Grow Me Through This

Have you ever said the prayer, “Lord please get me through this.” I have. Lately, I have lost track of how many times I have prayed that prayer. If I’m honest, I might say it once a day! Just get me through this trial, get me through this night, get me through this fear or get me through this quarantine. Or on a lighter scale, just get me to my kids bedtime! I noticed the other day that in this season of life I have been saying it more often than not. My youngest daughter is going through a sleep regression and cutting four teeth at once and if you are a mom you know the type of cloud we are under. Also, my two year old thinks it is a blast having her younger sister in the same room and just wants to wants to wake her up so they can chat! What is sleep?! What’s worse, especially for my personality, is that I can’t snap my finger and make it magically better. I have to wait. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. If you think about it, we wait for things every couple of minutes. I wait for my coffee, I wait for my toddler to do, well….anything, I wait for my coffee again and I realized that we spend most of our time waiting for things. There are not many seasons of life that don’t involve waiting in some way. I hate waiting. I’m just going to be real with you when I say that I am a really impatient person. I have a really hard time living in the present due to the fact that I like knowing what’s coming next so that I can prepare for it. I am a planner. Waiting, is just not part of my plan!

During this season of “self-quarantine” with life feeling so foreign and unknown I have found myself saying “Lord get us through this” very often. A couple days ago the thought hit me, what will life be like after this? What will I be like after this? Will I be different or will I be the same? Will I appreciate going to a restaurant more, or will that fade away with time and we all just go back to the people we were before this pandemic started? For me it is hard to go through a hard season like this and not have purpose or meaning. I wouldn’t want to get to the other side of this and be the same person I was at the beginning. This is coming from someone who hates change! I don’t want to go through the fire and not come out purified as gold. I wouldn’t want to be a piece of coal that has undergone the pressure and not become a diamond at the end. So I decided to stop asking the Lord to get me through this, and start asking the Lord to grow me though this.

What does that look like? Well, I like things broken down and easier to remember, so I broke down the word grow in order to give myself a tangible plan (shocker another plan hahah) to grow through this trial.

G: Be Grounded: We have just been given the order to stay indoors, we are indeed grounded. I feel like I did in high school when I would get in trouble and my parents would ground me for the weekend. I’m actually a huge homebody and love being home with family. However, when the choice is taken from me, I all of a sudden hate being inside. Right now, I want nothing more than to stroll through Target by myself. Isn’t that the dream!! Now it would be really easy for me to sit and wallow in the darkness and get lost in my anxiety, I’m actually stellar at that. It is easy to allow myself to get lost in the clouds of anxiety and fear when I should be trusting God from where I am planted. What if instead of focusing on this trial and feeling like you’re grounded, we shifted our focus to be more grounded. Instead of feeling stuck, allow your roots to grow where you’re planted. What does it look like to be grounded, to let your roots run deep? For me it looks like time in worship and in the Word. I need to ground myself into God. You cannot pour from an empty pitcher, at some point you need to fill up yourself. It also looks like spending time with family, which we can do a lot of right now! When the storm is raging I can trust that my roots have got me planted, they are strong and they are steady and I do not fear the wind nor storm. What are you planted in? What grounds you? “When a flower doesn’t bloom you fix the environment from which is grows, not the flower.” Alexander Den Heijer

R: Remove & Replace: Once you ground yourself it is easier to see what in your life you may need to remove. What things are weighing you down? Are there friendships that are toxic? Do you need to set boundaries with family or maybe even a coworker? Maybe you are feeling convicted about how much time you are spending on social media or on your phone in general! This is an amazing opportunity to remove the things in your life that are not making you the best version of you. You now have time to figure out what those are. Maybe it’s identifying some negative thought patterns and finding ways to remove the lies in your head and replace them with the truth. Remove the negativity in your life, remove the constant worrying and the anxiety. Then you can start to replace them with things that bring you joy! It is a choice to fill your life with the right things. “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8)

