Uprooted to be Replanted November 4, 2011

            I’m about to get really honest…this week has been one of internal upheaval. The past few months, okay, really on and off since graduation at TWU, have been littered with intervals of an “early adulthood crisis” of “what am I doing with my life?!” followed by periods of apathy and eventually acceptance. Additionally, it’s been so easy to fall into the trap of comparison. Comparing myself to people who seem to “have it all together” who are in graduate school, getting married, having kids, or starting that career; while I live at home after completing a BA and working in a job I love, with children with disabilities, but really don’t have clear directions for the “next step for me”. Thankfully, God in his infinite graciousness; let me go through these past 18 months. He let me see where looking for others' (my parents, old college professors, co-workers, and friends) approval or acknowledgement of my “success” as a post grad adult would really take me. It led to discouragement, isolation at times, and often hopelessness and futility. This was exactly what I needed to see-- the hollowness of putting my acceptance and identity in anything or person besides the atonement of Christ and HIS view of me.

              Similarly, this season has uprooted every way I defined myself. Sure, I am a sinner saved by Grace, but only after you realize your depravity do you know the weight of salvation, what you’re saved from. Like John Newton, you’re able to say “…I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great Savior”. Growing up in the Church was a tremendous blessing. I can see how Christ has saved me from so many things, I am so blessed. But the fact that I have “always known” about Christ and his work caused me to be “religious” in a lot of ways, and while I believed at the early age of 3, I quickly became religious. Like Martin Lloyd-Jones relates throughout his work, Spiritual Depression, those raised in the church tend to miss justification, moving prematurely onto a focus on sanctification without realizing the totality of their justification. He also states that your temperament doesn’t change when you become a Christian, but your relationship to it does; it does not rule you. My tendency is to want to succeed, and to want others to acknowledge it. From an early age, I remember wanting more than anything for my mother to delight in the things I did, to take notice of my efforts. This carried over into a pride in school work and, as I began to be teased in third and fourth grade, to prove that I could handle it, I was strong enough. I wanted to show the world that a 4’ 10” “almost dwarf” could play sports, could be a “good Christian girl”. I was blinded by my pride and deafened by my futile attempts to find lasting worth and acceptance in anyone but the loving, patient Savior who called me by name. It was easy to go with that flow as long as life was mapped out: high school turned to college, and then….what?

            After college, I tried to continue on my “to-do” list for life. Persevere with hearing loss, check; apply to grad school, check; attempt to get to know new people, get involved in a church, check. Then….well, 18 months later, I’m not in grad school because of financial reasons, and presently I’m not foreseeable acquisition of moving out, getting married anytime soon, you know, the other “markers” of a “successful” mid-twenty year old. It was a pretty bleak place to be. Thankfully, Christ has worked to uproot this, exposing the prideful, achieving nature I have through the frustration and hollow “fulfillment” that fleeting human approval brings. Ironically enough, the people in my life who I wanted to impress with my accomplishments and prove my worth to, like Christ love and accept me often in spite of those things. Yesterday I read one of the later chapters in Spiritual Depression titled, “In God’s Gymnasium” where Lloyd-Jones describes how God disciplines those he loves. He examines, and works us to work his character in us. Often, this takes the form of chastisement. He allows us to be disciplined so we can grow. It is painful but infinitely purposeful. I am so thankful for this season where I was uprooted, the dirt of my depravity was (and I know will continue to be) revealed so that I may be rooted in the only one who can truly satisfy all my desires and cleanse my unrighteousness. He is the perfect physician, as C.S. Lewis states, who “hurts to heal’, who uproots to truly root us in righteousness.