I can't believe this is my life. The good, the bad, all of it. More importantly, I can't believe God has taught me the things I am about to share with you. The more trials God has taken me though, the more I've changed. I never wanted to face so much adversity. But I have. & it’s changed me in ways I never expected. It’s made me realize things I never would have understood had I never gone through such trials. I went from being a hopeful Jesus-loving high schooler > to a broken-hearted Christian lost in the waves of life, afraid to trust God > to a hopeful messenger, just praying the right people read this. Here's my story. *Disclaimer: This isn't a pity party post. I have many blessings in this life, & I am very thankful. I always have been & always will be. What I've been through pales in comparison to what many others have faced, but it doesn't degrade the difficult times I've done through. We each have a unique life experience, & today I honor that. This is my experience with the storms of life.* Ever been through something so tough that you read the Bible differently? I started reading the Bible in high school. I became a sold-out believer & definitely faced some adversity... but very little compared to what I have faced in the past few years. Back then I would read verses like Jeremiah 17:7, smile, & share them without a second thought. Example of 2011 Abby: "and blessed is he who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him." What a great verse! I pray your confidence is in Him! (insert smiley faces) “What a relevant verse,” I thought... “so quotable!” So I would share them with a bunch of smiley faces & expect people to appreciate them. (And a lot of people did!) Lots of older Christians were SO proud of me for openly seeking God as a high schooler. It was a pretty radical thing to do, & I couldn’t keep quiet about God’s love for all of us. The words were so pure & hopeful to me. My faith was committed, but it was about to get so much deeper. Little did I know how much more those words would mean to me in the future than they already did. Don't get me wrong, my intentions were genuine; My heart was committed to God; I sought His will; I served others using the gifts He gave me; I faithfully tried my best to do what you’re “supposed” to do. I took words like “the Lord has promised good to me” very seriously. I expected great things in my future (as we all should), & I followed God as wholeheartedly as I could (as we also all should). It was a very sweet period of time in my walk with God. It was foundational in my undying belief in God & His sovereignty over everything. But then, all of a sudden, a lot of spiritually crushing things happened. Things that made me weep. Things that made me beg the questions: "GOD, DO YOU SEE ME? CAN YOU HEAR ME? WHAT IS GOING ON?" For probably the first time in my life, I saw how following Jesus and having things go your way did NOT correlate. Sure, I had seen other believers face heartache before. Things hadn't always gone my way either, but with the magnitude of these trials, this was the first time it really hit me. The questions flooded my mind. Could I really trust God now? What was the point of doing all the right things if the people who didn't even acknowledge Jesus got preferential treatment? How was I supposed to trust God with my future anything? I knew life was hard, but I never thought it could be this tough to be a Christian. I knew to be SO humbly thankful that I lived in a free country, had a roof over my head, had never been abused or stolen from or anything like that... but these trails were the beginning of a deeply difficult spiritual season, and it was a rude awakening to me. Maybe you've been there too. At first I took all these awful waves as a sign that life was hopeless, even as a Christian - Just being honest. I felt like a kid who just found out that their favorite superhero was a phony. That it was just a guy in a costume all along. The house of cards came falling down, I woke up from the dream, etc. Don't get me wrong here, I never once doubted the existence of God, His undying love for me, or His ability to control all things. I had hidden those truths in my soul for 20 years... they weren't going anywhere. (Thanks, people who built me up as a kid!) What I did wrestle with is this: How in the world am I supposed to make sense of all the hardships I'm facing. I know the truth about God. So why could I be facing all of this? Wasn't I the one who would crack open their Bible in the cafeteria even when people teased me? Wasn't I the one stayed away from all the things God told me to stay away from? Wasn't I the one who prayed for those who blew me off, excluded me, made fun of me, hated me, etc? Yes. I was. I was the girl who did all of those things. Because God told me to be that girl, I was that girl. And though I did it all out of love for God & others, I think a selfish part of me always kind of assumed that if I walked the walk in my daily life - that God would honor me with a really great life... And He did in