I hadn’t planned on saying it, but it rushed past my lips right after the
good morning. “It feels like something inside of me is dead.” Yep, I just flung it out there like saying,
“Hey, I’ve got to stop for gas on the way home.” I explained I just needed to get that out and
I didn’t expect her to respond. Smiley face.
I really didn’t.
The whole, I-feel-like-part-of-me-is-dead
deal dawned on me that morning as I dressed to meet one of my besties for
breakfast. For several months I’d been
carrying around a nagging hole. Up until
that moment I couldn’t find words to articulate it. But now that I could put a sentence to it,
perhaps I could trace it back to its source and deal with it.
After I dropped the bomb she froze like she didn’t know if she should
take a bite of her French toast or slide down the pit to rescue me from
myself.
I honestly didn’t mean for us to discuss it. I just needed to hear it
out loud to test its validity. You know.
Sometimes saying it out loud to another person is the first step to *recovery.
I know that. That’s what I cherish about
the friends God has given me. We listen to
each other’s out of the blue statements
and tuck those thoughts safe in the vaults of our person till time to dissect.
My friend wisely deciphered that my comment didn’t represent a bleeding
heart requiring immediate attention, so she honored my request and took a bite.
I blabbed on in an unusual
fashion. I’m normally a listener but again, this is a bestie so we give and
take as needed. Absentmindedly, I grabbed the more needy role rambling on about my crazy life before she even had
a chance to take a sip of coffee.
When realized I had dominated the
breakfast with the All About Rebecca Hour I released the floor with true
anticipation to hear what had transpired in her life in recent days. She jumped in with the events, questions and
discoveries in her life. But after a few minutes, she seamlessly brought the
conversation back around to my opening statement. Gracious friend…
We dug a little deeper to see what lie at the root.
No, I don’t feel dead to God, and absolutely, my life bursts with
blessings. But there are parts of me
that I had assumed made up the DNA of my soul. At the present they’re
non-existent and have been for months. Roles and responsibilities I loved and
thought of as a “life’s work” and gifts to hone. Some are dormant. Removed
perhaps. Some are evaporating before my eyes. Hence, that dead feeling.
My friend, dealing with her own bouts of deadness and loss, used herself
as an example to ask me a powerful question.
Recently she reflected on the Bible story of the man laden with palsy at
the pool of Bethesda. The first thing
Jesus asked him when they met appears an odd inquiry, “Do you want to be
healed?”
Bwahaha! Here’s a man who is so crippled he cannot function in a normal fashion. Of
course he would want to be healed!
But on second thought…
Being healed would mean more responsibility like holding down a job. No
more handouts or freebies. And with no experience or relationships outside of
his crippling identity, surviving in the world would require a new way of thinking and relating to life.
Maybe being healed isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.
So when God whispered the same question to my friend she blurted out a
resounding, “No!” She didn’t want the new thing God had for her. She wanted the old thing fixed and made
right. That’s what she’d been holding
out for God to do.
As
we fleshed out these thoughts and questions, we realized apparently God is
calling us to new things. For the
record, I’m not usually crazy about new things…
But here’s the thing about change, when we know God wants this and we refuse to accept anything
but that, nice as one may be, that’s
called rebellion. Oswald Chambers says, “Quit
harking back to what you once were when God wants to make you something you’ve
never been.” Hmmm…
The
path I’ve enjoyed has ended and a fork in the road lies ahead. I can stand at the dead end harking back that it’s completed; or I
can move ahead in the direction God has for me.
With all that I know about God, can I not trust that “He who began a good
work in me will perform it until the
day of Jesus Christ”?
Why yes, I believe I can. I will set my
face as a flint and move ahead.
*Side note: That’s why the Enemy loves secrets. But inviting Godly
people into your life spoils His destructive plan.
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