Not everyone will understand you
Some people will be committed to misunderstanding you. I’m sorry, but it’s true.
Some people will be committed to misunderstanding you. I’m sorry, but it’s true.
A few years ago, I endured three of the greatest pain points life has to offer: My father was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. My husband filed for divorce. And I discovered a Big Lie that ripped apart everything I thought I knew.
I teach middle schoolers, and from the beginning of the year to the end, something mysterious happens: They lose more of the child in their heart.
There’s no way God can use this. There’s no way God can use this. In many ways, I used to be the pessimistic version of Dorothy. But what I couldn’t see back then was this: God will bless the broken…we just don’t know when.
We all have a go-to method of hiding pain. Maybe it’s food. Maybe it’s alcohol. Maybe it’s really good acting. But we do it. And it’s not to hide from the world around us. It’s to hide the hurt from ourselves.
My father died on a Friday afternoon in late March at the very beginning of the COVID crisis. Letting go and healing in months of isolation is what I would describe as macro-grieving.
We do this thing: We get really frustrated with ourselves. We thought we were past the pain. We thought we had transcended all the troubles. But we haven’t healed. We’re still healing.
When we try to escape forgiveness, we begin to build a wall. Brick-by-brick we praise our strength and admire just how efficiently we can protect our hearts.
“You’re a normal person.” To be honest, it’s a comment that would have destroyed me in my 20s.
I used to think there was something wrong with me. I would pray. I would worship. And I would study the Bible. (I even finished reading the whole Bible last year.) But it felt like I wasn’t growing.