When God Screams…Maybe I Should Listen

I tend to have things happen to me in clusters and this is typically how God chooses to teach me something. This is often a very painful experience involving everything in my life exploding into tiny little shards leaving me nothing to cling to. Sadly, during these times I don’t seem to learn the lesson God wants me to learn and I find myself turning inward instead of upwards.  This perpetuates the cycle and I find myself needing to learn the same lessons over and over again as pieces of my life continue to disintegrate.I have become used to this pattern and have often asked God why I can’t learn lessons by having lots of good things happen.
Until now, He has been silent on this subject.

Until now, that is.

A few weeks ago, I decided out of the blue to go to a women’s retreat all by myself. This retreat was at a church I had never visited, but had heard good things about. I tried halfheartedly to find a friend to attend with me, but it was last minute and no one was available. I didn’t really care. I decided to go by myself. There was no impetus to this decision other than I felt that I had to do something to get myself back into community in the church.  Slowly over the past few months, I have been emerging from the rubble that was my last church experience and had begun to shake the dust off my feet.

I figured the worst case scenario would be that I would have a weekend in a nice hotel away from my life – and maybe have a few good conversations along the way, maybe hear a good speaker. I honestly had no other expectations. 

From the minute I walked into the doors of the conference room at the retreat, I was sought out and welcomed. I met the women at my table who immediately were treating me like I was one of their friends. This threw me a little bit. They didn’t know me at all (which frankly was kind of nice – they didn’t know me because of where I worked or what I did). They just accepted me into the table and treated me like I belonged.

This was incredibly refreshing, but as you know, I used to work at a church and so I knew that they knew I was there alone and had probably been given a heads up to make me feel welcome. I didn’t care – the welcome felt genuine and real. And I hadn’t felt that in a long time.

Midway through the weekend, a friend texted me and asked me how it was going.  This is my response verbatim: “I am having a good time. Met some really nice people. Very inclusive…although I suspect they sat me with this group intentionally and they have been told to connect me.”

My friend, who is amazing and is one of few who really know me said: ‘Hmmmm…I’d like to believe that you are just that awesome and they want to be your friend!”

Of course, I didn’t accept that answer.  I deflected it with some witty comment and went on with my weekend, at the end of which was invited to sit with 4 different people at church, invited to all the ministries they were involved in, became Facebook friends and exchanged phone numbers. It was all a little overwhelming but again felt very nice. That is actually where I expected it to end. But to a person – each and every one of the wonderful women I met has followed up with me via text and Facebook and made good on their invitations.

So that was the first thing that made me smile and feel good inside and maybe begin to believe that God wanted good things for my life. Because you see…deep down I didn’t really believe that anymore.  I was in crisis management mode all of the time and it had become a way of life.

Then I started reading a book my awesome longtime friend had recommended to me called “Daring Greatly” by Brene Brown. Of course, everything I was reading was lining up with everything I was seeing in my life. I was beginning to see how shame and low self-worth was causing me to live a crippled life. I wasn’t allowing people to love me because I wasn’t loving myself.

Simultaneously to these experiences, a friend was going through a hard time and coming to me for counsel. For the first time in a long time, I was able to remember that one of the gifts God has given me is the gift of encouragement. My past experiences enabled me to empathize and counsel in ways that were providing encouragement to her. And I began to feel alive again and remember what it felt like to live out of my true self…not a lot just a little.

God was speaking to me and I was hearing Him a little bit.  But apparently I was not quite getting it because He started shouting.

In the past 24 hours, a multitude of things have converged that have caused me to sit up and really listen.

I randomly decided (I decide a lot of things randomly apparently) to give away a bunch of books on my Facebook page. I get a lot of books and never read them. I hate clutter. I like to give things to people…hey, this sounds fun. Literally this was my thought process.

Suddenly I was hearing from people I haven’t heard from in a long time and getting little messages of encouragement from them simply because I was giving something I got free away.

Then in a string of Facebook comments, I made an offhanded comment stating that one of the perks of seeing me all the time is that I get free books all of the time. I wasn’t thinking about it – fishing for anything. I just said it off the cuff. One of my new friends, who I really hadn’t had much time to get to know yet, said: “Amie – the perk of seeing you all of the time is SEEING YOU ALL OF THE TIME. Let’s be honest.”

Okay seriously, this compliment knocked me to my knees. This was basically what my other friend had said (and I promise they don’t know each other – no one was in cahoots here). I immediately thought, what did I say or do to Ashley to make her think this?  She obviously doesn’t know me.

I didn’t say this to her. I thanked her and she gave me another compliment. All of these compliments at one time was a little overwhelming. This was all happening at the same exact time I was texting another new friend and she was being equally sweet and complimentary.

What am I doing to evoke all of this?  I have no freaking idea…and this is not a normal experience for me and I am kind of off balance by all of it at this point.

So I drank a glass of wine…shook it off and went to bed. This was not the right response apparently…so God decided to bring it all to a climax this morning in one loud crescendo.

I awoke today to a Facebook message sending me to this blog post which again brought me to tears. I felt God was calling out to me and saying, “I see you. I know what you have gone through and I love you.”

I have no idea why this new friend sent me this blog post. She felt prompted and it spoke to me immensely.

I also had an email in my inbox at work from a coworker. The email was addressed to my boss and it was praising me for being a good worker, kind and compassionate and they were so grateful to be working with me. What was my immediate reaction?  I thought, what did I do to provoke this?  I wracked my brain for any instance of some task I had performed that would prompt such an email. There was nothing. I even asked and the response I got was, “You did nothing. It is just very different since you have arrived here and I appreciate who you are.”

Not what you did…who you are. 

And to top it all off…I got another email from another coworker later in the day that said, “You are the calm in my storm and I appreciate you”.

Okay, God. I hear you.  I really hear you and I am going to accept what you are SHOUTING at me. You love me, not because of ANYTHING I have done. But simply because of who I am.

I don’t know if I am going to be able to keep remembering this truth that I have fully taken to heart today. So I am hoping that God keeps reminding me. Because I have felt true joy in these past few weeks for the first time in a very long time. And for that I am extremely grateful.

If you are one of the people who allowed God to use your voice to penetrate my stubborn heart this week, thank you. Your words have meant more than you would ever have thought.