O: Open: Honestly, my spirit animal is a turtle. Why you may ask? When things get uncomfortable, hard, stressful or overwhelming I ‘turtle’. I close off and shut off. I run away. In fact if there was a way that I could be both the tortoise and the hair, that would be me. I turtle into my shell and high tail it out of any situation. Being open is incredibly hard for me. It requires vulnerability, it requires courage. When you open up your heart you allow light to filter into the spaces that have been hidden away in darkness. When you open up your mind, you give space and permission for change and we all know how Kristen feels about change! Opening yourself up means bringing your brokenness into the light. When I was young I used to garden with my mom, she once taught me a very valuable lesson about what happens when you shed light into the darkness. When you lift a big rock off the dirt and look underneath you can see the bugs that were underneath react to the sunlight. They scatter. Think about all the things in your life that you would rather keep hidden. Think about all the habits that you would rather not change. Being open means allowing yourself the opportunity to grow into a better person. That growth can sometimes be very painful. We have become comfortable where we are, we allow our eyes to adjust in the darkness and to see the light would in fact be painful. Now that we have extra time at home during this quarantine allow yourself the grace and the opportunity to open up and expose the darkness that is inside you. We all have things in our lives that we keep hidden. Maybe it is time to open up and allow the grace of God to cover all of the shame you feel in the darkness. Allow those dark places to feel the warmth of the light and be open to the change that might be around the corner. It takes courage to grow and it takes courage to be open. Do not hide in the darkness…. open up and let the light in! “For all that is secret will eventually be brought into the open, and everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all.” (Luke 8:17)

W: Worship: My favorite thing in the world. This goes far beyond a Sunday morning set list. This goes deeper than a song to sing on a platform. Don’t get me wrong, leading the church in worship is one of my favorite things to do on this earth. Let us leave the four walls of the church for a second, and ironically all of us are being forced to leave the physical building as we speak! Instead of focusing on church worship, I want to focus on a life of worship. What if everything I did during the day I offered up to God as an act of worship? Instead of just praising Him with my mouth I praised Him with my entire life!

“Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of Gods mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, this is your true act of worship.” Romans 12:1

Let me break this down for you real quick.

“Therefore I urge your brothers, in view of Gods mercy,”

( Kristens translation: in view of what He has done for you or in light of all He has given to you. Take a minute and really think about all the Lord has done for you. Even if the only thing you can think of is that He gave you life and He died for you… that would be enough! I can guarentee you that is not the only thing He has done. Refocus on how incredible His mercy is and realign your heart to what Jesus has really done for you. Now when you view His mercy it holds more weight.)

“offer yourselves as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true act of worship.”

(Kristens translation: Offer. When you offer something, it is your choice. It is not forced upon you. Just like this relationship with God is not forced upon you… it is a choice.

Once you choose to offer yourself as a sacrifice, you choose to live a life of worship to God. Everything you do can be a sacrifice of worship unto the Lord. Doing dishes? You are serving your family and that is a sacrifice of worship. Doing the laundry for the 50th time that day?? Another sacrifice. Working at your job?? When you focus your heart and mind on God, everything in your life can be an act of worship. Your life may not be comfortable or easy, when you praise God through your sacrifices your life becomes an act of worship. Align your heart and your attention to His will and He will guide your steps! As you live a life of worship you point others to His incredible heart and His incredible mercy. Singing on the stage at church is great and all, but am I praising God while washing dishes? Am I praising his name while I scrub the floors? Your life should speak more loudly than your lips. We do not need to earn His love or affection, He gives that freely! How can I use this time of quarantine to live a life of worship. How can I allow that worship to change me, to grow me. You worship. You worship in your pain and in your joy. God will take what was meant for evil and cause good to come out of it. (Genesis 50:20)

In this time of quarantine, check your heart motive to see how you want to use this time. Maybe we need to use this time to reevaluate how we are treating people. How can you show love to others during this time of isolation. How will this change you for the better? I know for me, I have been praying to just get through it. Instead of just saying, “Get me through this God,” you may try saying, “GROW me through this God.” We have an opportunity to shut out the world and allow the Lord to do a good work in our lives and in our hearts! How are you Growing? How are you staying grounded? Are you removing and replacing? Are you open to change? Are you worshiping? Sometimes the quiet can be overwhelming and the stillness and can cause anxiety. Allow the stillness to bring you closer to His heart. “Whenever you can’t trace His hand trust His Heart” -Babbie Mason

“Be STILL and know that I am God.” (Psalms 46:10)

There may be a lot of stillness and yet you can find beauty in the growth. After all, “the flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.” (Mulan. YES. I have been watching too much Disney… I need to go outside.)

Grow.

XOXO, KB