so many ways. He definitely did. He brought me the greatest husband & kept me from any type of relationship baggage in the past. He gave me a close family & some really amazing friends. He gave me opportunities to find my gifts, grow them, and use them in meaningful ways. God has given me a lot of amazing things in this life. They are somewhat due to the positive choices I made while obeying Jesus, but they are all ultimately because of His grace in my life. Even when I've been selfish or impatient or whiny, He's given me good things, day after day after day. But He's also given me heartaches so deep I thought my spirit was dying. So I've wondered: How can such good things and such bad things come from the heart of the same loving Father? I feel God tell me this: "It's not about the good and bad, Abby. It's about the BEST." What does that mean? After years of dramatic highs and lows (that I'm definitely still going through today), I think I'm starting to understand. Can I help you understand? Hear me out if you will. In high school, the more I sought God, the more compelled I felt to pursue music & ministry as a career. There's been no denying it. I feel so passionate about those things, it's hard to contain sometimes. I want it so badly. God sees that, and He says, "I'm excited for you. Let's get you ready." So He surrounds me with blessings for the journey, He supplies me with: - Family & friends to support me when I get desperately exhausted - Gifts that I can still use even as I'm training them - The stability of food/shelter/whatever God thinks I need to keep me afloat as God leads me forward in life toward my calling, AKA the things He plans to use me for And then He brings the waves. Some of us are quick to blame Satan for all of the bad things that happen to us, like God would really let Satan have THAT much power to put us through THAT much purposeless misery. No... I believe the waves are God's doing most of the time. Look at every major prophet, missionary, preacher, etc in the Bible. God allowed so many waves, and they only strengthened their testimony. And that's where many of us stand today. In the waves. With just enough time between each one to catch our breath & hang on for dear life. Calling our mom, crying out for hope, begging God for an answer, basically just "getting by"... And then the next wave comes. "WHAT IS GOING ON, GOD? DO YOU SEE ME?" And after a while, we get frustrated, maybe even mad. It all seems so impossible. we are trapped & miserable. Begging God for an escape. We feel so lost and wounded. This is where it ends. The wounds turn into scars... But the scars start to remind us of all the waves we've already survived. And suddenly, in the midst of the storm, we begin to see things we never saw before. We see how God has kept us afloat when we honestly thought we were done for. We see how God has positioned us within the storm but not allowed it to overtake us. We see how all those people around us were sent by God to help us make it through. We see that God was there all along. AND we see that none of it killed us. We actually started learning how to thrive in the chaos. Unfortunate as it may seem, it became our new normal, & once we accepted that, we began moving forward. Still stuck in the storm, but finally feeling some sense of hope. We finally saw God. In the waves. In the weeping. In the anger. In the frustration. In the doubt. In the impatience. We saw HIM in all of it. & suddenly a great hope arose from within us, because maybe just maybe, this storm was exactly where God wanted us to be. And that was a really incredible thing to realize: Because if God wanted us to be there, then that was where we were SUPPOSED to be. And if God intentionally put us there, suddenly all of that misery had PURPOSE. The purpose was probably still unknown. But even if you never came to recognize it, God had always known the purpose. & if you would just keep trusting God, He would see you through all of it, even in the midst of all the insanity you'd lived through. You'd walked through the fire. For such a long time. But it never consumed you. Ever. Not once did it completely overtake you. It all had purpose, & that made it okay to move forward > trusting God, confidence in Him. I'd call that DISCIPLINE or REFINING... but that is just too brief a way to describe seasons so difficult to bear, so I got more thorough. Maybe God's been turning you into a diamond all along & you didn't even know it yet. Maybe now you know. I write all of this to you, because it is so fresh in my life. Sometimes, I wish I wasn't always in the waves these days, but if I wasn't, I wouldn't be getting all of this understanding. We learn the most in our trials, & that's another reason why they're worth the hardship. We gain more than we lost in these times. They make us who we are - Who God really made us to be - Wiser, Better, Tougher, Stronger. I wonder how many of you have been needing to hear all of this. There are 2 types of people that need this. 1. Those of you who are in the waves right now wondering if there's any purpose to the madness. 