Changes

Changes
5/23/10


Ryan and I recently went to Arizona to visit my brother Jim.

I always believed that there's a reason for everything. That whatever happens, good or bad, happens according to God's will and purpose for our lives. When we're hurting this is a very VERY hard fact to swallow. Countless times I've heard the words, "Why does God make bad things happen?"... even typing it makes me cringe. God doesn't ever CAUSE bad to happen. But he does ALLOW it to happen. Yet even that fact is too much for people to swallow, but bear with me... God allows things to happen because He knows that hurt helps us grow. Not only that, but it shows us how we need to rely on Him. Our weakness draws us closer to the one who IS strong enough to help us through our mess. That weakness helps us to grow in Him, and to grow in ourselves. When a chain is broken, the link that is mended is generally the strongest part of the chain after it is fixed. Bones that break and mend in one spot grow much stronger than they previously were. So why wouldn't it be true that God breaks us in order to challenge our hearts to mend stronger in those areas we were weak? In that sense, the breaking of a link, like our hearts, becomes extremely sensible to the point where anything BUT that ideal DOESN'T make sense. When we understand that, we can see that the chain breaks so that it can be mended, and it is mended for a REASON.

The key is NOT to run away from hurt. Hurt finds us, no matter where we are. It is inevitable. The key is to constantly be aware of what God is doing in your life so that you can UNDERSTAND why He allowed the hurt in the first place. If we are constantly angry with God, or with hurt, we are blind to the good that comes out of it. Tragedies happen, and they are horrible. There's no question about that. But the end result becomes beautiful. If there were no hurt in our lives, we would never cherish the things that are important in life. I have seen so much death in my life that every friendship, every person in my life becomes a vital and intricate part of my life. I value each person and never forget to tell people how much they mean to me (or at least I strive to do this the best of my ability). But i wouldn't care nearly as much, wouldn't work so hard to keep those friendships and help them grow if i had never lost anyone. It is because i have lost so many that i have come to appreciate people and sincerely care for them to the point that I want it to be my career. I strive to care for people, because I know what it is like to be broken and alone.




The beautiful thing about hurt is that God is always there for us when we're hurting. If the point of hurt is to rely on God, than we can be rest assured that He will ALWAYS be there if we simply call on Him. He gets us through and works on us according to His purpose. He uses hurt to call us back to Him. Sometimes, though, we try to walk on our own. God, being a loving being, lets us do what we want even if it is foolish. He lets us learn the hard way. So we walk alone, and the road causes us to stumble. But we take the scratches, the bruises, the breaks, and tell ourselves we can do it, that we CAN keep going even though it's hard. We pick ourselves up and gimp along, repeating the process until we're so broken and beaten from trying to walk the road alone that we can't move, paralyzed and weary from exhaustion. We look back at the road behind us, and in this moment we realize that it would have been much easier to just ask for help. In that moment, we DO ask God for help. And in that moment, God triumphs and rejoices over our return to Him.

As I said, God allows us to stray. The prodigal son left his father. But the fact that he left made the return so much sweeter, so beautiful. It was agony to have him gone, but when he returned his father wholeheartedly rejoiced. This is how I think God feels with us. He lets us leave the house, to wander and do as we please. He steps aside and suffers as we put ourselves through heartache and treachery. Even though we feel unworthy, we take our shame upon ourselves and go back to the place we never knew we always belonged. Yet instead of being angry, bitter, resentful, and ashamed of us as the Father should be, He runs to us, overjoyed, with open arms to welcome us home. Our mistakes mean little to Him. He just wanted us home. He ALWAYS wanted us home. Though we didn't realize it, He was guiding us home all the time through prayer and love. Though it made him ache to watch us leave, it was worth the sacrifice because He understands that the experience was necessary for us to grow. It makes the relationship between us so much more wonderful than it would have been if we had never left.

Ryan and I went to Arizona. I didn't realize until I came home that the dates we picked to go were vital to our relationship, our relationship with God, and to my relationship with God.

We had a blast in Arizona. It was beautiful, and not too hot. We met a lot of really great people there, and it wasn't until the end of the trip that we really understood why God brought us down to AZ at that time. Friday night we went to Transit, the college group at Mesa First that Jim is a part of. The sermon was given by Travis Clark, a young but brilliant youth pastor, based on a series Transit was doing called "Do You Know You're Enemy?". He challenged us to not only recognize what Satan is doing to destroy us, but to see it and counteract it. The most powerful point to me was when he explained that Satan manipulates truths of the Bible to deceive us into wrong doing.

WHACK!

God had hit me with a 2x4. I had been telling myself (or, letting Satan tell me) that living with Ryan was fine since we are engaged. I knew it was wrong, but it wasn't REALLY that bad...right?

WHACK!

Wrong. This was no gray area. Pastor Jeff spoke that Sunday about the difference between black and white areas vs. gray areas in the Bible. Ie, things that God explicitly says "do" or "don't do" vs. "eh, it's ok sometimes." This was no gray area. Though I had let Satan tell me it was, and that we weren't really doing anything wrong (yeah right), I finally told myself and Satan to STOP LYING to me. This rule was explicitly stated in the Bible. Though yes, we are working to resolve it by getting married, it doesn't mean that it's ok.

