This is a pretty untraditional Christmas post and I usually don't share this intimate of details about my personal life, but it's out of our experiences that God uses us to minister to others and to encourage and inspire, right?
I've been struggling a little the past few months. Just admitting that is hard. This Christmas has been a little difficult for me.
If there's one thing that I pray for most frequently for myself, I would have to say that it's humility. Time and time again, I find myself asking the Lord to humble me. Because I'm a girl with a lot of pride and sometimes, it's a struggle to keep that pride in check. It's like a shrubbery that you have to keep pruning back. And oftentimes, I find myself asking for the Lord to humble me by whatever means He chooses. Whatever it takes.
Sometimes God answers our prayers with a "no," sometimes He answers with a "wait." But sometimes He answers with a "yes" and gives us exactly what we ask for. Really, be very conscious and intentional about what you pray for.
I got my prayer answered with a "yes." The past several months, God has ushered me into a season of humility that I've never felt before. And it's been hard. So hard. Humility is never an easy thing. But the Lord's used so much to begin humbling my heart.
In no particular order, first, there's my driver's license. While most young adults are expected to have their driver's license by high school graduation, I'm still twenty-years-old and working toward getting my license. With holiday busyness, my Christmas deadline for getting my license had to be postponed and pushed forward into the new year. Admitting this and having to turn down invitations and social opportunities because of it is very humbling.
Secondly, I'm completely unemployed now and I'm under financial strain this holiday season. For a proud girl who has a very difficult time asking for help and accepting offered help from anyone, it's been very humbling having to ask my parents to buy for me little necessities because the price of small things add up.
Thirdly, I've have had to work at forgiving some individuals. Going head-to-head with your pride and its justification of how you should be treated is hard to do.
Fourth, life threw me an unexpected curveball in the second half of this year and I was thrown off balance. I was very abruptly reminded in the midst of my easy little life that there are things that happen that I can't prepare for. That I can't always anticipate. That there are things in my life that I can't be in control of. For a girl who loves planning and anticipating and having everything in smooth running order, this is a really really hard fact to accept.
Fifth, I spent a few days out of town on vacation with my parents a couple weeks ago for the first time in almost two years. And I confess, there was a lot I was hoping to clear my mind and my heart from. But as I was in Florida and as I returned, I realized those things- the passions and love in my heart- was not something that I could remove myself with my strong will or all of the determination in me. Teeth gritted and knuckles white, I realized that you just can't remove from your heart what God has put there. That is an aspect of myself that I simply can't control- that I absolutely have to give God full authority over to do what He wants with it. And that lack of control both humbles me and terrifies me as much as it did when I first recognized it nearly two years ago.
Sixth, I had to humble myself a couple months back and make a serious apology. I had to make myself vulnerable and show a broken piece of myself that very few even of my closest circle have seen. That gave my pride a big pruning to admit that I had treated someone wrongly and to have to remove the face of composure and strength that the world only sees and let my weaknesses show.
Seventh, I've prayed for others and encouraged, inspired, and gave advice for their situations from my own experiences. I've watched God move in those situations, which has been awesome and has been a blessing to my heart that I rejoice and thank God for! But it's been humbling and difficult when to my physical eyes right now my own circumstances from whence I encourage those others seems at a standstill.
And eighth, as another year draws to a close, I've had to look back over the past two years and admit to myself that I have no more direction and guidance for my future career now than I did this time last year. And it's plagued me with stress of the unknown ahead and with the feeling again of lostness.
I've been very humbled lately in the past months. I've been very broken. I've shed some tears, I've felt some hurt, and I've asked God a lot of "why?"
But I wouldn't trade it. I really wouldn't. Because amidst the stress and the mental exhaustion, the brokenness and the humility, God is taking me to a place that I've never been before.
He's opened my eyes to realize how loved I truly am. I mean, really, I am one loved young woman. Give love and love comes back maybe? I don't know.
But not having my driver's license yet has shown me just how many people genuinely care about me rather than judging me based off of my skills or my abilities or even off of my achievements. How many people who don't form their opinion of me from whether I drive on my own yet or not, whether I have a steady paying job yet or whether I have plans to pursue a college education. They understand where I am and they look at who I am, my character, my heart, my love for the Lord and for others, and they love me for me. They respect me for me. And it has amazed me profoundly how many people are willing to meet me halfway or even pick me up at my house or drive me home far out of their way to make a situation work just because they genuinely want to see me and spend time with me. Just because they care about me and are willing to offer me a ride.
Not having a job and needing to ask for financial help has reminded me of what a blessing of wonderful parents that I have. It's shown me that no matter what comes in my life, even in the life of my own family in the future, that my parents will always be there with abounding love and open arms to help me however they can.