2. Those of you who are headed for greater missions in which you will need preparation for the storms ahead of you. Don't be afraid of them, just be aware of what's going on & why so you can weather them better than I did at first. I want you to be wiser than I was! Keep in mind, I wish none of this upon any of you. I hope your dreams come true and your path is straight. I hope nothing hurts you along the way. But that's just so unrealistic. The more we press into who God has created us to be & what He wants us to accomplish, the more waves we will have to withstand. With great calling comes great responsibility. I hope this meets you where you're at & gives you some peace, because honestly once you realize that the storms of life are purposeful, whether God ordained them or not, you can learn to really take the most out of all of this. To my high school self, posting happy little verses about hope in trials, I'm proud of you for sharing your faith, but someday those verses will hit you much harder. When they do, you will actually be thankful to be maturing in your faith. It's not that you weren't a real Christian before. It's just that now, you are gaining more spiritual credibility so you can reach more people someday. You will never look at the Bible the same. It will continue to become more and more real to you as you grow through the trials and joys of life. Don't be afraid of this change, embrace every scar as a reminder of just how far God has taken you & how much farther He has for you to go. Buckle up. From, Future Abby! But back to Jeremiah 17:7 "...blessed is he who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him," ... At first it was a sweet verse about trusting God. Then, setback after setback, it became a verse that hurt to read. It was hard to read, because you had a hard time trusting God as you weathered the endless waves with no hope in sight. Then, after some miraculous realization, you got it. The waves were still coming, but you began to see God in them. Actually you began to see God in all of it. & in one miraculous realization, your whole life turned around. None of the circumstances had even changed yet, but your heart had. Your whole life had caved in before your very eyes. Dreams died & people walked away. Your life had turned to dust. & in that stage of desperation, you remembered the truth: God performs miracles from the dust. He raises people up from the ashes everyday. He heals scars, & makes the afflicted one's ministry all the more effective. And in those truths, you rise up and believe again. You read these verses again & believe these verses again. But with a depth of belief & expectation that you never anticipated. And you wouldn't change a thing. Written with love, Abby Grimaldi #BornToShine
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I am not afraid. I was made for this. #BornToShine Hey, it's Abby! One time my biggest dream didn't come true. I was so crushed, I seriously wondered if I'd ever be able to dream again. I was so scared to get my hopes up again. But God slowly gave me the strength & wisdom I desperately needed to dream again. It's time you join me. Let's dream again! #BornToShine is all about finding our dreams & chasing them wholeheartedly. But that's always easier said than done! Chasing a dream is thrilling, but also very difficult to do! Personally, I think the hardest thing about having a dream is allowing yourself to actually GO for it. It can be really scary to invest... & work... & pray for something that’s not guaranteed. As much as we wish for certainty, we're just not going to get it most of the time. If all great things in life were guaranteed, they wouldn't be so special to achieve or attain! My favorite skater is Gracie Gold. #RealLifeElsa I've actually met her a couple times because she trained at the same facility as Rocco in LA! Talk about a celeb sighting! She was so nice & let me get a fan-girl pic with her. Haha. She's won the US Women's National Gold Medal 2 times & even won a Bronze medal at the 2014 Winter Olympics! A couple days ago, I was watching a bunch of her past performances. I absolutely LOVE watching triumphant skates like hers! I've noticed that the general reaction when a skater nails their routine is to... 1. Strike their final pose 2. Start crying 3. Cover their face with their hands in shock 4. Wave their arms in the air like they just conquered the world I LOVE IT! It's just so sweet to see someone's dream come true before your very eyes. My favorite victory reaction of Gracie's was after her final skate at the 2016 US Nationals. She won two years before that but didn't snag the gold medal in 2015. I bet there were so many long days where she wondered if she would ever taste the sweetness of triumph like that again. She jumped up & down after her final score was announced at the 2016 competition, & it was really the picture of a dream come true! *As a pro hockey wife, I admit that I get overly attached to athlete's personal stories & triumphs... I