Thank you all for your prayers and for the words of encouragement that so many of you shared in response to my last post. I was really moved by the stories some of you shared with me. How blessed I am to be given such treasures from your lives! I have requested that a few of you give me permission to share some of your stories, but the rest of you will have to wait and see if anyone lets me share their story. (Pray for them to have the courage to share, I know you’ll be blessed!)
Before I get into my follow up on Regrets, I wanted to give you all an update on Morgan. Morgan is doing really well! She has been using just the Tylenol for pain relief since Sunday. Yesterday Morgan only took two Tylenol all day. She said the pain level is low enough that she didn’t need it in the afternoon. The bigger praise is that she said that even the pain she was in last week after the surgery was more bearable pain than the leg pains she was having before her surgery! Isn’t that awesome?
Being confined by the cast is difficult for her at times, but she is handling it well. (Thank you for your prayers regarding the Lord using this to grow her.) We borrowed a wheelchair for her and last night after church she was wheeling around with her friends and having a great time just being more mobile in the chair. Of course, all the other kids wanted to “play” in the chair, but she told them that even though she was having fun in the chair, they didn’t really want to have to use one. So then they all wanted to get a chance to push her, but she prefers moving herself around so she only lets them push her when her arms get tired. It was really fun to watch.
We are still praying for a job with health benefits. My husband got some new leads from the unemployment office and filled out several applications on line yesterday when he got home. He has more to pursue today. He has been doing some consulting for a small cabinet shop and another wants to hire him, but they don’t offer any health benefits. He told them he’d rather do consulting for them as well and continue pursuing a job with health benefits. I think that he might start doing some work for them next week.
Thank you so much for your prayers! I could truly feel them the day I made my last post. I am doing well. Really. I pray that as I type this out that the Lord would enable me to share what He has been showing me. To His glory!
Love,
WP Stacey
Regret, Repentance, and Restoration
“Rarely do we ask in prayer for what we really need. We usually think a solution will suffice, some sort of answer to our problem. We learn from lament that nothing less than the restored Presence of God will ever satisfy our souls.” (Michael Card, A Sacred Sorrow, workbook p. 21)
The restored Presence of God. Yep, that was it! That is it! I learned a valuable lesson through my regret. Instead of telling myself all the things that I “should” be feeling, or all the things God has taught us along the way, or all of the blessings we do have…instead, I just allowed myself to grieve. I just poured my heart out to the LORD about how sad I was over not having stayed in that house and all the memories I miss from there, all the things I liked about it, the stability it could have been, etc. Even as I wrote what I posted on this blog, I was just pouring it out. And you know, as I got that all out it took me to a place of repentance and restored relationship with my Savior.
I don’t think that act of selling that house was sinful, but there was a lot of baggage associated with the why of the move and a lot more baggage built up in not dealing properly with my thoughts and feelings about it. But mostly it was the thinking that a “solution was the answer” to my problems then and my regret now. The truth is that in fully lamenting it brought me to a place where NOTHING but His Presence would suffice, and I repented of seeking anything other than Him and that brought me into His Presence. Right where I needed to be…the very thing for which my heart truly longs.
“The bottom line: We are all born into a world we were not really made to inhabit. We were created for God, made to flourish in the comfort of the Presence of our Father with the warm context of His undeniable (loving-kindness). Now, in this fallen world, we are cut off from them both…We must call out to Him in the language He has provided. We must regain the tearful trail. We must relearn lament.” (A sacred Sorrow, p.20)
I just want to share this with you because it is so powerful! We all know that recounting our blessings is a good thing and that it is good for us to think about the good things He has done. Even remembering the sins and mistakes we have made and how He has redeemed them…redeemed us, these are good things. But what I am learning is that as good as those things are to do, unless I really am honest and lament the very really feelings that I have (cry out, like a child just sobs over a hurt until they can’t cry any more), until then I cannot fully accept the truth of the blessings. At least for me, I can say that, until I was honest about my regret and got it all out, I couldn’t fully accept the truth.
Please, don’t misunderstand what I am saying about lament. Even the other day when I was regretting past choices, I was not overcome. I was not/am not in despair. I am not depressed. I have been before, so I do know that I am not. In fact, even the day I wrote the piece on regret, I was not depressed, but I was grieving. Amazingly, I have been able to move past the sadness more quickly than other things that I have not fully grieved. In fact, after I wrote that piece and prayed I was able to have a really good day. I know that part of the reason was also that many of you were praying for me. So, while our circumstances have not change, the LORD’s Presence has been near and I feel well.
Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who has these battles of the mind, but I don’t think so now that I have heard back from several of you who have similar battles. In fact, even the scripture that I quoted the other day says that the mind is the battlefield:
We demolish arguments and
every pretension
that sets itself up against the
knowledge of God,
and we take captive every thought
to make it obedient to Christ.
II Corinthians 10:5
Also, I worry that you all might think that I am one of those people who enjoys being sad or thinking the worst, you know a “Debbie Downer.” No, that is not it at all. I am just learning the freedom of grieving and I have been sharing it with you. Actually, I am amazed at the hopefulness that I have been feeling these past months as we have struggled with joblessness, health, and financial issues. I think that right now, I am more truly joyful in my spirit than I have been in years. I fear that as I have let you in on my personal thoughts and struggles, that maybe you think that I am depressed or in despair. I am not. My mind is a battlefield every day, and some days are harder than others, especially days when we get a letter saying that my husband didn’t get the job, etc. But living in this truth is truly freeing, and I feel well in my soul.
Listen to what Michael Card has to say, “But there exists within American Christianity a numb denial of our need for lament. Some theologians go so far as to say these biblical laments no longer apply to us. And so the language of confession sounds stranger and stranger to our ears. It is heard less and less in our churches, and when it is voiced, rarely are our sins genuinely lamented…Our inability or refusal to enter into personal lament betrays the fact that we do not recognize the depth of our sin. We stubbornly refuse to have our hearts broken by it.”
I’m sure I will be on the battlefield every day. I am sure that there will continue to be disappointments, but I am sure that this tool of lament is just one more weapon that the Lord has given me to live in truth. And I assure you that it hurts less to be honest with my feelings and fully grieve them than when I stuff them and try to pretend that I don’t feel disappointed, sad, angry, or whatever the feeling of the moment is.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
Galatians 5:1
The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them;
He delivers them from all their troubles.
The Lord is close to the
brokenhearted
and saves those who are
crushed in spirit.
A righteous man may have many troubles,
but the Lord delivers him from them all;
Psalm 34:17-19
I’ve said a lot today and I pray that it makes sense. I pray that everyone who reads this today will be encouraged. I pray that the Lord will take my feeble attempt to share what He is teaching me and that it will be a help to you. I am so thankful for even the two ladies who wrote in their stories of regret to me that just the act of taking the time to write out their stories was helpful to them. I am thankful that because our God is so great, NOTHING will be unredeemed! I am so thankful that He uses the weak and lowly things to bring glory to Himself.
To God Be The Glory!
WP Stacey
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