It is a brand new year and some people are already on their "new year, new me" pow wow. For some of us however, it is a more quiet thing happening as we are still unraveling and trying to navigate the questions that we have and perhaps the feelings of not being where we thought we would be as the year ended and a new one is unfolding. I had something totally different planned for my very first article of the year. Something more upbeat and more in the "let's go get it" spirit but I felt in my heart to be real and open about my own struggles so that other hearts can also be encouraged. So instead of sharing the article that I tried to write more than three times and finally gave up on out of sheer frustration and the inability to accurately capture what I wanted to say, I chose to speak on a very true and ever-present feeling which is feeling left behind. I know a thing or two (or perhaps more) about it as it is something that I am wrestling with every single day: from the moment I open my eyes to the time I close them; but as I dived into the Word of God, I realized that there is quite a handful of Biblical figure that also happened to know a thing or two (or maybe more) about the struggle around the feeling of being left behind.
Ann sure did know a lot about it: being a wife to a wonderful husband was great but having to live with a co-spouse constantly taunting her about the thing she desired more than anything but couldn't have sure enough might have made her feel like she was forgotten by God, left behind.
Elizabeth was also another figure that knew something about feeling left behind when for years she prayed to be a mother and only to be disappointed year after year.
The woman at the well... She could have been the one with a PhD in knowing a thing or two about feeling left behind: four husbands, couldn't manage to keep one of them alive and now she was about to draft a fifth one while perhaps all of her friends and women her age were probably happily married and raising their children.
Joseph knew something too (at the risk of sounding like I am only rooting for women and being labelled as sexist, let's invite the men into the conversation too). Waiting for years into a prison for a breakthrough to come while one of the people you help in that same prison (and who was supposed to return the favor) is out living the best life while you are barely getting through life.
Those people knew a lot about feeling left behind and even though I probably don't know as much as they do, it is a feeling that I am familiar with. Last year ended on a good note for a lot of people around me and this year started with some pow wows that left me in awe of the things God can do. But if I want to be honest, the ever so real feeling of being left behind competed neck to neck with my praise and my joy of seeing God move around me. There was genuine joy but there was also the genuine and never ending question on my mental reel : "God what about me?"
As real and taunting as this feeling and this question are to me, as real as the stuck in the mud moments are for me, the Bible reminds that there is more to the story than where we are at, at any given moment.
As I read about the characters I mentioned and turned pages after pages, I was reminded that for every single one of them, the story didn't stop at that "feeling left behind/ feeling stuck" chapter. There was more ahead regardless of whether they couldn't see it, feel it or even at times believe it. Not much was said about the emotional state of these people as they went through that phase -except for Ann- but if I had to guess, I would say they were probably frustrated, angry to some extent, resigned and perhaps coming to terms with lowering their expectations of God. And if we have to be honest, even for a split second, as the new year rolled around and is unfolding, some of us still in the waiting season are just in that same emotional state: tired, angry, resigned, hopeless; and like the woman at the well who had a man who wasn't really her man , we are at a point where we are ready to do our thing and make it work our way instead of God's way. I don't know about you but I know I am.
But as I kept praying and seeking God and as I kept pouring my heart and feelings before God, just like Mary the sister of Lazarus, God kept on nudging me to keep the Faith. He kept on nudging me and encouraging me to believe again, to hope again, to trust more as He is in the work doing a new thing (Isaiah 43:19). In all of those stories, the silence of God on their matters, on the things they were praying and petitioning God for was deafening. It lasted a long, long time but when the answer to their prayers (not necessarily what they asked for) showed up, it was life changing. Sometimes the magnitude and length of God's silence only equals how big the blessing to unfold is. The waiting season sometimes looks and feels like a winter : everything is frozen. It is a season where God makes us slowdown, strips us from all the unnecessary things and brings us back to the essential: Him and a closer relationship with Him. It is a time where He shuts down all the extra external stuff so that we focus on the internal and eternal things. It is a season of prioritizing what is important. Everything seems dead and dormant but there is still growth happening, there is still work being done we just cannot see it. Just because there is silence doesn't mean God is not there. He is there and still working but again , in the words of Hannah Brencher, He has removed al the advertisement because it is not time yet for people to know. I remember a few years ago when Adele went silent for five years and all of the sudden popped back up with her new album 25. Nobody really knew what she was up to but in that time a lot happened obviously because she came back with something new. We did not hear her or see her but unbeknown of us she was working, she was producing something right under our noses but didn't blow a horn. She worked in silence and when the time was right, dropped it into our lap. God does the same with us sometimes too. He does the internal work as we lean in, carving, shaping, purifying and setting up the right props so that by the time the promise is fulfilled and the blessing is released, it is a solide thing, a done deal but most importantly, He is the only one taking credit for it.
It is a new year and I don't know how it already looks for you friend but if you are still in your winter, if you are wrestling and struggling like I am, my prayer for you is to draw near to God and lean in a little bit more than last year. My prayer for you is to believe, hope against all hope and remain suspicious that God is up to something in the midst of that silence; to trust that even when you can't see it or feel it, God is at work and it is only a matter of time until His work is being revealed for all to see.
Beloved, as this year is unfolding and we are moving through it, let's believe and trust that God will show up for us this year in a major way.
Take heart, help is on the way!
Until next time,
