We asked some of our staff and Dream Team to write a letter to their “March 1st Selves”. There’s something healing about taking time to acknowledge both the pain and the joys of this season, and constructing them into a meaningful narrative. This has been a hopeful exercise, and we hope you enjoy reading them as we post them over the next little while. If you’re up for it, grab a pen and paper and try writing one to yourself! What comes up may surprise you. - Relate
Dear Lillie,
I know you cling to routine. You find comfort in knowing that what you planned to happen, happens. You look forward to the days during the week that you get to see all of your friends and talk and laugh and hug and just be, without limitations. Remember when God spoke a word over your year? Depend. Yeah, you are about to understand that on a deeper level. Remember when He reminded you that you are called to a life of dependence on Him alone? I know you crave independence; you crave to create the path before you-- to be the pioneer that plows the ground on which you will walk. But to live a life of dependence is to cling to God, even when life is uncomfortable. And even when the path in front of you is not your preferred route. The path will change significantly. It will be dug up and redirected.
The entire world will have their lives put on pause because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The old normal will be gone and a new one will begin to form. It will hurt and make you sick with anxiety.
You already feel as though you have no idea where to plant your feet. You already feel that your life hasn’t met your expectations. And I know that you are already scared about what the future holds. So, I am sorry that soon, those feelings will be magnified. You will feel immense grief for the loss of your old routine and an overwhelming sense of frustration that you don’t have control. You will see it as chains at first. But God will reveal to you a deeper revelation of what He is doing in this season. This time of slowing down will not be stagnant.
Before the pandemic, you had begun to push your hurt down and ignore it. You knew that it would come back up eventually and erupt with an overflow of emotion. But you didn’t think it would be so soon and under these circumstances. In a season of pause, you will be forced to press play on the feelings of hurt and shame again. You will feel like sand, slipping through cracks in crumbled pieces. You would normally flee when these feelings rise up, but you won’t be able to go anywhere.
Shame will move in relentlessly. Your past mistakes, imperfections and weaknesses will take center stage in your thoughts. You will begin to question why you deserve God’s grace, especially when you’d been so negative and pessimistic. One night, as you sit on your front steps crying, God will speak to you. He will remind you that He is filled with mercy and that He does not look at what the world looks at (and that “world” includes you), He looks at the heart. God doesn’t have taste; He sees the broken, ugly and most shameful parts of you and is moved to compassion not disgust. Grace isn’t grace without an undeserving recipient.
There will be much to learn and press through soon, but the lover of your soul will not leave you. He will mend and rebuild what is lost. He will orchestrate all things for good. On your long walks through the neighbourhood, He will remind you that He sets the pace, directs the path and journeys with you—on your mundane strolls lost in thought and when your heart is so weak that one step requires more strength than you can muster. In the unknown you will learn to trust the One who knows all.
It won’t be easy to adjust, and you in all your stubborn ways will not take it well (this season has helped a lot with stubbornness, but we still have a long way to go). Trust me when I say that I am grateful for this change. I would not have chosen it myself but then I would not be made aware of the things in my heart that needed restoring. God would not have moved in the same ways. Your heart was becoming stiff and insensitive as you built up iron walls to protect yourself against hardship. Just know your defence system isn’t the walls you’ve built but the God who was raised from the dead for you. You won’t be let down or abandoned, now or in the battle to come. In times of stillness and silence, God will be with you. In times of anguish and worry, God will be with you. And when you choose to trust you will step into what you were created for, to be dependent on God wholeheartedly.
Watch as God moves like never before. You get a front row seat.
Love,
Lillie
(P.S. you will also laugh more than you have in a long time and learn to find joy in things that you had once taken for granted. But, mostly you will laugh, hard, until your stomach hurts and maybe make a fool of yourself on Zoom calls.)