can't help it! LOL* These skaters put their whole lives on the line (in so many ways!) to chase a dream. I think that's why their reactions are SO intense after they nail a routine. Their dream-defining moment definitely wasn't guaranteed. All they could do was give it their all (day after day for most of their life) & hope that they would eventually taste the sweetness of victory. This kind of risk makes the reward so much sweeter. It just means so much more at that point. Since so much can go wrong in a skate (or at a game, or in an audition, or during a test, or at a job interview, etc.), basically no dream is guaranteed. I'm convinced that this is why SO many of us are afraid to dream. "HONESTLY... What if I put YEARS of my life into a dream that NEVER comes true. How will I ever cope with that?" Let me just tell you: Been there, done that! You will survive. I promise. Numerous times I have invested my heart & SOUL into a dream I believed God placed in my heart because it was going to come true. Sometimes these dreams have come true. Other times they have not. In college, I spent several years preparing for my greatest dream to date at the time: becoming Miss North Dakota & competing at Miss America! I dreamt of what that crowning moment would feel like every day. I hoped & prayed. I created so many speeches for the groups I wanted to talk with. I practiced & prepared SO thoroughly for every area of competition. I spent my weekends developing my platform. I spent my free time at appearances. I thought through onstage questions & studied politics. I practiced doing my hair & makeup. I worked out & ate with my goals in full focus. Day after day, I joyfully & tirelessly chased this dream. I left no stone unturned in terms of preparation. I was ready. It was my sport, & I LOVED it! I won local titles, scholarships, competition categories, preliminary high scores, etc But the big dream... it never came true for me. It hit me like a pile of bricks. What a rough night. Ever been there? For a while I felt so confused. I was just so afraid to dream again. it was a lot to take in. Maybe you've had a conversation like this with God too: "Could I have been wrong about all of this?" God - No, it just seems like it. "Did You really allow me to work towards this... only to experience the absolute death of a dream? One that was deep within my soul?" God -Yes. This is how it needed to be. It's for the best. "Why, God? Why?" God -In time you'll see it wasn't all for waste, I promise. Trust me! And it wasn't. I knew it wouldn't be. I always knew God had my best interest at heart, I just had to get past that shock phase in order to MOVE FORWARD. As time passed by, I reflected on the reasons why God placed this dream in my spirit. I reached probably thousands of people as a titleholder. That's the most important thing. But on top of that, I did so much work on myself, my skills, my style, finding myself, etc. I also created #BornToShine Ministry in that time! That's just the short list. It took a while to get over that devastating loss of a dream, but ultimately I gained more from the process of chasing that dream than I ever lost by not seeing the dream come true. Listen to me: God doesn't waste anything! Don't be afraid to dream! Long story short, I believe that when we are walking closely with God, He places divine dreams inside of each of us - some that will come true & some that won’t. For the dreams that don’t come true: God will repurpose all the time & energy you’ve invested & give you something even more remarkable. Since that experience, I've refocused my energy & time toward doing... a lot more of what I was doing while preparing for pageants! Writing music, performing, writing, speaking, exercising, eating healthy, etc. I've learned to treat each prior experience in my life as a launching pad toward something greater in the future. I encourage you to do the same. Sometimes my present life seems so insignificant, but as soon as I start viewing my day-to-day life as a dress rehearsal for something greater, I feel so rejuvenated! Staying inspired is up to you, but I'm going to do everything in my power to help you out with that! Everyone needs a good pep talk, so that's what you can expect from these #BornToShine posts! To anyone hopeful that 2018 will be the year they finally realize a dream or even just see a glimmer of hope: Keep believing! Keep going! Victory (regardless of circumstance) is a choice we make every day. On days when I was moving forward past a shattered dream, I had to actively choose to live in victory - not defeat. So wherever you're at on your dream-chasing journey, let's get after it together! I wish I could sit down with each of you & hear about your biggest dreams. I would LOVE to cheer you on in 2018. Shoot me a comment or message if you’re on Team #BornToShine with me this year, & make sure to follow me on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter & say HI. LOVE YOU GUYS! THANKS FOR READING! -Abby Grimaldi #BornToShine Happy 2018, Born To Shine readers!