And having to apologize to my friend... That has reminded me over and over again in my hardest moments just how unconditionally the Lord loves me. It has reminded me that His love is unshakable. That with all of my fears, my weaknesses, my mistakes, my faults, and my broken pieces, He still loves me and accepts me just as I am. Even in so many times when I have mistreated Him, blamed Him, hardened my heart and drawn cold toward Him, even when I think He couldn't possibly still love me, He leaves me speechless time and time again as He proves that there is nothing I can possibly do that will make Him any less willing to forgive me and that will make Him love me any less through it all. And even through His conviction on my heart leading me to my apology, God was gracious: my friend I apologized to was gentler, more caring, and more understanding than I could've ever expected.
God's taught me that His plans and His timing isn't the same for everyone. That He has a timeline in ordering my steps and the events of my life that is unique and perfectly tailored just for me and the plans He has for my future. I can't see what's ahead but He can. And I'm learning that God does a lot more work behind the scenes than we see physical evidence of in the moment because He works from the inside out.
God has brought me to a place of such desperation and confusion and brokenness of pride that I have had no choice but to let go. In so many ways, He's brought me back to two years ago, to the very beginning when He first called me forward onto this incredible spiritual journey of learning to trust Him with everything in me. To give Him control of every part of my life. To be obedient and follow His leading no matter what it cost me. And I've been brought back to that place of total abandoned surrender to Him. To that place of faith and trust and hope that I had never known. To that place of having awakened in my heart a love more pure and more unconditional than I had ever felt before.
He's teaching me that it's okay to feel. In having my pride hurt and broken yet again, He's teaching me that it's okay to feel it. That I don't have to try to mask my emotions, put on a brave face, and convince myself that I still have everything under control and that I'm all put together. The act of feeling is part of forgiving myself.
Because having a lot of pride, I'm very hard on myself. It's very easy for me to hone in on my faults and my weaknesses and to really knock myself around emotionally on some days. I don't like feeling weakness and less-than-perfect. So many times, I just don't let myself slow down, stop, and feel.
But a few weeks ago, I really broke. I was alone in my bedroom, it was late at night, and the weight of the past few months just came crashing down. I really lost my composure. Tears just started coming in constant sobs for about an hour. I hadn't cried that long in almost a year.
There I was. Sitting on my bed, tears streaming down my face, I was crying out partly to myself, partly a prayer of my heart. "I'm not okay," I confessed aloud, "but I will be. I always manage to pull myself together again temporarily. But I'm tired of band-aids. I'm tired of being put back together just until I break again."
And in that moment of brokenness, I heard that still, small voice I had heard so much last year through my hardest moments. In almost a year, I hadn't heard the Lord's voice in that way: not in a stirring in my spirit but in a nearly audible voice. And that time, He simply said very gently, very short but meaningfully, "You're broken so I can fix you."
I realized that maybe it was time I stopped condemning myself. Maybe I should let myself feel my brokenness and accept it. Maybe I should try to stop fixing the deep parts of myself that I don't even know exist but that are broken and messy and hurting sometimes. Maybe it was time that I allowed God to begin healing me and remaking me again through the humility of my broken pride.
And lastly (for now in the season), God has shown me this season that the Nativity story is, of course, a story of love and joy and peace, of faith and of hope. But it's also a story of tremendous humility. Imagine being the King of kings, seated on the throne at the right hand of God the Father, and then coming to Earth in the form of a helpless dependent infant little baby boy. To be God, powerful and almighty, and yet to live and grow up as any other child in this world. To be incarnate and be betrayed, abused, ridiculed, mocked, and nailed to a cross. To know that you have the power to come down from that cross and that place of suffering but to choose to stay there, humbled with nails driven through your hands and feet and blood from your brow stinging your eyes.
When I think of Christ's example of humility, I think of Him demonstrating servanthood by washing the feet of His disciples. But in this season, the Lord's been opening my eyes and revealing to me that that is not the greatest act of humility in His life here on earth as a man. His entire life here- His purpose for coming here- is a story of humility so great that I can't even comprehend it. Of so much humility. And it begins with the Christmas story on that clear night in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago when a miracle occurred as the Son of God was born and history was changed forever.
Of everything that He's been teaching me through this season of humbling me, it's in His own example of humility that I've come to realize that some of the most profound and life-changing events birth from a humbled heart. And through the humility and the brokenness, that truth allows me to see with eyes focused on the Lord, hope dawned to light the new year. A hope that is illuminating my Christmas like never before.
With humbled hearts filled with great joy, exceeding thankfulness, unwavering hope and faith, and a full understanding of the magnitude of His love for us... I pray each and every one of us be inspired this Christmas by the greatest Miracle of all.
"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
-Philippians 2:5-11
Amen! Merry Christmas to all of my loved ones- friends and family- near and far. May God bless you and your families this holiday season and in the new year to come. <3
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