“I’ll talk to you again in a week.” This innocuous statement cut deep, right down to my core. To that place where the voices whisper lies about who you are, in the shadows behind the pretty face you put on for the world.
I was driving the first half of the 12 hours home from a Joyce Meyer Love Life Women’s Conference when I heard that statement from a beloved friend. If you haven’t been to one of these events let me give you a little preview. Imagine a giant stadium filled with 24,000 women of all ethnicities, cultural and political backgrounds, and denominations. And we aren’t arguing, debating, or fighting. We are worshipping! When you hear your small voice carried along in the current of this incredible multitude, raising praise and prayer to our God, it is a supernatural experience. Women were in fellowship with me who had overcome poverty, sexual abuse, drug addiction, loss of loved ones, prison, and more. Just knowing a glacier tip of their stories and that we were all coming together to still worship and praise His name was incredible. I was high. High on spiritual fervor and excited/nervous to get back to my own life and enact anything and everything the Holy Spirit demanded of me. I wanted more than anything to seek Him and to turn my life and actions over to Him. But on the road home, I was quickly dashed with a bucket of ice-cold reality in the form of a simple statement…
My loved one had been out with friends and began to tell me a venomous story about someone’s son’s sin issue. I use the word venomous intentionally. You know if you’ve been spending some time in the word of God that your spirit softens and opens like a little flower and suddenly everything seems hopeful and beautiful again and you’re crying for no reason. Suffice to say, you’re raw from a close encounter with God, the heart-calluses from the world sloughed off. So gossip, abuse of God’s name, bad words, junky television, etc. suddenly becomes like venom and you feel the sting and want to escape. But listen, this was a crazy long drive, and I was thankful for the conversation, so I tried this approach instead of throwing the phone across the car, “Hey, let’s talk about something else.”
“Why?” my loved one demanded. “I’m just trying to tell you what happened.”
“Well…I just, you know, came from this conference, and I don’t want to hear gossip and stuff like that…” Weak response, I know.
And then the burning words, “Um...OK, I’ll guess I’ll talk to you again in a week.” Mic drop. In other words, “I’ll talk to you when this phase wears off and you’re the normal Marissa I’m accustomed to, the one who likes gossip, no, loves to gossip, and you’re over this super-Christian bull-pucky that you’re pretending to be into right now.”
Ouch.
However, the hurt from the words came from the sting of truth, not from her, so please don’t judge my friend. She was basing her comment on analysis from a pattern of behavior over the years and years we’ve known one another. She’s used to interacting with me in a certain way and probably felt like I was judging her for a behavior that was previously encouraged. After we hung up, my voices jumped on the band wagon and viciously reminded me, “You didn’t stick with guitar, dance, a myriad of instruments, a makeup direct-sales business, a jewelry direct-sales business, two blogs, ventriloquism (I was 9…give me a break voices), becoming a vegetarian, basketball, writing your novel, painting, relationship after relationship has failed and the one that you persisted in was abuse-riddled and ended in divorce. You’ve been to a “Church Camp” before and it obviously didn’t stick. You’re a running joke to your friends and family. What’s changed? Nothing. You are a QUITTER.”
As I continued the drive, each of my failed starts flashed before my eyes, and I remembered the enthusiasm with which I started each one, the hope for finding some purpose, some better woman, at the end of each rabbit hole. Every search ended in loss of interest, a dwindling of passion, or getting caught up in laziness, worldly pursuits, or another new relationship. Each shameful memory reminded me that I would probably fail with my search for God in my life and I would go back to just being me.
BUT GOD
That comment has stayed with me. One week after the comment, I finally wrote about it. One month later, I had completed my first in-depth Bible study and worked my way through the entire book of Genesis. I didn’t start the YouTube channel I thought about starting, I didn’t begin writing a new novel, nor did I order a bulk amount of tiaras and boas to start a home-based business (don’t ask). I just started simply by seeking Him and spending more time with The King than the television. I looked for ways to be kind to people in my life. I gave money to a lady on the street, even though it was inconvenient to pull over in traffic. I found God in the moment and focused on transforming my routine into sacred. I found myself surprised again and again by the feeling of joy in these little instances. 6 months in and 3 bible studies down, 1 year...a blog and a book are in the works. I’m happily married. But with God, not on my own.
Before God = Quitter
After God = Finisher
“When He had said this, He shouted with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out! And out walked the man who had been dead, his hands and feet wrapped in burial cloths, and with a [burial] napkin bound around his face. Jesus said to them, Free him of the burial wrappings and let him go.”
Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead...after four days! Against the odds of scientific impossibility based on analysis of past deaths. Lazarus was bound in his burial wrappings, trapped by his past I guess you could say. A burial napkin bound his face. Lazarus could not speak; he could barely hop out of the darkness. No more will death surround and silence me. No more will my past prevent me from coming out of the darkness to Him. I will surround myself with loved ones who will help me out of the death of past sin. Let me go, past.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
Leave the past in the tomb, get some Godly friends to help pull you out of those burial cloths, and begin to emerge into that creation God is urging you to be. Welcome to the light, your future.