If you're brand new to my blog, WELCOME! I am SO excited for what God will do through #BornToShine this year! To be real upfront: I know many of you feel your dreams have fallen stagnant - or maybe you're between dreams - or maybe you're looking for a dream! The thing is...it's ok. It happens. That's why I'll be here all year reminding YOU that you honestly are BORN TO SHINE! No matter how exciting or blah you may think your life is...God has great intentions with your future! The amazing thing about following Jesus is that God can take any "mundane" life & turn it into a grand adventure. I've had a number of exciting moments & great successes, but I've also had lots of lengthy seasons of waiting between the exciting peaks. I've come to find that since all of us will be waiting at some points in life, most of us will struggle with contentment from time to time. We may also compare our "small stage" or "boring life" to the highlight reel of those we admire or even envy. Beyond that, what if someone is doing the exact same thing to us! It's a foolish chain, & I say we approach 2018 differently! That being said, I would LOVE for this to be the year we all embrace where we are in life & learn how to chase our dreams with a sense of gratitude, hope, and most importantly FAITH in God's blueprints. A lot of you know I am married to a stud! If you follow hockey, you probably know my husband as Rocco Grimaldi, UND & Team USA alum & current Colorado Avalanche prospect! I could go on & on about his hockey achievements, but the core reason that he's my husband is because of his inspiring faith. He is so committed to God, it's incredible. He has overcome much adversity as the smallest player in the NHL, pushed past seasons of lengthy waiting, & worked through a season-ending knee injury several years ago. He was just named an AHL All-Star, & I am a proud hockey wife! Anyway, here's why I bring him up: So a couple nights ago, we were driving home from one of his games, & we started talking about our future ministry dreams. We are so inspired by people like Tim Tebow! He has built an amazing ministry! As some of you know, I LOVE all things social media, branding, marketing, etc... To help Rocco begin thinking about who he could reach & how, I asked him a bunch of questions. This is the SAME exact process I used for 2 years while I dreamed-up & developed Born To Shine! Do you want to serve God with your life? Are you looking for direction & a place to start as the new year begins?? Take a look at the following questions & start brainstorming for yourself! What are your goals for this year? What do you want to do with your life? What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind? Who do you want to reach? Who do you find yourself praying for? Who around you could use spiritual encouragement? What makes you feel alive? What do you speak most passionately about? What are the key lessons/stories in your life? What inspires you the most? Who do you naturally feel the most compassion for? What are you good at? What are the needs around you? Finally, ask God to continue helping you in this process! Dear God, Please bless this reader with wisdom & passion in 2018. Show them Your purposes for their gifts this year. Open doors for each of them to serve you & experience Your sovereignty in their lives. Give them the grit to move forward as dream-chasers. Provide encouragers in each of their paths - people who will lift them up & bring out the best in them - people who will provide them with sound council & Christ-like support! Bless my readers with the courage to be bold in their faith & to share it as often as possible. Have your way in their future & amaze them with the very best that you have to offer. Prompt them to know Your Word & obey it diligently. Lead them to the Truth & keep them from the lies all around. Protect with spirits & guide them as they embrace their #BornToShine identity this year! AMEN. God bless you guys! Connect with me on Instagram/Facebook/Twitter, so we can be friends! Here's to a great 2018! Abby Grimaldi #Born To Shine |
AuthorChristian Singer-Songwriter, Writer, Hockey Wife, & Fitness Fanatic. Nomad with North Dakota roots. Archives
January 2020
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