God In Our Mess

I am currently fully emerged in one of the toughest seasons of my life, thus far.
I want so desperately to write about this time of my life with an outsider perspective. I want to be able to step back and look at it with gratitude and say, “Hey, I know what He was up to. I get it and it doesn’t hurt as bad anymore.”

I want to be in that place, but I am not.
And maybe, I will never be in that place where I can see the purpose behind it all.
Sometimes God places us in messy situations, dragging us kicking and screaming through them with no explanation.

I can’t explain why God placed me in this season with a broken wrist just months before the competition I had been preparing all year for. What I can tell you is these 3 things: He is always present, it's okay to grieve, and you are not a victim of your season

In the weeks to come, I’ll unravel each one of these points for y’all in hopes that maybe it will bring light to the messy situation you find yourself in today. I am sifting through those. tough moments, whatever they may be, right alongside you and, more importantly, so is He.

#1: He is Present

I had always wanted a cast when I was younger. I thought it was one of the coolest things when someone got to walk around the school with a bright neon cast around their arm covered with signatures and hearts and inside jokes. It was a tangible representation of the love that surrounded them.

Having a cast when you are in your 20s? It’s not as cool as I once thought it was. In fact, it was just a big fat heavy nuisance and a tangible representation of everything I had lost in this season.

Every morning I woke up, wishing that maybe this was all just a nightmare and the cast would be gone. But there it was in all its glory staring back at me and reminding me that this was, in fact, my current reality.

It was so easy for me to slink back into depression and obsess over all that I had lost. It was so easy for me to feel alone in all of it and to walk through life with a “the world is out to get me” attitude.

What took intentional effort was reminding myself OUTLOUD that “He is good and He’s got this.”
What took relentless effort was showing up to the gym and finding solutions instead of excuses..
What took focused effort was shrugging off my loneliness before it engulfed me and clinging onto Him.

I realized that I could choose to see the cast as a disability and as a representation of everything I had lost OR I could choose to view it as God taking care of me and preparing me for something better.

One attitude took a lot more effort than the other, but it was also the one that was capable of lifting me up instead of dragging me down into a deeper rut.

Sometimes our struggle and the mountain before us distract us from our supply and the God beside us.

He is always there, even when we find ourselves feeling alone or neglected or “mistreated by life”.

So instead of looking at the cast with disdain, I started to look at it with HOPE.

And instead of covering it with signatures and good luck wishes, I asked my friends to write words of encouragement and their favorite bible verses on it. A tangible representation of the unconditional Love that surrounds me in whatever messy season I find myself in.

Psalm 46:1 "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble."

To be continued...

-Sofi