Take A Good Look

I started my first job in ministry as a lost wide-eyed girl who’d spent the last 10 years running from the weight of her bad decisions. I didn’t believe that I deserved to work in ministry, much less the prayer ministry, yet here I was being offered a job. When I came to Trinity Church it was the first time in years I felt hope that wholeness existed and that I just might have a chance of finding it for myself. So without having any clue what the next three years would entail or what an assistant to a prayer pastor even did on a week-to-week basis, I accepted. At that point in my life, I was battling with deep rooted shame, self rejection, and fear of abandonment. I had erected walls around my heart to keep people at a distance because I didn’t believe I was capable or worthy of receiving love. The love I had been given or sought out in years past, primarily from dating relationships, had always been conditional and I was always left feeling like I wasn't enough. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had begun to view my interactions with people through this lens of constantly perceived rejection. It was a defense mechanism of sorts, if I thought they rejected me first then I wouldn’t have to do the hard work of letting them in.

As I began to work for Melissa and Anthony in the prayer ministry I found this strange dynamic at work. I would see them move in power, authority, and intimacy and I would ache with longing to know the Lord’s heart for me in that way, and yet at every turn, my mind was riddled with thoughts of disqualification. I would at the same time want to be a version of myself that was different and genuinely thought that no matter what I did I could never change. It was a very self-defeating and exhausting cycle, and I thought it was just affecting me. What I didn’t realize is that my internal world was having a deep effect on those around me, especially Melissa and Anthony. It got to the point where I was incapable of receiving any level of correction or instruction from them without taking it as a personal rejection. I allowed a narrative of thoughts to run rampant in my mind that I could not do anything right. I began to distance myself from them & other relationships and turn to old coping patterns of numbing my emotions with media and books.

Throughout my first year and a half with Melissa and Anthony, they witnessed all of this inner turmoil at work in my life and even took many emotional hits from the unhealed places of my heart. But from the first day that they met me, they saw beauty and strength of character in me that I didn’t know was there. They consistently demonstrated the compassion and grace of Jesus to me through their words and responses. They had many chances to turn away and give up on me, but they chose to remain and to speak to the person they knew I could be. This looked like a lot of hard conversations with provoking questions to help me realize truth. It looked like tears wept over me in secret and public by them. It looked like laughter and game nights, and long talks in the parking lot because they knew those intentional moments were a healing balm for my soul. They loved me too much to leave me where I was, so instead they stayed and loved me through the mess and into my healing.

I believe that we all face the same two crossroads at some point in our lives. The first is what I would call the “take a good look” moment. Everyone has things in their lives that they need healing and freedom from, in that we are not alone. The defining moment in our healing journey is our ability to take a real honest hard look at ourselves and admit that some places in our soul need help. If we can’t admit it, how can we ever start working on it? The second crossroads moment is what I would call “freely receive, freely give”. I didn’t do anything to deserve the freedom or grace that I’ve found in Jesus and yet he offered it anyway. We will all encounter people in our lives who are hurting and in need of that same grace. We get to choose how we respond to them and if we keep showing up for them even when they let us down, which they will. One of the greatest lessons I have learned from Melissa and Anthony is how to love well. It was the revelation of God’s love through them that shifted the way I see myself and tenderized my heart again to be able to receive love from others. I hope to write about some of my encounters with Jesus that opened up my eyes to His love for me in future blogs, but for now, I leave you with this: No matter how broken or alone you may feel there is a way back for all of us where we can find true freedom, love and family.