Happy New Year

Goodbye 2014

2014 was a very difficult year for me.   It started in the tribe alone and without partners (they had been gone a good month or longer already).    

Spiritually I was really struggling.  I was asking God for help but not feeling like I was receiving it.   Emotionally I was lonely.  I was so frustrated that I couldn't just pull up on those boot straps a little harder and put up with it.  I was depressed, hopeless, and full of guilt for feeling that way.   Adding on to the guilt was that my girls were also struggling with loneliness.     But we were being ‘faithful’ missionaries.   Trying to ‘finish well’ until our furlough year began.  

So furlough began in June.   I was hurt and wounded.  I though being stateside would fix everything.  The wounds carried over and festered in my heart.  I expected that being around wonderful Christian people and being at church and being able to fellowship with mature believers would heal me.    It didn't.  Then I was hurt that no one saw my hurt.    I was hurt that no one knew how to help my hurt.  I didn't know how to help me.   God was healing me a millimeter at a time.  But it was too slow.  It didn't feel like it was enough.    

A friend shared this thought with me:  “When I began my ministry I was walking WITH the Lord.  Somewhere along the way I began working FOR the Lord.  And then I burned out.”

That resonated deep in my soul.  Could it be that I inflicted this hurt on to myself?   Forcing myself to work for the Lord and be faithful and try harder when everything in my being was screaming ‘STOP!’     It seems God does NOT give strength and joy and power to the one who is working in the flesh, being dutiful, striving, attempting to please, and creating all kinds of wood, hay, stubble.     But it’s such a subtle deception.    Working for the Lord – seems spiritual.   Attempting to please,   attempting to be faithful to the end…….. a lie that seems so religious.      But all it did was kill and destroy.     

      Something in me feels very broken.  At a deep level that I can’t even reach.   A frozen level – that I can’t even cry over or explain. 

 But I’m sensing a slight thaw.   A drip or two.   I can actually write down these thoughts – something that I couldn't do for a long time.    A tear cried in church.  A momentary sunray of light in the clouds of depression.   A hint of hope.  A lessening of blaming God. 

So in 2015 I’m hoping the frozen place thaws completely.  I’m praying for healing and also understanding so I don’t get in this place again.