Sinking Ships + Lifeboats

Recently, I finished “Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World” by Joanna Weaver. It brought me face to face – again – with words about rest, stillness and quiet. 

This has been a consistent theme in the books I’ve read this year regarding spiritual growth and faith – most of which have been unintentional but 100% necessary. 

There’s a lot to unpack for what that has meant to me over the last year, but it’s not something I really want to share. While my heart is bandaged up pretty well these days, there is a lot of vulnerability that comes with how raw and real that journey has been.

I’ve been sitting on some form of these words for the last several months. I’ve tried to push them all back down, because I’m really not convinced anyone needs to hear my story (or cares, for that matter). But each time I do, I feel nudged back to this space… this blinking cursor. 

So, here I am, opening the door to a personal story about all the mad feelings, self soothing with the wrong things, relinquishing control, understanding grace and experiencing redemption in a way I never imagined I could.

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It’s not easy to admit that the path I’ve taken has been the hardest one – especially when it didn’t have to be… especially when there were lifeboat moments all throughout it. Sinking ships are a journey in themselves, but it doesn’t negate the fact that the boat is indeed going down. 

It is in that journey of plummeting to the bottom, however, where God stripped me of everything I thought I needed/wanted and made me very, very still. 

This story has a lot of side stories, but you likely have better things to do than read that novel (and to be fair, this is long enough).

The Cliffs Notes version reads very simply: The 2020 version of me came with more bumps and bruises than I care to admit. 

In addition to being mentally exhausted from the general chaos that came with a pandemic and serving in an essential capacity, I was emotionally depleted by the same level of chaos in my personal life.

Betrayal, hurt feelings, trying to tape pieces back together that just didn’t fit, denial, and a train of brokenness… You name it, I experienced it. It was muddled and it was messy.

I don’t know about you – but I was barely equipped to handle a public health crisis. Handling an emotional one at the same time wasn’t exactly the headlining act I wanted to sit front row for. 

Everyone navigated last year’s storm in different boats, and I often felt like mine resembled a rowboat with one paddle. Daily, I felt like I was bracing myself for the impact of each new storm, hoping that my boat didn’t capsize and that my one paddle would be enough.

If it had just been the pandemic with work, I could have retreated to my house each day and possibly processed everything (really, not really – because WHAT A YEAR). But, retreating home wasn’t a positive thing. When I was at home, I was completely alone and it was a bleak reminder of all that I had given and poured myself into… and how much it had unraveled. 

All of it was deeply emotional, and I didn’t have the appropriate armor to deal with it. 

Handling emotions has never been my strong suit. What is a strength (eh, arguably a weakness), however, is my intrinsic ability to avoid all emotions by nose diving into work. 

So, when the turmoil really hit its peak, I did what I know how to do best… I tackled work and working out as if both were my sole mission in life.

In my infinite amount of wisdom, I decided to match the emotional/mental output of every thing going on at work with the physical equivalent. If I wore myself out completely, I wouldn’t have to acknowledge that my heart was broken or the litany of trust issues that sat at the head of my heart’s table. 

Because, clearly that made sense. 

While communicating messaging for a public health crisis came with its own challenges and it remains to be the hardest thing I’ve ever been a part of, the work didn’t fail me. I knew what was expected of me and I knew how to do the job (most days).

I ran to work each day and stayed as late as I needed to, just to not have to think about everything else. Because of the chaotic state of the world, it was easy to hide what was going on.

And in the moments I wasn’t at work – I made my body busy. 

I worked out in the empty hours of the morning.
I climbed stairs in the afternoon.
I took Milo on long walks throughout the neighborhood, often in a weighted vest, at night.

The only hours that weren’t filled were the ones I slept, and I did that as much as I could – getting in 9-10-sometimes 11 hours, consistently. 

And, when that didn’t fix anything I needed it to fix – I created a deficit in my diet.

When someone is not dealing with an emotional crisis at home or a public health crisis at work, this is an ideal way to tackle a physical goal. But, I wasn’t running toward a goal.

I was running as far away as I could get from everything I had lost or was in the process of losing. 

It did have some perks.

The trade off for all of the physical outputs was being the leanest I’ve ever been. And, then there were the dopamine hits from random compliments I had never received before. 

Those things felt good, but that feeling was always fleeting.

The reality of overworking my brain and my body came with several consequences. One was that I fell into the trap of being numb to everything. Whether I understood what I was doing or not, I successfully pushed my body to such strenuous lengths that it was just as tired as my heart. 

I was broken. And, I was angry at God because of all of it. 

Anger, denial, grief and redemption.

Before this point, I had never been truly angry at God.

Initially, I prayed all the prayers I was taught to pray as a child. I prayed exactly for what I wanted, because that’s what I was always told I should do. None of them were answered. Not a single one.

I remember feeling defeated and that “ask and you shall receive” was garbage. If there was a riff in my relationship with God before (and there was), it just got wider.

