My Story

A few months ago, I was asked by my Omaha church to be one of the speakers at their Women's Retreat. The theme of the retreat was stories (one of my FAVORITE things), and this is what God laid on my heart to share with those wonderful women this past weekend. I pray it will encourage you in whatever walk of life you're in.

 

In thinking about my story, I think about meeting my high school friend, Kayla, at a coffee shop a few weeks ago to catch up. The four years since I’d seen Kayla had blurred into a blink, and naturally I thought of her as the same, innocent girl I’d hugged tightly at high school graduation. But as the condensation on my iced coffee dripped onto my hand and the barista loudly talked to the customer in the drive-thru, I remained undistracted from Kayla’s engulfing prodigal-like story. I sat wide-eyed as tales of promiscuity, drunkenness, rebellion, insecurities, and finally of the restoration she found in Christ poured out into the space between us, hanging in the air like precious Christmas ornaments too fragile to handle. As she finished, any response to her stories felt shamefully inadequate. My response flittered out of my mouth haphazardly in words that hopefully resembled, “Wow, Kayla, that is amazing.” Kayla immediately turned the conversation to myself, as she is the type who will ask about you in a way that makes you feel as if you could tell her the silliest, most inconsequential story that you’d never told anyone because of its futility, and she would respond just as you did, or even how you wished you did, and you somehow feel a little less alone.

I was ever grateful for this trait of hers in that moment, as I have always been aware of my relatively innocent, colorless and uncensored (because it needs no censoring) story that in no way resembles the ones full of deep rebellions, hopeless rock bottoms, and Road-to-Damascus type conversions that usually end up being told at conferences and retreats and coffee catch-ups. I uneasily chatted about my music degree, about how I met my now husband, about how we are support raising to become missionaries right now. She listened with the earnestness and clarifying questions I wished I’d had for her story, which added to this odd discomfort turning in my stomach, and the burning on my cheeks. As I finished my story, I addressed the elephant in the room by adding, “Nothing too crazy, I know.” Kayla laughed in an accepting way that eased my awkwardness a bit. “Yeah, did you ever have a period of rebellion, Whitney?” she asked wide-eyed, like I imagine a child fan asking Michael Jordan if he’d ever missed a basket. I found myself blushing nervously, hesitant to respond, in fear of sounding prideful since this old high school friend had just told her raw, rebellious story while mine is one that probably resembles a story that most mothers pray their daughters will have, minus that snowy Sunday afternoon trip to the tattoo and piercing parlor back in 2011.

 “I’ve had my struggles with sin,” I urged. Kayla looked at me expectantly, waiting for the rebellious part of the story; she knew I had one. Did I have one? I frantically searched my memory.  I remembered high school, where my desire to please my peers permeated far too deeply into my soul like a poison, killing every part of my heart that my insecurity allowed it to touch. What had started out a simple need for friends and belonging quickly escalated into a ravenous, insatiable hunger that led to disappointment and depression when fed and self-hatred when starved. This desire forced me on an exhaustive quest to be accepted. I lopped off huge, defining aspects of my personality that I deemed too annoying, too weird, too different, too burdensome to others. I would adapt my favorite movies, books, even colors to match those around me in desperate crawls toward this elusive “acceptance” that never seemed attainable no matter how many friends I had, social activities to which I was invited, or numbers programmed in my new cell phone. Each night I lay awake, still desperately crawling on this unending path, anxious and wondering if my friends were hanging out without me. Eventually, all at once I lost almost all the friendships that I clutched so tightly, leaving me standing on this winding path with nowhere to go. What I had been striving for so feverishly was now completely out of reach. And with no idea who I was, constantly striving to be someone different and better to an audience that was quickly diminishing, each morning came with less and less motivation to even get out of bed.

I could tell that story, I thought, but dismissed it as a classic case of high school insecurity, anything but rare for girls that age.

Of course, I could tell of my college years.  Enslaved to daydreams of wedding bells and inevitable disappointments, I could not shake this desire nor stop this frantic, unsuccessful search for a man. I blamed my personality and my jean size, I blamed this dumb college I attended that couldn’t even provide one guy to take me out to dinner; I blamed my apparently lacking searching skills; I blamed God for his inability to provide a man for me. In my search, anything with testosterone and a cute smile was good enough for me, and I found myself eventually going on a lot of dates with a lot of boys, yet none of them worked out for odd or ambiguous reasons that I could never quite articulate. Boys with whom I talked on the phone for hours would be terribly awkward in real life. Boys who were enthralled by me one moment didn’t care about me the next. Anxiety and jealousy billowed around me as my friends, all with rings on their fingers, would ask me why it didn’t work out with the most recent guy. This search, becoming more and more blinded, frantic, jealous, and desperate each day, consumed and distorted my prayers, my thoughts, and my intentions. And though each boy that failed inexplicably left me cynical and bitter, I still could not stop myself from searching, as if each disappointment fueled both my disinterest in men as well as my desire to find one. I would pray earnestly for contentment, for joy, for confidence, but my heart could not stop searching while coincidentally only finding emptiness.

Oh, I could even tell of my junior year, and that boy who was unlike all the others, like a tornado inside a closet, this boy whisked into my life. Still hurt from the past though, I prayed fearfully for God to take him away, but the more I prayed, the more I fell in love. Much more than the crushes and daydreams of past boys, this man stole my heart, my affections, and my allegiances. And as I tried to emotionlessly pray about him, I watched God open every door and remove every obstacle. I grew more and more excited, enamored, smitten…astounded, really… because I knew…guys, I KNEW… I would marry this boy. As my junior year progressed, God clarified it week after week for me until I knew with every fiber of my being that THIS was my future husband.

