Thy Will, My Sacrifice.

Remembering William

Have you ever had one of those moments maybe someone said or did something really nice and you vow to yourself “I’ll never forget this”? I’ve had moments like that, and to be honest I don’t really remember everything about the moment that made it so special. But I rationalize to myself that I’ll never forget the feeling that resulted from that person or that moment. I use to assume it was the same type of thing when people would refer to someone they once had in their life that they may have lost. You know, when they say, they think about that person all the time. I thought of it as more like a figure of speech than a reality, because you’re bound to forget if even for a moment. To my surprise this last year has really been quite the opposite for me. I understand and relate now. I find I remember more now that he’s passed. I have a ‘William story’ for literally everything. Walking through the grocery store reminds me of the shopping trips we use to take together, how confused he would get every month because I always managed to exceed the grocery budget, coming home from the grocery store and calling him from the car to come help me carry bags into the house. I look at photos and remember the conversations just before and after the moment was captured. I see other people in their relationships, celebrating each other, loving each other and I think about what we had. How I could never get enough of being around him and rushing home everyday just in anticipation of being back in his presence. I hear his voice in my head when I start to walk away from a phone charger still plugged in – frustrated but politely asking me to unplug it if I’m no longer using it. When I stand at the kitchen sink I think about how he would come home from work and hug me from behind while I stood at the sink, or the conversation we had the Friday before he passed in which he talked about all he wanted to do for me before he left for DC for the summer – like fix the kitchen faucet. When I sit in the cafeteria at work, I think of the many phone calls I had with Will in those seats. Conversations about how my day was going, getting a pep talk to dealing with my work frustrations, crying to him about how he hurt my feelings, or talking through disagreements. I love that I have these memories of William, but sometimes they bring more sadness than comfort.

Dark Clouds

After launching Thy Will, My Sacrifice the energy around me changed. It became harder to see these memories as good things, they now felt heavy. It was harder to pull myself out of the sad thoughts. On top of that, every other area of my life felt complicated too. It felt like a funk. I got into a groove where no matter how much faith I have my reality still sucks. I had every intention of making biweekly posts on my blog to keep fresh content up celebrating and honoring God’s goodness and his love, and sharing things I have been learning through my healing, but it didn’t happen that way. I decided even before sharing Intro to Thy Will, My Sacrifice that my second post would share about the reckless love of God, but I couldn’t get myself to the space of feeling inspired to write. My days became so packed with trying to keep up with things at home + things at work + trying to make time to keep up with friends and have a social life and build on relationships with people. It was all the perfect excuse not to reflect and write. And honestly, I accepted that because this rush of distractions also came with a cloud of random sadness. It started off as not being able to see the good in my memories of Will, I was breaking down from simply missing him. But it progressed to a deeper sadness. It wasn’t even about Will anymore; it was just like I couldn’t find comfort or happiness. I was praying and praising and soaking in his goodness just as I had before in moments like this, but this time it felt ineffective. This was harder to shake.

Perspective

I felt small and compressed by everything going on around me. But I know the value and power of perspective. Perspective is the way you see something. Your point of view or line of sight that you have from your position. So even though the circumstances around me created these feelings within me, I had to step outside of that and look at things from a different perspective.

I remember shortly after returning to work last summer, I had a conversation with my big bro. As I sat on the phone, sobbing over the weight of the sadness, he said to me, “Imagine one day looking back, your story of how you’ve overcome what you’re going through right now will become part of someone else’s survival guide.” So as I fought through not allowing this recent anxiety to consume me, that is what I held on to. I changed my position to see it from the next person’s. It’s ok that I’m not ok right now, and as I figure out a way to get to a place of being ok, I will be able to support and walk the next person through when they are not ok.

Alright, but wait. If the next person came to me at this point, I don’t know what I’d tell them. I’m still working on pulling myself up, I don’t know how I would pull someone else up right now. I don’t have the answers Sway!

But I’ve moved from the eye of the storm, to being a bystander – watching the impact of the storm. Now it’s time to navigate the storm. God gave  me this visual for Heaven’s perspective some time back in August 2019 and it has been resurfacing in my life recently: I don’t know what the views from heaven exactly look like…but let’s say it’s up in the sky, above the clouds – sort of like the view from flying in an airplane. When you look out of your window, your position is higher, so you’re able to see more. God’s position, His view, His perspective is the highest – when God looks down and sees a storm, he would see where it starts and where it ends. Theoretically it’s really the same thing when he sees a “storm” in our lives. That is why we want to look at our storms from his perspective instead of our own. From our own position, we’re caught in the rain, with no umbrella, hair all wet, open toe shoes – panicking indefinitely because we don’t know when this storm will end. We look all around us and only see the down-pouring of rain. Trying to run away from the storm but ending up basically running with the moving storm cloud. But from God’s view, he sees how small this rain cloud is, that it’s moving and if we stand firm it will pass in a moments time. Or even better if we knew which way was towards the end of the cloud we would get through it quicker!

Isaiah 40:22 (EASY) “These are the things: God sits on a special seat where the earth and the sky meet. And the people on earth seem like small insects to him. He hangs out the skies like a curtain. And he makes them like a tent for him to live in.”

God is so great! He created all of the earth. Jesus saw my life in it’s entirety as he was crucified on the cross. He has infinite wisdom and power. That’s who I want to help me! That’s who has the answers! So I am going to channel Him, by way of prayer and reading His word, so that I can see my storm from his perspective! So that He can share His insight on what my next move should be, giving me the turn by turn directions of how to navigate my storm.

His grace is sufficient

I have some bomb leadership in my life. I shared some of the weight that I felt I had been carrying with my pastor and he talked with me and walked me through a few scriptures that brought further perspective to my life. We read through II Corinthians 12 and talked about a thorn in the flesh. The gift of a handicap to keep one aware of their own limitations and the power of prayer.

II Corinthians 12:9-10 (NKJV) And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Great tribulation brings out the great strength of God. Grace is the favor and love of God in action! God’s grace is sufficient to uphold me, sufficient to strengthen me, sufficient to comfort me, sufficient to make my trouble useful to me, sufficient to enable me to triumph over it, sufficient to bring me out of it! (Spurgeon – EnduringWord.com)

Count me in

I have a special relationship with music these days. My late husband William appreciated quality, lyrical music. It became a special part of our relationship that I still emphasize today. He used to quote song lyrics to help me change my outlook on things or to explain to me why he thought the way that he did about something. Now, when I here lyrics that really resonate with me, I like to think of it as a happy reminder of Will’s continued presence in my life.

SWITCH is a collective of worship pastors from Life.Chruch, a multi-site church with a mission to lead people to become fully devoted followers of Christ. SWITCH has a song that was released back in February 2020 that I happened to stumble across in the midst of battling this thorn in my flesh. It’s called Count Me In, I highly recommend looking it up to listen to it. https://youtu.be/2S2HsHwGQkg

In the midst of my continued personal growth in abiding in the proven word God, and all that our city, nation, and world is facing through this COVID-19 pandemic this song has set the baseline for where I stand. Life gets challenging sometimes, but I will not let the challenging days or the anxiety over take me. I will stand on the faithfulness and grace of God for strength to persevere until the work is done.