Sometimes I find it easier to
measure my life by seasons rather than days, months or years. Ask me what year has been my toughest and I
wouldn’t be able to even recall, but I could linger long over several different
seasons I’ve been through, recalling what events ushered me into that season and
what delivered me out of it.
Recently I
found myself in a rather aloof phase.
You know the kind: mundane, just going through the motions. Comfortable.
Apathetic. Other seasons seem like a blur. Or perhaps I’d rather not remember
them, they were that painful. Events I lived through, but I’m not sure I was
there. Seasons of survival. I’m learning
it’s easy to lose yourself. Be swallowed up by life’s minutiae, its busyness, and
its tragedy. Somehow you wake up and you don’t know who you are anymore. You
are still going, but you’ve lost your heartbeat. What you lights you up. What
makes you come alive.
But, as pitiful and lackluster as it sounds, I’m learning
that even in these kinds of seasons, God is at work. In fact, it was in a very quiet season that
God showed me an invaluable tool that is helping me navigate the various
seasons of life. A purposeful method of
keeping track of my heart in the midst of life.
Really, I stumbled onto it out of desperation. I was in a funk, throwing
a pity party for one, and frankly feeling swallowed up. Useless. Alone. I cried
out to God to show me what my purpose is suppose to be right now and more specifically how can I not lose track of who I am, who He has made me to be in this season—because to me it pretty much seemed
like a big fat waste.
Side note: Can I just say right here people if you want a
specific answer from God, you need to ask Him specific questions. Nothing
bolsters faith like specifics. Things
spoken to your heart in the dark of the night that no one would know you needed
to hear. Not even yourself. But then, there is God saying it. Whispering it.
I know God doesn’t always
answer this quickly, but I have to say that immediately I was led to three verses
that corresponded to yearnings already present in my heart, purposes that already
coordinated with my gifts, talents and burdens. It was as if He was just
waiting for me to ask the question.
I can’t say it was automatic, but God used
these verses, these three purposes, to sharpen my focus and help bring intent
back into my everyday activities. I’ve come to see this practice of asking for
God’s purposes for the specific season I’m in as kind of asking God to give me
some holy boundaries, kind of like gutter guards at the bowling alley, keeping
my ball heading down the lane to knock down some pins rather than landing in
the gutter every time. Holy gutter guards! They heighten my awareness of God at
work in my everyday life, helping me fight that apathy of dishes and homework
and dinner in order to see the eternal in the temporal.
Actually, this blog is
a fruit of God’s gutter guard in my current season. One of the verses He led me to that day was
Matthew 10:27 “What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is
whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs.” One of God’s holy boundaries
for my time, my efforts, my life for right now is this: to share with others
out of my own personal relationship with God. How He has healed my heart. How
He has set me free from fear, insecurity, and unforgiveness. How He has spoken
to my fragile heart words of life. How He has saved this broken life and made
me whole.
Yep. That lights me up. That I
can shout from the rooftops!
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