Yesterday morning I stopped and took this picture. I knew the MOMENT I took it that this testimony was ready to write. I’ve been trying to write it for months. I think God was still putting his finishing touches on my heart because I was struggling to articulate it.

When I took this picture, I couldn’t believe how much this scene reflected my own heart. I have been in a very dark place, for a very long time. While driving, the depths of the darkness around me reflected it back to me. It really isn’t important what brought me to ‘this place.’ Every time I try to help someone understand how I got here it comes up way too overwhelming or not near hard enough. Much of it is too sensitive to even share. Isn’t it interesting how personal pain can be? I thought I couldn’t share my testimony because I was struggling with helping people understand the circumstances. When I took this picture, I realized it isn’t the circumstances we share, it is ‘the place’. If you’re in ‘this place’ or have been in ‘this place’, then you know. It’s dark. It’s uncertain. It’s earth-shattering and painful. It completely alters everything about life that you knew… and all of your plans. It is a place where suddenly you question God… and in particular… you question his sovereignty, his ability to protect you, and his very love. It is a place of extreme discord. Where the God you thought you knew feels like a fraud, an imposter and a lie. It is a place where NOBODY can talk you out of your extreme disillusionment. A place where others say coined phrases like… ‘Just be glad it isn’t… ‘ or ‘Be grateful for…’ or ‘God will pull you through…’ and you hear it as screeching nails on a chalkboard. It is God who brought you here or failed you. It’s ‘THAT place.’ There is no ‘fixing’ what brought you here, and our circumstances that brought us here don’t have to match to relate to one another. We just know that like the road in this picture, we are in a ‘through’ moment and there is no turning back or starting again. So I want to share my testimony from the midst of ‘this place’.

In the heart of my deep dark night, I threw a shoe through my bathroom door and screamed at God for not caring for me. The circumstance that brought me to this point was easily overcome, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I had been obedient. I was doing ALL the things. I had followed ALL the way He led me and sacrificed so much along the way. And while God had taken care of my daily needs, he had left the wants and dreams unfulfilled. And they were piling up high in the corner. Instead he had replaced them with a seemingly needless, barrage of tribulation like a million tiny paper cuts across deep enduring scars. EVERYTHING was hard. If I were being honest, I was still living in a world where I thought obedience and hard work would breed success… eventually. I could not let go of the eventually. And I didn’t realize I had the wrong picture of success. Somehow, in the middle of that tantrum, God whispered, ‘Have you considered my servant Job.’ And I started a REALLY long journey of letting go of that ‘eventually’. Pain is a HUMAN experience, but as a Christian I often get blindsided as if I were immune. I don’t know what gives us the idea that we will be protected from everything in life. According to the Bible’s definition of God, it isn’t true. So this is my testimony to share if you ever find yourself throwing a shoe through a bathroom door. Or on your knees weeping with the shower running so that your family doesn’t hear you cry. Or bitterly skipping time with friends so you don’t have to hear their wonderful news compared to the disaster you find yourself muddling through. You are not alone and it is okay to be angry at God. This is my testimony of how opening my Bible graciously gave me the opportunity to endure VERY human pain in a very meaningful way.

First, even though you cannot see us in the dark and we are not on the SAME road, you are not alone. There was nobody in the passenger seat with me this morning, and no one on the road I was traveling. However, I know other cars are there. You are not alone. In fact, you are surrounded by a huge cloud of witnesses, martyrs, saints and servants. All who have laid down their lives and their happiness in obedient pursuit of God. You have the second half of Hebrews 11. While the first half of Hebrews names the heroes whose lives turned out blessed for their effort, the second half is so filled with adversity that the names are too long to list. Many of them dying in it. You have Job, and Jesus. You have every single apostle. You have Isaiah, and Jeremiah. You have the millions of Christians martyred. Every. Single. One. Each pleaded with God to take their cup, but God would not. You are NOT alone. In the lowest of the lowest place, I would read Lamentations chapter 3 before going to bed. I would repeat it over and over, “Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed… it is good to wait patiently for the salvation of the Lord.” In my own pain, I often felt alone, like no one understood it. I would try to explain it to them, but they didn’t REALLY feel it with me. Yesterday, I was reminded of how personal pain can be but how the questions in the darkness are often the same. If God loves me… and God is all-powerful… then WHY is He putting me through pain? That question is often the discord of Christianity. And I realized that my testimony might matter to someone. I hated God and I had a choice. Maybe he doesn’t exist because He isn’t acting like I thought. Maybe He existed and just doesn’t actually care. Or… maybe it is something else. What if I could read what hundreds of others have been through to understand what I wasn’t getting. I began to ask myself what I did not know about Him that helped these other followers keep going.