It caught me off guard because that isn’t how I was raised, and I felt immense guilt over it.

So, if I wasn’t already stuffing enough emotions to begin with, I added guilt to the pile, too. 

It also didn’t help that I constantly diminished the importance of my feelings due to what others were experiencing at the hands of the pandemic.

I’ve been through tough situations before.
I’ve been hurt before.
But, nothing felt like this specific level of brokenness… and, it led to a part of me believing that I was in such a tangled heart space that I couldn’t be fixed.

Maybe I had pushed against God’s calling on my life for too long, too many times?
Maybe He didn’t think I was worth the effort anymore?
Maybe I had forged my path that was so far from what He wanted, that I had used my allocation of “rescues.”

But to be completely honest, I’m not sure I really trusted He could fix what was broken. 

I realize how cliche this all sounds. “She was broken and she asked God to fix her.” But, really… it’s more than that. 

Over time – eight months to be exact – God tried to meet me exactly where I was to rescue me from my rowboat. He showed up daily, with a lifeboat in hand.

And for six-ish maybe seven of those months… I kept sending it away.

It wasn’t the lifeboat I *thought* I wanted. 

Don’t worry God, it’s okay. If you’ll just send another one…I’ll get on that one, if I feel like it’s the right one.

The problem was, my “right one” and God’s “right for me” were two different things. 

Each time something glaringly obvious came along, I pushed it away – closed my eyes really tight and prayed for what I wanted.

I’m embarrassed to share how much I negotiated with God during this phase. I thought… Maybe if I do this right now… He’ll give me what I really want.

I recently read “We’re All Freaking Out (and why we don’t have to)” by David Marvin and he had this to say about passages in the Bible that address “ask and you shall receive.”

“What Jesus is really telling us is to place God’s will, God’s agenda, and God’s desires as the first priority for our lives and that if we do, we will begin to experience peace…”

He goes on to add, “… at the core of almost all of our anxiety is a fear of things not going the way we want. When I worry, it’s almost always about [my] kingdom, my agenda, my desires.”

Yeah, yeah… I heard it, too. 

From text message conversations I over analyzed to the wisest of words from friends over coffee or happy hour, there were both the quietest and the most blatant nudges wishing I would just take the dang boat.

It’s easy for me to blame my stubbornness as the root of my apprehension and need to desperately forge my own path. I wish that was it.

The reality is that I knew, deep down, everything I wanted wasn’t right.

We are taught at a young age that our gut intuition is a guiding force for the direction we need to go. But, I all but pretended mine didn’t even exist. 

I was convinced my way was the right way. I was convinced God was going to create a much different ending to this season of my life. And, everything I wanted was full of my desires for my life and the future I imagined I would have. 

But none of that matters when it isn’t right.
And, it wasn’t right. 

It wasn’t right for me.
It wasn’t right for the situation.
It wasn’t right according to the life God had ready for me to experience.

That’s a hard pill to swallow. 

Accepting it meant I had to accept starting over.
Accepting it meant I had ignored all that I knew to be true for too long, and I had nothing to show for it but the brokenness I was feeling.
Accepting it meant I had to reconcile the time I had invested, and possibly forgive where the hurt was stemming from. 

I didn’t know if I had it in me to start over again, and I really just didn’t want to face any of the above.

All of it scared me.

I would say hindsight is 2020, but I’m not sure that saying will ever have the same meaning again. Now, however, it’s clear to see my missteps, sidesteps and blatant ignorance for what God wanted in my life.

Mostly, God wanted me to get on his lifeboat so I could rest, be still and listen.
He wanted me to trust that His plan was better. 
He wanted me to lay it all down. 
More importantly, He wanted me to faithfully pour into our relationship the way I had done with so many other people and things in my life.
He wanted to transform my desires into the ones He had ready for me.

I wish I could say that when I began to take stock of those very real feelings that everything began to change. But, this is me you’re walking this journey with… and, well… keep reading.

Focus is good; but, only when it’s on the right thing.

Even though I was letting go of what wasn’t right and working toward building a better relationship with God, I was still holding on tightly to the one thing I had used as a source of soothing – prioritizing how much I worked out and what I ate around everything.

EVEN THOUGH God was teaching me little by little about what He had laid out for me, this other part of my life I put on a pedestal was still in hyper-drive. 

It was borderline obsessive-compulsive, mostly because it was the very last thing I felt I had control over. 

In addition to the daily work, I was spending 3 hours on Saturdays doing the worst grunt work – carrying heavy things, running interval sprints… just to chase the high that came from it. 

I easily replaced one part of my life with another… and why?

Because feeling strong felt good.
Taking compliments for how hard I was working was just as awkward as only I could make it, but it felt good. 

In the midst of trying to let go and bandage my heart, I was simultaneously worshiping my relationship with the gym and working out.

Okay God, you can have this part of my life — but this other part is going SO well for me. I’ll keep it and keep doing what I know works.

