Wrestling to Rest

I’m still not sure where I’m going in this writing journey, but all I do know for sure is I’ve got a Good Shepherd. And it’s there, in the capable and loving hands of Jesus, I can honestly rest. So I’m going to be completely honest with you, my readers.

It has been a wrestling match of epic proportions to embrace it!! 

So, so many times since I felt God encourage me in this writing, I’ve said, “I have no idea what I’m doing!” And yet, here I am. It’s been eight years since I heard the still, small voice. A voice that only became audible to me after my health and work – essentially my life – came crashing down around me. 

In March 2022, I was rockin’ and rollin’ with consistency and discipline to crank out weekly Woman Made Well blog posts and FaceBook posts. I wanted to tell you about how Jesus had and is impacting my life. Messages did come, but only after the 11th plus hour, it seemed, following a lot of prayerful pleading with God and working myself into a reasonably respectable anxiety attack because I didn’t want to be a quitter or a failure or let God down in any way. 

Yes, I was serious and deliberate about the process. I wanted to please God so passionately. But there were so many things I didn’t know about myself, and I didn’t know what I didn’t know.  

Then an amazing and absolutely confounding experience cracked the foundation of the platform I was trying to stand on in my own strength. (Uggg, red flag. God gives grace to the humble. He invites us to rely on Him to elevate what His will has prepared, not do it ourselves. https://www.biblehub.com/james/4-6.htm)

Looking back, I was a little smug. I thought I had my purpose figured out already. I wasn’t working for my kingdom anymore but for the Kingdom of God. And now, I could apply the excellent work ethic I’d inherited to this new adventure. But I didn’t realize how my self-sufficiency distorted my ability to receive God’s love and His grace. In how many ways I was refusing His grace while relying on the old stand-bys of a perfectionist and people-pleasing performance routines – conscious and subconscious – to this new thing God was giving me to do.

I was working for grace, not letting grace inspire the work. 

Thank God that He was leading me, telling me when to stop and go.

With a benefit of an incredibly godly group of facilitators, I was allowed the opportunity to process through and start to develop my life’s purpose statement. It was exciting, but the old Kelli’s survival skills were still so deeply rooted in me. And from there, going through the exercises, I “led the witness” – me! I attempted to fit God’s purpose for me in my neat little tagline. It wasn’t working. From there, I hit a severe writing wall, and I felt another small voice saying to lay it down – temporarily.

And rest.

During this time of wrestling rest, I could see clearly how God had been providing for me even with my disability. How my health and energy are sovereignly controlled. Yes, I participate in taking care of my body, but I don’t even come close to controlling it. If my health hadn’t deteriorated and my energy had not depleted, I wouldn’t have willing walked into the writing calling God has revealed. In fact, I would have been going the other direction.

This was a life-changing discovery. This weakness I’d been wrestling with, praying for healing from, viewing it from medical perspectives and cultural perspectives that told me I should be like everyone else. Believing this situation was in my control to solve.

This happens to be the conduit by which my Savior has chosen to meet me and invite me to serve Him. It’s inexplicable!!

It was simply a little voice nudging me to leave my comfort zone in search of a promise because my Father had something better for His daughter than she could ever hope for herself. 

A journey not knowing where she is going – but never alone. https://biblehub.com/hebrews/11-8.htm