Ryan and I talked long and deep after that Friday service about many areas in our lives, in our relationship, and in ourselves that we had done wrong or were doing wrong. Apologies were said, and changes were made. Changes that are so exciting that I simply cannot help but scream from the mountaintops how WONDERFUL our God is(!). We decided to rededicate our relationship to Christ and to God, and to be pure in Him from here on out until our wedding night.

**Pause for necessary excitement**

This was a VERY big step for us. I cannot even explain how EXCITED I am about this change.

But that wasn't the only area that we decided to change. I looked back at this past year in school. I remembered how HORRIBLE I was in my anger, in stress, and especially in my relationship with God. I pushed God away because I was dealing with the idea of death (more on that in a sec...). I would pray still, and actually prayed a lot. But that was it. I was stuck on a treadmill, not going anywhere in my walk with God. What was more, I was hurting myself because I had kicked Him out of my life. I was stressed all the time and let that stress deteriorate my body and my soul. I let it eat at me, causing me to be easily angered and completely void of His joy. It was one of the two hardest semesters I've ever had at school. It was awful. As I reflected, I saw how broken I was.

++ I have seen a lot of death in my life. Having known more than 14 people to die, and attending most of the funerals, I began to really understand just how mortal we are. I understood this fact and had gained a terror from it before any of my peers even experienced ONE death in their family (if any). I was alone in my anguish, having no one to rely on among my peers that understood. The only ones who understood were family, but none were my age. My family is so vast and age differed that I am the very youngest and the gap between me and the next youngest is still rather large, but the fact that the family is so big means that we are scattered, so the reliance of family was just about impossible anyways. I relied solely on God, since any form of a mentor or anything close in my life had been taken, several times. I couldn't trust having someone to follow because I knew I would lose them eventually. I was left with God and God alone. But after seeing so much death, I was so completely aware of mortality that I was constantly thinking about it. Always contemplating what it was like to die. Always wondering what it was like to live thereafter. Never understanding, never being reassured because it isn't often that someone comes back to tell us what it's like. I became completely terrified of death, of heaven. It sounds idiotic, but I was terrified of heaven. Not that it doesn't sound amazing, but that it was something beyond, something I couldn't understand, couldn't see, couldn't even fathom. I was terrified that my sin would condemn me to hell. But even if it didn't, a forever anywhere but earth was also terrifying. It was then that I started to run away from God. I couldn't even think about Him because it always lead my mind back to death, back to a fear so intense that I would get physically sick. It wasn't until after a year or so of living this way that I finally decided that the only way to get over it was to work through it. I never doubted my unbelief, I actually confessed it. I never denied that I was struggling, but I never expressed it to anyone because I felt that expressing it was somehow admitting that I didn't believe in God. Like talking about it spoke it into being, proved how much of a hold it really had on me. God knew I was struggling, and I would pray that He would rescue me from that unbelief like He had with the man who confessed his unbelief in the Bible. I told God that I simply couldn't understand, and that I believed in Him and loved Him, but I was scared. Yet even though I would do this on occasion, the fear still had a hold of me. The uncertainty, the doubt... I couldn't get rid of it. I told myself I was fine, that my relationship with God still existed (hardly.). I said an occasional prayer, but the truth is that God was very absent from my life. I kept praying that God would unveil Himself in a very big way so that I may once again understand how real He is (definitely not the right approach), all the while continuing my life with Ryan very apart from God. I was asking for the wrong favor.

+I have for the last couple months been becoming more and more aware of my need to grow with Him. I have pretty much gotten over the idea of death. I know now that it is inevitable, I cannot stop it, and like anything else in God's plan, it is necessary. God has been freeing me from the fear I had in the past. In this new freedom, I have been working on my faith in attempt to get right with God. I have been striving to pray without ceasing, because prayer is a very powerful and important part of our faith. I also started working on gaining a devotional life, since I was never very good at keeping up with my Bible reading.+

As I looked back on the state of my life for the past few years my eyes and ears opened to my spirit's suffering. I had hushed the cry for God from my spirit for so long that I couldn't hear it any longer, even though it had become so loud it could curdle the blood. As Ryan and I discussed all of our issues that Friday night, I knew that I had to work harder. To rededicate not only our relationship to God, but MY relationship to God. We vowed our purity to each other and to God, and I vowed to do my absolute best to walk more closely with God.

Everything has a reason. Everything is a part of God's plan.

I see now that the timing of our trip was planned perfectly by God. He knew what would be spoken that week. He knew where Ryan and I's hearts were. He shaped our lives by opening our eyes and using our hurt for His glory. I was the prodigal son, and He finally called me home, and I finally saw how much He missed me and how anxiously He had awaited my return. I now have a new-found joy within Him as I grow daily in prayer and reading. He has changed me in many ways, for the better.

Everything has a reason, and no reason is better than His.

In Christ, always,

♱Serenity Elizabeth∞Cat Simmons♱