It wasn’t long after this part in the journey when I dislocated my shoulder – which required surgery. It also required three months of rehabilitation if I ever wanted to return to a normal quality of life (like reaching for a glass on the top shelf without it slipping out and causing a Lethal Weapon situation). 

For all the go-go-go and diverting I had done over that year, all of a sudden I had to physically be still.

Shoulder surgery is finicky. It requires all of the stillness initially for healing, then slow movement so it doesn’t freeze. Because of that, and because I didn’t want to lose any time or any momentum, I blindly planned to be back in the gym within a week.

On that scheduled day, I tested positive for COVID. 

All of the things I was running toward so that I could run away from everything else ceased to exist for almost an entire month.

I had no choice but to let go of all the perceived control I was desperately trying to keep on my life, what I thought my future should look like and how to maintain what level of comfort I had grown accustomed to.

Tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor and I will provide you with exhibits A through Z of my life. 

There’s a quote by Oswald Chambers – 

“When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted desires, a broken friendship, or a new friendship— when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.”

I’ve had this quote in my Bible since I was in college, but I didn’t feel its magnitude until I experienced what felt like every line of the passage.

• Heartbreak – check.
• Temptation – check.
• Disappointment – check.
• Sickness – check.
• Thwarted desires – check.
• Alone – check.
• Totally speechless – check, check and check. 

I don’t believe that God decided to dislocate my shoulder or gave me COVID. But, I do believe he used both to make me still, totally speechless without the ability to ask even a single question. 

In the stillness and quiet, I learned grace (for myself and others) and joy were an output of a process that came from spending more time with Him. 

Slowly, verse by verse… prayer by prayer… the real healing began, along with understanding what He freely wanted to give me. Peace.

Inside the lifeboat.

The lifeboat was right on time every single day, but getting in required giving up what I thought I knew and the expectations I had of others.

It required less time trying to forge a path that wasn’t mine to forge.

My personality doesn’t always leave room for lessons to be learned quickly (obviously by the length of this post). It took eight months of anger, grief, exhaustion, a dislocated shoulder, surgery and COVID to make me look up and realize that the soft nudges from Him over the course of several years went wildly unnoticed or dismissed. 

But when I finally got in the proverbial boat, even halfway, He began to reveal a journey that included what I was meant for.

It wasn’t immediate.

On most days, I’m still here trying to discern my way through grace, joy and ultimately – forgiveness… for myself and others. 

It’s not easy, and it’s still messy. But, right in the midst of all of it is a sense of peace that only comes from buckets (and buckets) of His grace.

To see God clearly and lean into His desires for my life, I’ve had to accept a slower pace than the physical outputs I required of myself last year – the ones I became so reliant on. Aaaaaand, it might be the hardest part of this journey.  

I enjoy the full-throttle approach. Leaving everything on the gym floor is how I decompress – it’s why it even became my go-to in the first place. But, right now there’s more to the journey than sweating it all out on the floor.

A few months ago, that realization hit me square in the nose. In total frustration – I audibly said in the car on the way home, “Okay, we’ve healed the emotional stuff and the physical stuff. I feel better. I promise. Let’s crank up the intensity and consistency. Let’s go.”

I’m pretty sure I give God heartburn.

He quietly responded that there’s still more to this journey of stillness, with more to learn. 

And instead of missing the moment, I said “Okay.” 
It might have taken me entirely too long to learn the lesson, but I did learn it.

This is still new territory and it’s uncomfortable. Comparison is the thief of joy, and sometimes it still catches me in my feelings. But I know that this slower, more deliberate pace is what God is asking of me.

The lesson we’re in right now is that “training” my heart for spiritual growth is more important than training my body. I can still do both and He wants me to do both… but, the value of my worth and desires has to be in the right place for the other to truly work to my benefit – and not serve as an escape. 

Trusting the process.

On the last pages of “Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World,” the author talks about how we often want the product without the process. 

“Perseverance isn’t a lot of fun. Yet it is perseverance that allows God to make our muddled messes and turn them into miracles. He delights in transforming the black-carbon pressure of our life into diamonds of radiant beauty. But doing all that requires a process. A process that takes time. A process that is sometimes painful.”

No one, not even God promised that a life of discernment and faithfully following would be easy – but He did provide that it would be worth it.

I will never claim to know the answers or that I have it figured out. My journey is wayward. I reach for my phone more than my Bible on most days. But, what I do know is that broken people can be made whole.

“And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” – 1 Peter 5:10

For so long, I was delighting in my own desires, thoughts, needs and wants. And it wasn’t until I fully embraced the quiet moments with God that I was able to develop a relationship beyond what I imagined was possible – that I really began to understand. And, those plans that were never my own? They are now what I want the most of.

“Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.” – Psalms 37:4

Even in the midst of brokenness, tangled heart spaces and misdirected worship, God can make it right. Whatever season you’re in right now, I hope that of all the things in this all too wordy blog post – you take that one home.