Sometimes I feel so torn by this digital age that we're living in. I love the convenience, the easy access to everything and the pretty pictures. All of the pretty pictures...timehop can have me in a puddle of tears over how fast my babies have grown and I can catch up on our out of town families beautiful weekend shenanigans all in one sitting.
While there is something to be said about capturing the good and putting it out there to preserve for our own memories and also for the world to see, I do think it can be a bit misleading at times. There's a fine balance of capturing the good while also remaining authentic.
I desire to do both, but it's hard sometimes.
This past weekend when I took my sweet mama and my girls to NYC and documented my memories, I kind of thought it might be a good time to take the time to go a little deeper than the pictures. I always desire to encourage others that even though those live shots to beautiful melodies might make everything seem beautiful and easy and whimsical and fun-sometimes there's a little more to the story. And it's so worth telling because that's where the good stuff is found.
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Many, many years ago when I struggled with anxiety at my worst I had this lingering sense of wanting to get out. I would wake up panicking in the night and have to go out on the porch and look up at the stars. I would go into work (night shift at a hospital) and as the walls felt like they were closing in if I could just get a minute of fresh air outside, I could make it through the night. It was a dark season but God was faithful.
I now know that there's actually a lot of science behind what God was teaching me about His creation, what I was feeling and how to cope. It's been a beautiful process as I've grown and hopefully helped others along the way over the years. I'm happy to say that MOST of the time now, I go about my days and do not live in fear or panic. Im pretty intentional about consistently doing the things that keep me close to God and therefore a lot calmer on a daily basis.
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So in the middle of a big beautiful bustling city along with 982,837,894,346 (I kid) (sort of) other people....I found myself STUCK in a stinking elevator on Saturday. If you're thinking, "Oh I bet she wanted out" you'd be right.
And I don't like to admit this, but I panicked. There wasn't much I could actually do but I did stand there and cry. My girls were mostly fine, mama was fine, eight other strangers were fine....it was just me. I wanted OUT like nobody's business and as you know stuck in an elevator is kind of confining. Nobody was going anywhere. I do remember at one point reaching into my purse, pulling out a few chewable supplements which are totally natural but to the strangers in the elevator might have looked like I was popping some sort of CBD. I didn't care.
Thankfully one sweet man who was also a little unwell over the situation asked me if I wanted to pray. I did and within a minute of praying out loud the powers that be were able to open the door and get us out of there. Imagine that. God is faithful.
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Now here's where it gets a little tricky because I would love for that to be the end of it. And in a large part, it was. We went on about our day, went to dinner and a show, had a blast an mostly forgot about said incident.
It wasn't until about 3 am. in that hotel room when everyone else was fast asleep that the enemy came in like a flood and that feeling of needing out settled on me and had me thinking that getting out of that room, out of that hotel and down onto the street for a minute was what I needed to feel relief. It would be funny if it wasn't so true. Sometimes the lies that the enemy tells us when we aren't operating with the mind of Christ just aren't even halfway logical.
Thankfully though even though it had been many years since I had anything like this happen-it wasn't my first rodeo either. I sent Tim a text in the middle of the night and asked him to pray for me. He immediately answered and told me to go read Psalm 46. I did and it calmed me. Then I read it again. He told me to play Shane and Shanes versions of singing Psalm 46 and 42 until I felt better. He was right. It works every time. HE works. His WORD works. God is faithful.
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I was recalling some of the less than beautiful details of this incident to a friend yesterday and we were laughing hysterically. The hard parts of life are so much more bearable if you can laugh at yourself....God designed us to be curious, to ask questions, to laugh and enjoy life. He is continually drawing us into relationship with Him and I will proclaim this until the day I go home to heaven....I wouldn't have the blessing of knowing Him like I do without this stinking thorn in the flesh. So therefore it is worth it. Knowing Him is so worth anything it takes to find that when everything falls apart you are really and truly held together only by Him.
I so hope that when someone sees my life in snippets of squares on Instagram that they see there is a God that holds me together. He holds all of us together and has us carefully tended to in the palm of His hand. We are going to be ok. Life won't always be easy and as a matter of fact some hard days turn into hard seasons which turn into hard years. That's the gospel life. It will ultimately be redeemed in Heaven but we have no guarantee that it won't sometimes be hard here. The enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy but Jesus came to give us abundant life (John 10:10).
The older that I get the more that I'm finding that abundant life is found not in everything always being perfect, but just finding Him in the midst of it.
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I share this with the desire that you remember that no ones life is perfect no matter how beautiful or aesthetically pleasing it looks on the Gram. And even if your struggle looks different than mine, don't you dare for a minute let the enemy stop you from living the life that our God intended. It won't always be easy, but it is so worth it to persevere!
Go and live your life without fear as you trust in Him. Repeat that phrase to yourself and sing the Psalms over yourself as often as needed. God is faithful!
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