In reading about them, I realized that it is okay to be angry at God. God IS sovereign and all powerful and He CAN stop what is causing my pain. He did not, and now EVERYTHING is changed. My relationship with Him will never be the same. Go ahead and throw the shoe. You don’t have to lie to God about how you feel. He detests liars. This was the next step I took in the darkness. I think I was drawn so much to Lamentations 3 because the author downright puts the blame of his misery squarely on the God who is refusing to change or fix it. However, accepting that God allowed, and possibly orchestrated ‘that place’ in my life was a resounding dissonant chord for me. I had been fed so many good stories that happened to Christians who followed God, that I had forgotten that anything bad could happen to them. The prophet in Lamentations didn’t necessarily do anything to earn his plight; he bore the burden of collective sin. I’ve spoken with many people who abandon Christianity due to this dissonance. But I think it was around this time, when God whispered to me about Job. And it was here that I realized God’s lack of provision, unwillingness to heal, lack of protection for ourselves or loved ones… they are as much a part of who He is, His relationship to us, and His purpose as all the wonderful things on this earth. I didn’t get to that until I opened up my bible and let Him tell me.

Like the widow and her son who had only but small bits of flour and oil, how can I know God as provider, if I always live in plenty? I recognized that the lepers Jesus healed could not know Him as healer, if they were never sick. And like the last prophets of Israel delivering the last messages of God, how can I experience the depths of his presence if I am never lonely? Or like Paul shipwrecked on his way to preach the gospel, how can God be my banner and my shepherd if I am never lost and I am never in a place where I cannot protect myself? Dark times give us the opportunity to know God as Jehovah – Lord. Even if the Lordship of God we expected to see, is not the one that shows up. He may be showing us another. In Job, after losing everything he owns, all his children, his livelihood and all of his health just short of death, Job’s wife tells him to just curse God and die. He replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” I realized in this moment that I was talking like a foolish woman. I stopped in that moment and prayed for a heart like Job. Job didn’t curse God for not protecting Him, he acknowledged God’s sovereignty and accepted His choice. I wanted a heart willing to accept that God’s purpose is greater than my needs and wants and burdens in my life. How do I live like Christ and accept the crosses of my life, even though I may beg as He did for that cup to be removed?

In the picture above, I want to point out how the light appears in the darkness. Using only my headlights, I can only see what is directly in front of me. However, the sunlight as it rises gives me a new hope. I found that while I am in ‘that place’ it is very hard to see the rising sun. If, like me, you are standing in the dark, holding the dim light of your faith and trying to decide if it is easier to blow out the candle or keep pressing on, I’m sharing my testimony in hope that you will fight for the sunrise. Have faith in the sunrise. Scripture is your sunrise.

EVERY human will walk through pain. Christians often walk through the worst of it. But because of Jesus, my experience with pain doesn’t have to be the same as ordinary humanity. I have the promises of Christ. God’s word is my sunrise. My pain isn’t just the meaningless consequence of sin in a dark, dark world. I may have been angry and hurt, but God intervened, and I gave him a chance to speak. God promises something so much more for my pain. I realized that the worst cross of pain and death was born by Christ himself and God did not take it from him. I do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For I believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so I believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. And we will be with the Lord forever. (1 Thessalonians 4) IF I truly believe this, my earthly life has new meaning. All my accomplishments and failures are nothing compared to the eternity where Jesus has built a home for me. I have an eternity ahead of me where none of this pain will ever happen to me or anyone I love again. So why can’t we just skip to the end?

My view of God is fuzzy and muddled from life, like the bugs on the glass of my windshield. I cannot see ALL of the road. My view is limited to the headlights in front of me. In my faith, God becomes stronger, but only in my times of deep need and want, can I discover Him to be Lord. When I got to this place of acceptance to God’s sovereignty and realizing that He was trying to teach me about his Lordship, I began to ask God to show me what I cannot see in my pain. He reminded me of a year I spent in Romans. Romans tells us that we can rejoice in suffering because it produces endurance, endurance produces character and character produces hope. Hope will not put us to shame. Why? Because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us. I expect Hope not to put us to shame because God will eventually deliver. But that’s not what Paul says. He says that our hope does not put us to shame because of God’s love.

