Open

August 23, 2020

I’m six months into a three-year commitment at my new job. I came into the role to bring structure and order to the organization. When I was preparing for the job, and even at the beginning of the role, as I was mapping out the strategic plan, I thought most everything would be resolved by now. I thought I’d be able to turn around an organization experiencing great barriers in a matter of six months (or maybe even less than that, who knows!).  

Ah, the enthusiasm of youth.

We’re a lot farther down the road than anyone else expected us to be at this point, and we’ve accomplished a great deal, but we’re nowhere near where I thought we’d be.

I thought we’d have fixed everything and would start to grow now. We are growing, greatly, but we’ve also still got a lot to resolve.

As I was reflecting, recently, on where we were, where we’re at, and where we’re going, I realized that it will probably take the entire three years for us to get to the place that I thought we’d be at by now. I realized that we probably won’t get to that point and then grow, but more than likely we’d grow as we got to that point. That all of our organizational trauma and baggage wouldn’t be resolved before we were given great opportunities and gifts but while we were being given great opportunities and gifts.

It’s been a hard thought to confront. We are, in an organized and systematized way, resolving the areas of concern thoroughly and carefully. We’re taking every step out of disorder and chaos with wisdom. Inexplicably, God’s blessing and gifting us even though we still have such a far way to go.

Can God do the same with me? 

Ever since I realized I wasn’t healthy and wasn’t allowing God to make me whole, I put a pause in my mind. I thought I was like this organization, in disorder and experiencing chaos, and I needed God to turn me around fully in order to receive his blessing. I stopped dreaming and largely shut myself off. Like a Scooby-Doo cartoon, I was pulling the drawbridge from over the moat and throwing piranhas into the water to keep everything out while I cleaned up inside. I have been thinking that because I’m not healthy or moved on from, well, pick a trauma, any trauma, that I can’t receive a good gift from God. That everything’s a test or a tool. I’m starting to think I don’t receive well. I don’t receive kind or encouraging words well. There are some types of gifts that I don’t believe myself capable to accept until I’m fully whole and healthy and recovered.

But as I’m seeing with this organization, it’s not an if/then situation. Such as, “If I get well, then God will bless me.” It’s both/and. God is both restoring me to the vision he has for me and he’s blessing me in the process. He’s refining and blessing, simultaneously.

It is disheartening to be made aware that I’ve turned my heart from accepting a good gift from God. It brings a pit in my stomach and a heaviness to my soul to know that I’ve closed myself off from this part of God. It’s part of God’s character to give and to bless as much as it is to discipline and refine. He gives us salvation, he gifts us the Holy Spirit, it says a godly wife can only be given by God, he gives us his grace, and His Word is full of stories and examples of his generosity. I am not the exception to God’s gift or blessing. And believing that I have to be whole and restored in order to be worthy of God’s gifts is pretty much saying that I have to work and earn his blessing.

Oof. 

That’s a sobering realization.

Ah man, I think that’s a belief rooted in pride.

God, I didn’t know that was in my heart. I don’t know where to go from here. Logically, I see how you can restore and bless me at the same time. I cede that your way of managing this is far greater than mine. I don’t need to understand your ways, I trust you and I know that you’re working for my good and for Your glory, in all things. So I think that means I should be able and open to receive.

I want to be open to your gifts and I want to accept your blessings well. My first thought is that I think I need to believe that I’m worthy in order to do that. I can now admit that I thought all of these illnesses, these assaults, these traumas made me unworthy. But fundamentally, I don’t believe that. You make me worthy. You made me, Christ died for me. Because of you, I have worth and I have value. God, root that truth deeply within me. Let it hold firm.

God, if there’s anything else preventing me from receiving good and wonderful gifts from you or that prompts me to work to earn them, remove it. Just get rid of it. I don’t want to live closed off from you.

I’ve got two and a half more years on my commitment to this position. I don’t know where we’ll be at that point, but I’m open to where God leads.

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