 But as the last day of classes came, that boy cordially, graciously, and devastatingly told me, “No.” I remember furiously throwing my shoes across the room after that, heaving sobs that seemed too massive for my lungs as I screamed silently at this God who supposedly promised good for me. I remember the passing through my days lifelessly; painfully betrayed that what I had been desperately searching for jumped out and stabbed me in the back. Like a rug pulled from under me with no ground below, pain so deep with disjointed, illogical thoughts hinging upon nameless feelings. All swinging chaotically in the rafters of this giant space I had carved out for this boy in my heart. It took hours to stop the tears, a full day to start eating, and a week to start praying again.

I could tell this one, I thought, remembering how the story ended, but it’s just a simple heartbreak story that every girl has written in her life’s pages somewhere.

I could be really vulnerable and share the strain of my present. Support raising has presented me with numerous circumstances that leave me disappointed and wanting, leaving me in a perpetual state of throwing a rather extravagant pity party for myself (though you are all invited if you’d like to come). I could confess how much I’ve complained about working part-time at a grocery store for awhile (even though I promise I had a college degree!), and how easily work would discourage my heart. Could I admit how many support trips would leave me crying in the car because they didn’t go as I had wanted? Or how many social media posts I’d crafted that passive-aggressively begged for attention and applause of our “sacrifices for the Gospel.” Could I even tell her of the silent treatments I’d give my husband each weekend as we drove back home after a support trip, realizing we’d once again forgotten something super important like razors or makeup bags? Or of the jealousy brewing in my soul of friends going on expensive dates and faraway trips while we limited ourselves to $40 a week on groceries? Of how the little things that went wrong would leave me unquenchably fuming? Dare I explain how many petty meltdowns I’d simply blamed on PMS, how many times my sweet husband would patiently console and encourage me as I sat and pouted because something hadn’t gone my way, or promise my sulking self that I am not getting fat?

I looked at Kayla and the thought settled curiously on my heart:

our stories are the same.

Minus the details, the names, and the actions, all of our stories are the same, because…our hearts are the same.

In fact, our stories even are the same as the fickle children of Israel, thousands of years ago, completely and hopelessly incapable of staying faithful to their loving Creator. Constantly looking for something else that does not satisfy, like a foolish, unfaithful wife to her caring, honest husband. Like a child begging for sweets when a feast is offered to him. My heart, Kayla’s heart, all of our hearts seem to instinctively run far away from what we desperately need. Though I still did my devotions every night, though I raised my hands every Sunday, my heart was, has not been set on my Savior. Without a visible rebellion to worry my parents or concern my pastor like Kayla’s, I have deceived myself into thinking that because I am a Christian, I only worship Jesus. Oh, but friends, beneath my innocent façade, I have worshipped acceptance, boys, circumstances; elevating them, seeking them, striving for them far above my Savior. The difference was Israel’s idols were carved, Kayla’s were unhidden, and mine remained tucked in the shadows on the shrine of my soul.

In high school, my striving shifted to depression and a simple desperate prayer of simply “Lord, save me. Somehow, save me.” God did not save me through the friends I prayed for, not through self-confidence I thought I needed, or giving me the joy I’d asked, it was through giving me Himself. As I laid down my desires for acceptance and turned them to seeking Jesus, knowing Him, loving Him, my personality came back. My joy came back. Friends eventually came back.

And during the summer after my junior year of college, my prayers even after the heartbreak begged God for the right guy, for healing, for contentment, for joy, yet never for Himself. And once I sat down, turned my gaze to Him and Him alone, shifting my focus from my mess and my pain and toward His face and searching for His handprints, living for His glory rather than my desires, seeking Himself above all else, my anger cooled. My bitterness became sweet joy. My jealousy into contagious contentment. I had realized the greatest joy in life: it wasn’t about me.

Despite God’s constant interferences to win over Israel again and again, their foolish hearts could not keep them from trusting idols, chariots, and their own strength. Just like Kayla could not escape her promiscuity no matter how hard she tried, and I could not shake my desire to find a man despite my desperate prayers. God’s answer to Israel’s desperation was the same as His answer to my insecurities & Kayla’s rebellion. His answer was Jesus.

Though our methods of idolatry differed, it was through Jesus that He so powerfully, jealously, mightily saved us. Jesus. Jesus, who revealed that it was no longer just the outward rebellion like Kayla’s, but the inner lusts that were just as offensive to Him. Jesus, who despite this new standard He had set, lived it perfectly. It was through Jesus that He redeemed the Israelites, Jesus to whom Kayla final surrendered after years of fighting, and to whom I finally turned when all else had proved failures.  And it is Jesus whom I must seek amidst the temptations and idols that suffocate my present.

My story and all of our stories may entail the blatant rebellion & a Road-to-Damascus reconciliation or the hidden, inner idolatry masked by our raised hands on Sundays. But both will lead to destruction. Because my tale is but a small page in the grand story of our God. A sentence, maybe a paragraph, full of the richest joys and the deepest heartaches. But something mysteriously beautiful occurs when I realize that the things I desire and pray for, even the good things like our children, our jobs, our families, my support raising are worth nothing if I don’t first desire and pray for Jesus to be the main character, the only worshipped one, no matter what the plot. And this new joy of being mere “extras” in His book, drawing all the attention to Him, lets us see that point of our stories is really all about Him and His glory, His fame, His Kingdom coming. And we can finally fully appreciate the mysteriously grand way He breathes restoration, life, and redemption into stories both safe and scandalous.