The Story of My Life (So Far)

The meet-cute. Girl and boy meet eyes across the Bunson burner in a high school  chemistry lab, instantly sparking not just the correct chemical reaction but a flame within their hearts through the exchange of hidden smiles and nervous laughter. Or hurriedly, girl flies around the corner, steaming coffee in hand, once again late for work when she literally crashes into boy, experiencing heat, not just from the coffee spilled on her blouse but as the once busy moment screeches to a halt. He offers his scarf to clean up the mess and it is love at first sight. It seems so easy in the movies. I’ve concocted many similar scenes with myself as the leading lady and yet to be named lucky mystery man sweeping me off my feet in a variety of random, romantic backdrops and circumstances. While Hollywood wants me to believe these fantasies as the end all and be all when defining love and romance, I’ve discovered that God has something much more real and imaginative when it comes to the story of my life. He continually shows me, the best is yet to come.

           

I grew up in an amazing Christian home and was taught about Jesus and the power of prayer from a very young age. I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior at Pioneer Girls when I was 6 years old and if I’m being honest, nothing really changed. I still prayed before I went to sleep, or when I was afraid, or when things weren’t going my way, just as I was taught. I never experienced a major transformation moment.

            

When I was in junior high, I discovered the power of God’s word as living and active. I’d read the Bible before then and even earned lots of merit badges for memorizing Scripture, but junior high was the first time I felt that God was speaking directly to me. I had gotten into a disagreement with some friends at school and I remember coming home discouraged and upset, opening my Bible to some random page, and reading a passage that spoke exactly to what had happened that day. I was so excited, I wrote the verse on a note card and shared it with one of my friends the next day. From then on, I was hooked. I tried to read my Bible every day and then apply what I was reading to how I lived my everyday life. I grew in my faith and made it through my high school years, full of ups and downs, excited about who God was and how he was moving in and through me.

            

I was blessed with an amazing support system through my family, friends, youth group, and church family. However, when graduation came, I decided I wanted to explore the country and felt God calling me to attend a school away from home. The school I attended had a soccer team willing to let me play and was a Christian school so I was pumped about playing with other Christ followers. Because it was a Christian school, I had a picture in my mind of it being kind of like church camp but four years long and a little bit more homework. I knew that God had called me to this school for a purpose and I was excited to see what that purpose was: would I meet my husband? Would I be the leading scorer and earn a starting spot so I could give all the glory to Him? Would I wow everyone in my honors classes with my God-given wisdom and lead them to a better understanding of who God is? I had great dreams for all I would accomplish for the glory of God’s kingdom and my own personal success. I thought I knew the good God wanted for me, so I obediently left home for the great unknown.

            

God’s good for me turned out to be a lot different than what I expected. I experienced some difficult things while at school and in fact almost transferred back home after a particular incident with my teammates. I became a version of myself I didn’t recognize. I was quiet, reserved, and unsure of who I was. I longed for the comfortable setting of my high school hallways where I knew most everyone, I was a consistent starter and productive member of a soccer team, and things came more or less easily to me. I had to continually fight for playing time on the soccer field, daily felt inadequate intellectually during discussions in my honors classrooms, and socially became awkward and unsure of how to relate to the people around me. I knew in my heart of hearts that God had lead me to this school so I did my best to cover up my insecurities and put on a brave face for my friends and family back home and at school. I had this idea that God wanted me to be happy and positive in hard situations, so I pretended I was happy and tried to stay positive instead of revealing how out of place and miserable I felt a lot of the time. I thought I was being obedient in God calling me to this school and didn’t want the people around me to think God was wrong to make me feel miserable, or I heard him wrong, heaven-forbid, so I did my best to portray the version of myself I thought would please the most people and put myself and God in the best light.

            

When it was time to go to grad school and pursue my dream of being a physical therapist, I felt God calling me back to MN. Slowly, but surely, he began to rebuild the self-confidence I lacked in college with a little bit of humility woven through. I thrived in my new surroundings, easily making friends, succeeding in the classroom, and even finding success on the soccer field through our class’s intramural team. God continued to call me to obedience in other areas, leading me to an amazing 3-week internship in Niger Africa where I learned how physical therapy and international missions may have a place together in my life. He lead me to a church where I moved from a fringe observer to an active member and participant in ministry. He brought men and women into my life that strengthen and encourage me in my daily walk with Christ.  They accept me as I am, but love me enough not to leave me that way, challenging me toward total surrender and dependence on God as we do life together.

            

The pain I experienced and the shattered dream of college being the “best days of your life” stayed with me long after graduation even as I began to heal in other ways. I limped along thinking there was something wrong with me or I had misunderstood God or if only I had been stronger I could have really made a difference in the lives of the people I met there. I frequently agonized over the missed opportunities to stand up for what I believed during a class discussion or share insight into what God was teaching me with someone I had a hard time relating to. Until recently, I looked back thinking I had failed my college experience and wasted the ministry God called me to there. Even the amazing experiences and people I met who positively influenced my faith journey, were viewed through a dirty lens of the overall sense of failure surrounding that time in my life.

            

One of the verses God has laid on my heart recently is Romans 12:1-2. It says: “Therefore, I urge you brother, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is-His good, pleasing and perfect will.” (NIV) Together, God and I have begun the process of renewing my mind and much of that process has involved my time spent at school. He has laid me on the hearts of others to reach out and share how much I influenced their life during that time or laid others on my heart to reconnect and demonstrate why the relationships I made during that time are important today. He has shown me that I didn’t make a mistake in the school that I chose but was being obedient as he called me to be, even when things were difficult. He also showed me that I don’t have to have my life together in order to glorify his kingdom. He took my brokenness, the version of myself I didn’t like and used it in ways I never expected. I may have missed opportunities, but I have been forgiven and he offers second, third and seventy-third chances to try again as I earnestly offer myself as a living sacrifice. I am a work in progress and he continues to craft a beautiful story out of what I perceived as ugliness or failure in my life.

            

In the past, I’ve hesitated to share my faith story or testimony because my story doesn’t have the all-important Jesus meet cute I've heard in other people's story. There is no defining transformation moment between the pre-Christ me and the after-Christ me. But as I reflect on real life love stories: my parents, my aunts and uncles, my friends and cousins, it’s less about how they met and more about the journey to here and now. They’ve experienced the ups and downs of life together: there have been triumphs and failures, heartache and joy, conflicts and resolutions. They started as two separate people with dreams and agendas and goals of their own that merge into one as they journey in love together. The world wants us to think the only stories worth telling are fairy tales with interesting beginnings and happy endings. But the story God wants us to share is one that is real and in progress. Our stories are woven together with care for good, even if that good is realized much later. He calls us to recognize the importance of the story he has written in our lives, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and share it with the world. In our weakness, he is strong, and in our brokenness we are made whole by the beauty of his love. And that is the story he has written for my life, so far.  I'm excited to see what comes next...

"But he [Jesus] said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."

~2 Corinthians 12:9  

What story has God written for you? Are you ready to share it? Take a step of faith and share the story of love God has written on your heart. You'll be so glad that you did! Have a wonderful day!