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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AuthorChristian Singer-Songwriter, Writer, Hockey Wife, & Fitness Fanatic. Nomad with North Dakota roots. Archives
January 2020
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