When my kids were young, aged 6 to 1 month, there would be moments of extreme chaos everywhere and I’d sort of stop, like pressing pause on the DVD player, and the motion around me would continue but I’d be in my own interior world, and i’d ask, “Who am I and how did I get here…” I just never expected to be a full-time mother of four young children. I had my life planned — I was going to have exactly two children, one boy and one girl (like both my husband and I had) and I would continue working as an English teacher at the private school in Atlanta I had attended. That period of my life is only one in which God came in and hijacked my plans and took me to a different, but very redemptive place altogether.
This is just one small example of why we need to stop from time to time and look at our stories, find out what’s really going on, watch what has happened, feel the pain of loss and experience the great joy and hope of redemption. And this is why I LOVE helping people read their own stories, to seek the hidden treasure of redemption in their lives. For it is in seeing the passion and pleasure of God written into our stories that frees us to really live! Galatians 5:1 says, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
I love to teach the TRUE story of Scripture, because there we see how God writes his story of grace — in very unexpected ways. I love to help people look at the intersection of their stories and the stories of Scripture. Wow, look at this, i’m just like Sarah — when she laughed — I’m afraid I laugh all the time at God — “Oh, you can’t do that! Oh you wouldn’t do something that wonderful for ME!” And He is so kind and even a little teasing, calling me out to play in the freedom for which Christ set me free, “Oh, BUT YOU DID LAUGH!” 🙂 Boy, do I feel caught. And yet, He doesn’t catch us to humiliate us. He catches us to see HIM. And when we see God, we see that He has stunning answers to the question, “Who am I and what am I doing here?”
“You are my beloved, and you are here to enjoy me and worship me forever!”
For reflection:
1. What about you? Do you stop from time to time and look at your story, asking the questions, “Who am I and what am I doing here?”
2. Think about setting aside a morning or a day to ponder some core questions about your story: when was there rest and peace, how was it disturbed or disrupted, what did you do to try to re-establish equilibrium, can you see God’s redemption and restoration working in this story?
