Suffering Hidden

Well, hello, blog old friend! Except for two recent blog posts recently, it’s been a long time since I last wrote here, and I have missed you!

The last two years were a blur for me. 2017 and 2018 felt like one long year with lots of changes and transitions. In 2017 I was pregnant with Wes- our youngest- had lots and lots of morning sickness, was part of a team that planted a church, completed a language intensive, Wes was born, and Maia started school. In 2018 we said goodbye to the UAE, were in transition, started a very restricted healing diet, moved to another country and went through major culture shock. Both years were one difficult marathon.

We experienced everything from my crazy hormones and a chronic debilitating infection in my husband to post partum darkness for me & autoimmune symptoms for both of us. There wasn’t much reprieve between our stressful time of transition in the US and our move to this country. We did all that with three kids in tow, including a baby who only slept maaaybe 5 full nights his whole first year of life.

We are still in this season of resettling. During this time I’ve also found myself cooking for 3 different diets for health reasons. I’ve been spending 4-6 hours in the kitchen making 6-9 meals every day. It’s been brutal.

Sometimes people look back on a time of suffering and talk about how sweet it was and how they knew God so much better through it. If I’m honest, sweet is not how I would describe these past years. There was a lot of joy at different times. God met me in His word and fed my hope time and time again. But these have been hard years with many days barely making it from one day to the next.

I have wrestled with Christ. There have been all kinds of tears: tears of exhaustion, of anger, of perplexity. I have at times resisted the mighty hand of God that causes sleepless nights, illness, and all kinds of stress because I have been afraid it will break me. Having little reprieve in unrelenting stress with increasing demands has been fuel for lots of temptation. I have been especially tempted to doubt God’s goodness and care for me, and to put my hope in something other than God, namely, REST.

How do I process a very difficult, long season? Especially when my faith has been tested and I have a hard time seeing if I have really grown in trust? Do I give in to serious introspection? Do I despair over the many times I gave in to unbelief? Do I find comfort in the times I did trust? How do I move on with confidence to a different season of resettling and language learning while still experiencing some of the same suffering and temptations to unbelief?

In some ways I don’t think it really matters whether I see clearly what all God has been doing, and whether I can clearly measure growth in knowing God. What gives me confidence is what Christ did when He bound His life to mine (Rom. 8: 9). He, the Uncreated One, came to live inside me through His spirit. He also hid me inside himself forever (Col. 3: 3). Nothing can change this.

I am inside Christ. Everything that the Lord has brought to my life and that He will bring in the future, I can only experience safely in Him. I wrote earlier that I have feared at times that all this stress would be the end of me. But that can never be. Nothing can destroy me.

I am hidden in Him in an irreversible way. God is for me in Christ. Safe in Him, what can man [or sleeplessness, unrelenting stress, exhaustion, or depression] do to me?” (Psalm 56: 8). Moreover, in Christ the only thing they can do is serve Him His purpose to do me good. God never wastes anything so whether or not I can see what He has been accomplishing in my life, I take heart: He will effectively fulfill His design in conforming me to His Son (Rom. 8: 29).

This gives me hope when I think I am stuck in unbelief and fear. It changes how I pray from, “Father, please change me” to “Father, I know you are changing me. I am so thankful you’re not stuck in making me like Jesus.”

Christ is inside me. I don’t need to be overly preoccupied with my faith, because “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2: 20). I live by faith in His faith, not mine. Because He is faithful and true, I have seen Christ’s faith in His Father ultimately ruling my heart, enabling me to submit to His word, and praising Him when I don’t understand what He is doing or why. Christ’s holiness in me has been enabling me to confess when I trust my judgement more than His. In a shocking gift of grace, God is living His life through me in Jesus Christ (Eph. 4: 18). That is the only way to overcome the unbelief in my heart that Christ already overcame at the cross.

The life of Jesus in me is revealed through suffering. This diet, this culture shock, this broken body of mine are how God will manifest the life of Jesus in my mortal flesh. This moves me to embrace this season. To thank Him for it, even. I will only know His endurance, His trust, His courage, and His joy as I see Him living them out in me by faith. His life is the life I want, the only life that enables me not to lose heart (2 Cor. 4).