I keep reminiscing about the past and thinking if I could only get there again. It wasn’t perfect, yet I was thriving. However, I left that place because I felt I was lacking. Then I processed it through the lens of a God that uses everything for good and felt a new hope.
Throughout the past near decade, I’ve learned that being at the top of a career doesn’t satisfy. I’ve learned that losing 40 pounds, being fit, and working out 300 days out 375 doesn’t satisfy. I’ve learned that relationships are always imperfect and they do not satisfy.
With a heart that felt nothing, bible verses became an affront and anger felt like kin. I felt the anguish of not having an answer, of there not being an answer.
I know what it feels like to desire change, but not be able stop the self-destruction. I know what it feels like to break a life and to forget hope.
After years of God never giving up, always with me, always protecting, always providing, always faithful, but continually breaking, I am now broken. Losing the capable self I once knew, I am now fully aware of my utmost need, knowing that I am unable to do anything apart from Him. And turning full-circle, all I want now is to return to my former, simpler life that I was so quick to leave behind.
But Christ says, “Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:19)
I’ve come to the conclusion that I can never go back to the former things exactly how they were. God has used every shattered thing for good and even at a point that feels very close to the bottom, I find that I am in exactly the right place for Him to use me in a new way.
When we’ve expended all of our energy, when we’re at the end of ourselves, when our desires have finally been refined of the dross, when all we want is to seek and know Him more and we know it’s only by His Spirit, this may feel like the bottom, but might it actually be the top?
I think in heaven, maybe the oven dings and then the angels rejoice over another one of us having the self burned away, and ready to serve, and to serve for God’s glory.
So, if you feel wrung out, desolate, destroyed, and at your very end, I say, it’s time to expectantly look to our friend Jesus and rejoice in what’s next. I know I am.
“There isn’t one of us who doesn’t need key people who believe that the broken are the most beloved, that the busted are the brave, that the limping can lead-and that everything that looks like its breaking apart might actually be falling together.” -The Broken Way, Ann Voskamp