GOD is love. To know Him is to know love. I realized that I CAN stand surrounded in my pain and the ashes of my dreams, IF I anchor myself to who HE is and not the circumstances I am in. At the end of Job, God is done listening to Job ask why he was suffering even though he was righteous. He makes a long list of his mightiness and Job responds in the only appropriate way, “I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted… I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” And then Job repents. He is righteous, but repents. I am not an emotional person, and I do not really cry. But I wept very bitterly at this point because I realized what I was doing to myself. I thought the purpose of my obedience was to bring about Heaven on earth. But God has a different purpose for our lives on earth. We are to know Him and to make Him fully known (John 17). The word of God helped me let go of my ‘eventually’ and realize it didn’t matter. I cannot tell you the freedom I experienced from the pain it took to let go of that word.

This is the best description of the change that happened to me. I was riding life like I was tethered to a roller coaster built by God. I was trying to get to know Him using the ups and downs of the coaster he created for me. Like Job, I judged my righteousness by the circumstances of life and felt God unfair. If things were going good, I was on the right track. I was following the rules, but life was jerking me around, and it left me confused. I was letting the circumstances of life teach me about God. Now imagine God is a fixed point above the roller coaster, and I’ve moved my tether and attached it to God himself. Using the Bible to act as my tether, I have a fixed point. Now, I’m riding along my roller coaster in peace, because my tether is not changing. It stays the same. I let God talk me through my circumstances to show me about Himself and His purpose. I do not even NEED the ‘eventually’. I know that my circumstances are ALWAYS going to reveal more about Him as long as I remain tethered to Him. The ‘Eventually’… has already arrived and has always been here. I’m free from the curse of humanity and the lie that my life must have certain things to be successful. It has new meaning now. To know Him, and to help make Him fully known. Now, that I’m looking in the right direction, I can see the sunrise.

This is just a picture of a lonely road at sunrise. However, the sun rising slowly in the back reminds me… Heaven is coming. I have a ‘no pain’ eternity waiting for me. But if my cross gives me a chance to KNOW God on earth and to see God’s resurrection for my spirit or yours, this pain has deep and everlasting meaning. I’m happy to say that there is a tiny, spiritual fruit growing out of this that never could have been. I’m forever changed.

I’ve been complaining because I have been wanting to move on from Job. But I knew God wasn’t ready for me to move until I could share this testimony. I’m not home yet, and until I am, I have only one job to do. To know Him fully and to make Him fully known. Reading scripture and learning things isn’t the same as allowing it to change you. Freedom from ordinary humanity lies in the cross of Christ. My testimony? I want to tell you that God is real. I’m begging you to take the time to read what He says about Himself. But more importantly to let Him show you why. To fix your eyes on how Jesus handled HIS cross. He is the author of our faith. He is the perfecter on how to live it. Just like Jesus, your pain is not without purpose and meaning. I can’t give it to you, but HE can.

God did not play healer or fixer, but in this time I met Him as sustainer. He is enough. I traded the expectations of blessings in exchange for the privilege to know Him as provider. I finally let go of my ‘eventually’… and found an overwhelming freedom from the curse of human striving that is too great for words. He spent nearly seven years pushing me into places where I am not enough, in order to help me see how HE is greater. The end result is a changed spirit. I got to SEE God in a way I never would have had the chance to do. I am not the same. If you are in ‘that place’, you are not alone. You’re allowed to be angry, and to sit in that as long as you need. No one knows your pain or how long God is going to take you through it. I hope this testimony helps you realize that even if no one seems to feel your circumstances, ‘the place’ is recognizable by many. I hope that my testimony encourages you to keep opening up his word and protecting your heart by tethering it to Him.

I’ve been asked several times to write devotions.  However, I find testimonies are better. They are personal and they encourage us to keep going. That ‘keep going’ theme is a big part of our community lately as we have been experiencing an extreme amount of loss and pain. So I choose to share my testimony. My testimony is about how God’s word revealed who God is and helped me get from darkness to light. So… it seems fitting to end this testimony with the Word.

A while back I posted this song with these lyrics:

Your light came breaking through the darkness

Waking every heart with

Heaven singing joy unto the world

If I start crying at the children’s musical this year during this song, you’ll now know why. I choke back tears just about every time. I know one day, some maybe sooner than others, they will sit in the dark. And so, I’m ending with the most encouraging scripture I have about ‘this place’.

In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:4-5 – about Jesus)