the Christmas pictures.

Their father came to town to get them, but the mother’s grandparents had them and wouldn't let him have them. Because there’s a divorce in progress, custody is fuzzy, so the police couldn't help him.

Debbie Nash’s husband had put me in touch with a wonderful attorney who offered to help. Joshua was already in school down the street, the kids had been happy and stable here, and none of their mother’s family was stable. So, we found the mother, and she agreed to give me guardianship. The father had already agreed and had even agreed to surrender his rights so they could be adopted. The mother refused to sign the surrender, but I felt it would not take much to get her to come around. She knew she could never have them unless she gave up her sex-offender boyfriend, and she wasn’t willing to do that. Things finally seemed to be moving quickly in the direction I thought they were supposed to. We filed the petition for guardianship on a Monday morning, and I raised my hand and swore to care and provide for the children. The attorney and I were ready to get the police to go with us to pick them up. But then their mother called and said she changed her mind, that her family was going to fight it if I tried to take guardianship. Her grandfather then called and threatened the attorney and everybody else involved. The attorney recommended that I dismiss the petition.

I went home with that same puzzled look on my face Noah had the day he asked me, “What’s the rule?” I thought we had it all worked out. I thought this was what this was all about. What had we done this for the past 3 months for if it wasn't going to change anything? I couldn't believe God would bring us this far and then let everything fall apart.

But, underneath, I felt this sense of peace rising to the top. Almost a sense of relief, and I felt guilty for it.

We started the study of Hebrews the same week I filed for guardianship. I had been keeping Debbie up to date on what was happening with the kids, and she began to talk about the study of Hebrews and how I was living it, and she kept talking about Hebrews being about resting in God. And, at first, I couldn't figure out how in the world my situation related to that.

Then, in Hebrews 2:8, I read, “You gave Him authority over all things. Now, when it says ‘all things,’ it means nothing is left out. But we have not yet seen all of this happen.”

That caught my attention. Christ has authority over all things, but we can’t yet see that. I prayed that God would help me completely surrender the kids to Him and trust that He is in control. Little things began to come to mind now and then. Joshua praying to ask Jesus in his heart. The last few nights before they left, Joshua’s prayers thanking God for Jesus. I thought, you know, Joshua could take the Holy Spirit to that whole house, and, if not to the adults, he can at least share it with his sisters.

The great-grandparents have petitioned for custody. The judge doesn't want either parent to have the kids unless the father can prove he can provide a stable home, so everything is in limbo right now.

I tried to make sense of it, but I couldn't in my limited mind. I just had to throw all my weight into trusting God. One day I remembered that image of God kneeling beside that little brown-haired girl in the middle of the chaos, and I realized that He is doing the same for Joshua and his sisters. Then I remembered the deeper truth that, without the chaos, I may not have realized I needed Him, and I thought, maybe God knows Joshua needs to live through this to recognize his need for God.

Other truths in Hebrews began to jump out at me. I read Hebrews 4:1-11 about entering His rest. It says the time for this rest is today. Verse 10 says, “For all who enter into God’s rest will find rest from their labors, just as God rested after creating the world.” That bugged me. I couldn’t get it off my mind, because everything I’d ever been taught talked about toiling for God, striving for God, persevering, running the race. How did this fit?

Then one week I was worried about something. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. It grew and grew way out of proportion. I was talking to my dear, wise Christian friend Molly, and she said, “Debbie, life is too short. God is about fullness of life, springs of living water, joy. If something is causing you stress and worry, it’s not of God.”

The next day, in Debbie’s lecture, she said, “Do the only the LAST thing God told you to do.”

Several things clicked at that moment. God’s rest and doing His will are not polar opposites. I can’t really do His will unless I AM resting in Him. All those years, I wanted to get my assignment and run off on my own and prove how worthy I was, and that’s not at all what God wanted from me. He wanted me to rest in Him, to lay my head on His chest, and trust totally in Him. He wanted me to listen, do the last thing He had told me to do, and then wait and rest in Him till He told me the next thing. The verse “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” took on whole new meaning. I’d always thought of striving as a positive thing, but I realized the way I interpreted striving WAS the polar opposite of being in God’s will. When I have to strive and force and push and pull to try to make things fit, it’s not of God. If I let go completely of all of it, and put on His easy yoke and take up His light burden, then it’s easy. Not that life will be easy, but His rest/His will for me will be easy on my soul. When I went through the depression, I felt like God wanted me to take everything off and then put back on ONLY what fit. After 4 years, I was finally figuring out what fit.

The verse “Do not weary in well-doing” suddenly meant something very different to me. I’ve always heard it used to mean don’t give up; keep working no matter how tired you get. Now, I wonder if He was saying something very different and we've been misunderstanding Him all these years. Could He mean don’t wear yourself out in well-doing on your own, but instead rest in Him, take on His easy yoke and light burden, and let Him do the work through us?

In February, my second grandson was born. When he was just a few weeks old, I sat watching him as he was drifting off to sleep. Every time his eyes would close and he’d almost relax, he’d move and rouse himself and struggle to open his eyes again. It hit me that it’s human nature to fight rest. We want it so badly, but we fight it all the way. After watching him a few minutes, I picked him up and held him close. As soon as I did, he gave in completely and went soundly to sleep. If we yield ourselves totally to God and let Him hold us, we can rest completely in the security of His arms.

I have not even scratched the surface of what God has been teaching me in the past few months or even years, but here are a few thoughts I want to end with.

A few weeks ago, I surprised myself with the way I handled a situation with courage and strength I knew I would not have had 4 years or even 1 yr ago. The next morning, I found myself thanking God for the depression, because I knew I’d never have found that inner strength if I hadn’t gone through the past 4 years. When I realized I was thanking Him for the depression, I realized I was out of it. For the first time in 4 years, I can confidently say, “I am back.”

On page 92 of our CBS commentary, it says, “Our faith and hope must be grounded in the sure knowledge that whether He calms the storm or helps us through it, He is in control – whether it feels that way or not.” Beth Moore says to keep repeating God’s word over and over until your feelings begin to agree with it.

Oswald Chambers said, “Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.” I still don’t know what’s going to happen to these children that I love, but I know and love the One who is in control. The One who loves them more than I do.

One of my favorite songs is “I Will Listen” by Twila Paris. It says exactly what I've been trying to say today. I'm going to upload a youtube.com video of this song with the lyrics. I want you to really hear what she is saying. Please listen to her, especially when she sings the line about us learning to love the dreams that He has dreamed for us.