In The Same Shoes

May 26, 2020

I’ve been sort of MIA on this blog for a while now, and there’s no particular reason or excuse I can come up with to justify my absence. Whether or not this blog is a place where others come to read my messy thoughts, writing is how I process not only things that are happening in my life, but in the world as well. I feel that writing is a major way that I am able to hear God and make sense of His presence in my life. Sometimes, I pick up a pencil with no clue where it will take me and zero understanding of anything that is going on, and by the time I reach the end of the page (or 10) I feel as though God and I have just had an incredible conversation. That’s the best way I can describe it at least. 

What I do know for sure during these uncertain times in our world is that what God does in our lives is not meant for us to keep and hoard for ourselves, but that our lives may be used as living proof that our Savior is both alive and active.

With that being said, this season of my life, and many, if not all of your lives too, is a season of disappointment and confusion. Plans have been postponed or canceled and almost every aspect of our daily lives has been shifted. 

Today and this season was supposed to look a lot different for me. A while ago, God got a hold of my heart and filled it with a passion to fight against human trafficking. Unsure of where it came from or what I was supposed to do with it, I decided to follow Him. As I did, my passion grew and grew, and I knew for certain that a big part of my life was meant to be a voice for the voiceless victims of one of the world’s greatest injustices. 

Right now was supposed to be another major step in my journey towards pursuing this passion I felt God leading me towards. Plans to go to Thailand and serve alongside organizations working to combat trafficking were ripped away. For a while there I found myself not only really confused but also pretty frustrated with God. Why would He give me this opportunity just to take it away? I was so sure as to why God was calling me to Thailand this summer. 

Ever since the start of my journey standing up against human trafficking, I have become angrier and angrier. My heart began to fill up with bitterness and hatred towards not just the problem but the people contributing to it. I struggled with separating the evil with the person. I found it so hard to see and love anyone involved as a Child of God who Satan has grabbed a hold of and entangled in sin. 

I can’t honestly say that I have reached that point now either, but I know that God needs me to get there before I continue in pursuit of fighting human trafficking and being a part of His mission, because there is no place for my hateful heart in His ministry.

I know that I must not step into His work with a heart full of hatred rather than love.  I am not sure what the future holds, or if this trip is merely postponed or canceled altogether for me, but I do know that I have to trust God in this season of uncertainty, rather than being frustrated with Him.

When reflecting on these canceled plans and lashing out at God for ruining them, I remembered a moment from a few weeks prior. I was journaling about how it has been so easy for me in my life to always trust God. I had always taken pride in the fact that I found it so easy to completely rely on and depend on Him. And then I thought, but have I really ever trusted God? I mean, up until then, almost everything in my life has gone according to plan. Up until that point, my plans and ideas just seemed to always align with God’s. I had always found it so easy to trust God because I always agreed with what God was doing. 

Well, here I am, ironically enough a few months later, in a place where my plans finally do not match up with God’s. I don’t agree with them, I don’t like them, I don’t understand them, and so this is a season where I am learning what it truly means to trust God when things don’t go my way. Am I going to use this season to be upset and frustrated with God, or am I going to use it to depend on Him and believe in His timing and plans despite my unknowingness of why it is all happening? 

I know a lot of people are probably in my same shoes right now. Feeling disappointed, angry, confused, lost, and so on. Personally, I believe this is a time when God is trying to get each of our attention and teach us something individually, but I also believe that He is trying to get the entire Church’s attention to come together as well. 

  “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.”

2 Chronicles 7:13-15

These past few months have been a crazy time in our world, and many of the recent events reflect what we see in Scripture. In this passage, we see God using fires, locusts, and plagues to get the attention of His people. Maybe the recent series of events is a coincidence, or maybe God is trying to get the attention of His people right now. But what is unsettling to me about disregarding this passage for our current circumstances is that the Church, which is now spread out across the entire world, is more divided than ever. We as Christians nitpick every little thing and use it to create tension, disagreements, and exclusion. We take sections of Scripture that we want to believe and are okay with incorporating into our lives, disregard the rest, and start a church on the foundation of those few things rather than on the entire Word. We judge every professing Christian and push away nonbelievers. We choose certain sins to be worse or better than others. We have walked away from being the Body of Christ and have created our own smaller parts that function the way we want them to. Nonbelievers see our division and want no part of it, and frankly, I don’t blame them. 

As for my plans to be in Thailand right now, I do not know if God will lead me there in the future or what the purpose of it all was, but I am certain that with or without me, God is there working and bringing healing and justice to all those affected by human trafficking, and that alone is worth celebrating. I choose to trust God in this season both with the uncertainty in my life and the uncertainty in the world’s circumstances. 

          With everything going on in the world right now, what is God trying to get your attention for, and what is He trying to get the Church’s attention for? 

Much love, Em