Warning Signs

 Lately, I've been doing a lot of looking at my life in review. It's been one of those years of addressing and verbalizing the unspoken, answering questions long hidden, and bringing to light things swept years under the proverbial rug. Trauma of any kind will do that to you and unless you name the un-named things, they will continue to haunt you. Limit you. Speak lies to you. 

When I first started this blog back in 2014, I did it with the intent to document my personal journey to Grace - to discovering God in the dark places - in hopes that someone out there in the same situation would find hope and know they're not alone. I think somehow, at the time, I believed there'd be an ending to this process... that at a certain point, I'd arrive. Eight years later, I can honestly say that, while I've found much, I've lost much and still have much to search for. On some deep, inner level, I've yet to be fully rescued. Fully found. 

The uncovering, unpacking, untangling continues and I keep making myself turn and look the pain in the face and dare to believe Grace waits for me in the shadows. 

The writer who recently said all life hinges on the turn wasn't wrong. At any point, we're either curving towards life or curling towards death. We're either attaching to the Vine or tearing ourselves away from Him and choosing to wither in our suffering rather than be pruned for Glory. 

As many situations have passed before my memory in recent months and I've been forced to acknowledge some aching wounds that have never been healed, I've had an epiphany of sorts: Perhaps pain is God's wake up call. Maybe, in walking through hard things, we are kept from complacency. Were we to have the care-free life we always talk about, always want... were our dreams to all work out and our hopes to come to life as we wish, would we actually cool in compassion, dull in spirituality, distance in relationship? Would our prosperity cut us off from the real world where pain is a given by-product of the Fall? 

Reflecting back, I wonder if all the heart-breaking things have actually done me a service by steering me away from regret by teaching me the value of life and love. As much as I resisted it - as much as I never wanted or asked for it - it is undeniable that pain gave me a harsh but valuable gift: perspective. 

I know for a fact I wouldn't have the deep loyalty to those I love if my heart hadn't known betrayal. I wouldn't have the urgency when it comes to forgiving what you should and expressing what you mean and loving while you can  if I hadn't confronted death and the sad fact that you may never your chance again. I wouldn't have the ability to sit and hear out someone's inner silence and help them find their voice if I hadn't lost my own a few times along the way. 

Deny pain as a teacher, and you push aside one of the very things that can change your life trajectory. 

Thinking of all the tear-filled moments in the past has gotten me clarifying the future. Because it's bound to happen if your eyes are open...

Being a guest at so many funerals and sitting at the bedside of death on multiple occasions makes you ask how you want to end someday... and what the in-between can look like so you don't wish you'd done things differently. 

Being rejected makes you desire to never inflict that pain on someone else, so you learn how to talk things through and stand for love and community - how to stick it out with others when it's a bond worth fighting for. 

Being taken advantage of makes you want to be better about boundaries and guarding your time, your energy, your mental health, your space so that you don't cast your resources at the feet of those who will only trample on you in disrespect. 

Being doubted makes you determine all the more to believe in the talents and value of others, inspiring them to go live limitless lives without judgment and without hypocrisy. To never place anyone in categories or see them through a lens of clouded personal opinion but to let their stories speak. 

Not being apologized to makes you seek restoration when you can all the more. Makes you want to set things right when it depends on you and to never leave another in unresolved pain, pretending like nothing ever happened. 

See, all the things I've walked through, however difficult they were, shaped who I became. Taught me lessons. They were warning signs that stopped me in my tracks and made me ask, "Where do I want to go from here?" 

If suffering is actually God's way of redirecting us, then shame on us for writing off its benefits! 

Not that the actual things we go through are in themselves 'good' but that they, in the hands of a masterful God, are used for good to help us re-think where we want to end up someday when it's all said and done. 

Maybe you're right in the middle of the worst thing ever and you're wondering how in the world, in all this world, Grace can or will show up. How this hardship could possibly be the makings of redemption when all you want is just for the pain to go away. I get that. I've said that out loud, too. Many times. 

But through all these times and, I'm sure, more to come, the Hand of God was traceable. Even if it took me months or years to notice it. And the things I wrote off in the beginning eventually came back around to make sense down the road. I understood some why's later on. Not all of them, but a few. And those few have given me faith that all the digging and stripped away and sorting through and processing has been worth it. Because in my mess, I discovered the heart of God. And I pray that someday, the same will be true for you.