At City Church, we love to remind each other of God's story of creation, fall, redemption, & renewal. We also strive to remind each other that God's story intersects with our own personal journey. Each Tuesday for the next 8 weeks, a City Church attender will be sharing a piece of their story on our blog of a time when this intersection was especially evident for them. Today's story comes from Bethany Roberts.
We can all think about our younger selves and think about the life we dreamed we would have. For some, this dream played out just as it was envisioned. For others, what we thought our life would look like looks drastically different than the life we now have. My life is the latter, drastically different than what I dreamed or imagined.
In many ways this is good. I live in a city that is deeply broken with some of the most amazing people. On my block alone there are 4 houses of people from City Church with many others within just a couple blocks. These people have been an enormous source of blessing, encouragement, and the best people to share a glass of wine late at night with. However, there are other areas of my life that are difficult to reconcile with the dreams of my younger self. I always imagined that I would be a wife and mother by this point in my life. With each passing year, the ache and pain that comes with this absence deepens. And bitterness knocks at the door of my heart.
If you take my personal circumstances away, there are some common emotions that are part of the human condition. Emotions like longing, the withholding of something seemingly good, or the death of a dream and desire. There’s a grief that accompanies this experience. My struggle is not the absence of the family I dreamed I would have, my struggle is seeing God as good. It’s the bitterness that knocks on my heart and the coveting of the circumstances of others that I struggle against. I have found that there is little room for gratitude, joy, or faith when my heart is focused on what I do not have. When I look to the Scriptures I see that God is good, that he loves me endlessly, that His plan is perfect, and that He is not vindictive or cruel, but instead that He is a loving and gracious Father.
Romans 8 is a chapter of God’s word that I cling to regularly. One of the beautiful parts of this chapter is the description of the tension between our own desires and God’s plan. It so strikingly points us to the hope of being made perfect with Jesus and our part in the grand tapestry of God’s plan. When I look at my life as an individual experience with my own individual desires that must be fulfilled, it leaves me feeling very isolated and empty.
Our lives don’t make sense on their own. We must look at our lives relationally in the context of living in a community of believers, non-believers, seekers, and doubters. A phrase I dislike is the one that says, “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.” God gives us more than we can handle every day. What he wants us to do is lean into the pain and cling to Him. He longs to provide comfort, the people to walk this life with us, and to provide for our every need. There’s a line that comes from the song “Brokenness Aside” by All Sons and Daughters that hits me in that part of my heart & impacts me so deeply:
"Will your grace run out
If I let you down
'Cause all I know
Is how to run"
Oh! How often I run from God. How often I willfully live in discontentedness because it feels better in that moment than seeking joy. I am so incredibly thankful for a God that relentlessly pursues me to bring me to Him.
Romans 8: 18-27
18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.