Gonna Be Startin' Somethin'

The one of you who reads this blog is probably completely and utterly shocked that I am actually posting.  To be honest, I thought I was done blogging.  Then something happened.  Something so big, so earth shattering that my desire to write things down came back with a huge force.  Do you wanna know what that big thing is? 

God 

I know that may sound cliché or even a little ridiculous, but there is no other way to say it.  In the last year God has been bringing me to a place where I’m broken and completely without a thought as to what to do. 

With the move from Spokane in the winter, I was brought into a situation where I completely had to rely on Him for answers to my 612 questions and anxieties about moving to the unknown.  It was through that experience I learned that God is in control of every detail, even before I realize it’s a detail.  His answers to those details far outperform my expectations. 

Then the new routine happened.  While I was prepared to trust Him for the answers to the unknown, I was unprepared to trust Him with life in the unknown.  If you can talk about things that stress a marriage, things like moving, finances, and new jobs top the list.  We had all of those in one month.  The stress of all that brought health issues, which brought our marriage into the eye of the storm.  For the first time since Zoe was born, N and I were in the storm together, trying to determine what the plan was.  You know what we did? 

We tried to control

We worshipped idols that put things in our lives ahead of God

We became critical, negative and irritable

We lashed out and blamed each other

We wallowed in self-pity

We began our cycle:  trust God, go in His path, get stressed, put God in a small corner of your life, wreck havoc….

Here’s the best part of this cycle.  Instead of continuing to try to do this on our own, we became part of a community that isn’t afraid to hold you accountable, isn’t afraid to show you your faults and isn’t afraid to guide you back to God.

For the first time in our marriage, N and I broke.  We both lay there completely and utterly broken.  We were shattered without any kind of idea what this meant.  We both had to acknowledge the things we were doing that were sin in our lives.  We had to get real and intimate and because we were broken, we didn’t have the energy to continue to hide. 

For me, I struggle with feeling unlovable.  I sometimes feel that if I don’t do something absolutely perfect, people will see the real me and they’ll find me lacking. 

I also struggle with being submissive.  I’m not good at it.  It contradicts me being able to prove that I’m lovable. 

Do you know what God tells me to do?  Submit to Him.  Submit to N. 

Do you know what else He tells me?  His love is sufficient.

I’ve been a Christian since I was 8.  I’ve been in church, Sunday School, Bible studies, theology classes at my Christian college and I own 3 Bibles, I’ve read the Bible cover to cover.  Yet Satan had such a hold on my thoughts that I felt unworthy, unlovable and was driven to control so that I could prove people wrong. 

I was allowing sin to have a stronghold in my life and I was totally unaware I was doing it.  I had a fear that if I didn’t continue doing it, life would crumble, people would leave me and I would be alone.

That is how incredibly talented Satan is.  How incredibly manipulative he is.  We can sin and not even be aware we’re doing it.  The world tells us the same thing.  Because of our insecurities or struggles, we believe the lie. 

For the first time in my life, those feelings of needing to control, of needing to prove my worth are dying.  Our marriage is on a level that it has never been.  We have an intimacy that I’ve longed for.  We had to break in order for God to come in. 

This is the beginning of my personal revival. 

This is God.