You know, if we knew God as much as we would like to, He wouldn’t really be God anymore. We would be.
I don’t know about you, but I would be the biggest failure of a God there ever was. I’m so grateful that He has that job, yeah?
I say that to say this: He’s one tough cookie to understand. I was at church on Sunday night (yes, Sunday night service changes lives just as much as Sunday morning services can, you should check it out sometime) and He took me so off guard, I had to leave church early. I had to chat with a friend to try to figure it out. I remember having a familiar feeling of loneliness on this Earth as we were in worship at the end of service, and He took me off guard by asking me to let that very feeling go. Like permanently.
Well, just as off guard as his request was, my answer was even more surprising. My heart and my spirit instantly went into an uproar. When first looked at, that doesn’t seem like such a large request, does it? And He asked so gently, I was shocked that I reacted so strongly. I wasn’t angry at Him for asking me, just troubled.
What was so incredibly ironic about the whole thing was that my Fine Arts team mom Facebooked me our Fine Arts song for the year the next day. The title was Surrender (exactly what God was wanting me to do). I literally laughed.
This was a serious request. The turmoil inside me was also serious. My logical side spent days trying to figure out what was so special about what I call the “hollow feeling”, where I feel lonely, or sad about being lonely. It’s when people do the little things to hurt my feelings. Not like shattering my heart to pieces, but poking it with toothpicks. My friend Candace put it perfectly: people break away at our hearts, and they will eventually make a very beautiful statue, or a very ugly one. I suppose God’s reason for asking me is so that this world doesn’t make an ugly statue out of me.
My first thought was that I was going to flat out deny God His request. That was a very shaky thought, because I don’t recall ever flat out denying God anything of me. When I thought this, I had a funny feeling of being a rebel. Not that being a rebel was funny, but the feeling kind of was. I had the feeling that I would be thrown into jail for denying Him or something like that.I wanted to say no, because I knew that giving up this hollow feeling would mean having to give it up daily. This feeling, this bad problem of mine, had been a part of my life for at least a decade. I nearly scoffed at my own Savior.
“Why would you ask me do let go of something like that? Don’t you have any idea?”
Yes, He did. That’s exactly why he asked me to surrender it.
My second thought was panic. I didn’t realize it until Wednesday (after this Sunday request) that the reason why I was holding so tightly to this hollow feeling was because it protected me from the mild hurt I’m exposed to all the time. That hurt builds and builds and builds.
God helped me discover more about the hollow feeling during worship on Wednesday night. I prayed for the longest time for confidence, and I realized that this hollow feeling was the exact thing keeping me from that confidence.
This entire process rode on guilt. But God is SO GOOD! If I get anything out of this, it’s the knowledge that God is a PATIENT healer! I was so disappointed in myself that I couldn’t let it go at the snap of my fingers, but I found out that God wasn’t. I just knew that He was smiling down on me with all the encouragements in the world. I FELT that on Wednesday like I never have before. If these hard struggles mean this intimacy with God, maybe they’re not so difficult after all.
I said to Him:
“I don’t have the confidence to let this go, God. I just don’t.”
and He said to me:
“I think you do.”
“Well, if you think so, that’s all that matters.” But my answer was very reluctant. After a moment, He said back to me:
“Have people really hurt you that badly? That you have this little faith in yourself?”
“Yeah. They really have.”
“Well, I can heal that too.”
His last answer to me was so full of love that I just melted inside. I just crumbled from happiness. It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me, and I hope I’ll remember it forever. He had completely gained my trust. Yet, I still couldn’t quite let it go. But it was ok! I finally learned that He would be willing to wait for me as long as I needed.
I’m still trying to figure out the kinks of this surrendering process. It’s hard, frustrating as all get out, and confusing. Sometimes I’m not even sure of what I’m letting go of. But God helps me. I’ve never, in all my 16 years of living, felt so loved or comforted. It’ll take time, but that’s alright with me. If we never go through the processes of life, we may miss out on countless opportunities to benefit both the world and ourselves.
