When You Feel Like You're Losing Your Life

As long as we are rich, possessed of anything in the way of pride or independence, God cannot do anything for us. It is only when we get hungry spiritually that we receive the Holy Spirit,” (Oswald Chambers). What does that mean, get spiritually hungry?

It’s been a month since I lost the baby.

Destitute- empty- we have to come to Christ not clinging to things. When we cling to things, there is not the room for the Spirit to work. That does not mean things are bad or that He does not want us to have things. By no means! It just means don’t CLING. We are clingers. I’m a clinger. We cling because we are so vulnerable, more vulnerable than we even want to admit or know or even realize. It’s not a conscious thing, how vulnerable we are. That’s why we cling. That’s why we get addicted. We don’t even MEAN to. It just happens, to the best of us. And then we start shaming ourselves and feeling like it is happening ONLY to us. We become buried in self-contempt clouds, and no one can dig us out. And we won’t cry for help because of how awful we feel that we’ve let ourselves get there. And that is when Satan wins. But it’s lies. All lies! Satan is lying to us! It’s not the truth! The truth is, God isn’t mad at us. God isn’t angry. He’s not sitting up high looking down upon us so low and wagging his finger. Rather, God is actually right there with us…. not even beside us, but under us, propping us up, just like I was yesterday with Eli.

He fell asleep on the subway train after a particularly delightful afternoon watching the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. He was all puffed up on cotton candy and popcorn and Christmas songs, singing, dancing, and lights, and giant Christmas trees. He promised he wasn’t tired. He did NOT want a nap. He did NOT want to go back home. But we got on the subway, and he proceeded to fall dead asleep on my lap. We managed to make it home, all the while he slept. Jesse carried him out of the station, up the stairs, down the block, through the blustering winds, into the apartment. We wiggled his coat off his little limp yet profoundly heavy 27lb body, and managed to get his shoes off as well. Then we lay him down on his bed gently, in the dark, in his snuggly big boy bed with his big-boy mixer truck pillow. And he slept. But we had to wake him up after about 40 minutes lest he sleep too much and then not go to bed. Well that was not an enjoyable ordeal. He was anything but happy. He cried, I mean sobbed, for a good 35 minutes. But Jesse was patient with him as he kicked and pushed away everything. He didn’t want milk- didn’t want Paw Patrol. Didn’t want Ethan the Dump Truck. Didn’t want popcorn. Only wanted his ga-goo (aka his blanket) and to be held, but not in the chair, only on the couch, and not on that cushion, only over there. So particular, that child! I don’t know WHERE he gets it from. Such a little monster/diva we had on our hands. All the while, his loving father comforted him and worked with him until he calmed down. Jesse said, “it’s hard to wake up from a nap. I don’t like waking up. I know what He feels like.” And that’s just it. Jesse does. Jesse is the biggest grumpy bear when he wakes up in the morning. Often, if something happens in the night and the two of us are awakened, Jesse will speak harshly to me,  yell, or snap at me. I used to get my feelings hurt. He would always tell me the next morning that he didn’t even remember, that he had been asleep and couldn’t help it. This made no sense to me. When you wake me up, I wake up and behave like a normal human being… not a monster. Apparently, that is not the case with all people. I mean, I’m not HAPPY to be woken up all of the sudden in the middle of the night per say. I’m not HAPPY to be tired. But I’m also not going to kill someone because of it. Not so for my husband and my son. When they are woken up, they feel people should die… or at least suffer very harsh grumpy words and uncontrolled attempts at grabbing blankets and pillows that may or may not result in kicking, punching, and moaning. All that is to say, Jesse was able to comfort Eli while he cried like a maniac for a half hour. I wasn’t going to yell at Eli to calm down and quit being a lunatic, but I had no idea how to work with him and comfort him to make him become normal again because it didn’t make any sense to me. And that’s just it- our pain- our suffering- whatever it is, DOES make sense to God like Eli’s made sense to Jesse. So God DOES work with us. He knows our form. He’s made us. And He’s actually been through it. (Cue the whole God incarnate in Jesus Christ coming in the form of a baby thing…). He’s right there under us (like we were under Eli as he kicked and screamed). And He’s holding us as we navigate, even when we don’t feel it. But the fact that we survive is proof that He’s held us. The fact we are not obliterated is proof of it. He is slow to anger and filled with loving kindness.

So when we cling too much, have a hard time letting go, He is not so fast as to punish us in anger. Our circumstances are not the outworkings of Him having punished us. Rather, they are the outworkings of a loving Father pursuing us, hemming us in, “behind and before and [laying His hand upon us]. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high. I cannot attain it.” Psalm 139:5 He will bring to be what needs to pass. We have only to trust in Him and commit our way to Him; this is what I have seen Him do in my life when I have taken no thought for my life. When I take thought for my life, I spend a lot of time working my butt off to accomplish things and get them done in a timely manner and in a manner which hopefully people will then say they appreciate. However, when I let the Spirit move and work through me, I am not concerned so much as to what others are feeling or thinking about ‘’what” I am doing. It is not that I am irresponsible. I am just responsible to less people. Instead of feeling it is my responsibility to keep the entire world in check and make sure everyone is okay, I have only to fulfill my obligation to God and to those He has placed directly in my path and place for that day. He will handle everything that falls to the side, and He will handle it MUCH better than I would have handled it if I had tried to handle everything myself anyway. This is why He can tell us to take no thought for our life or what we will eat or drink or wear or where we will go. This is why He can say Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you. This is why He can say that there is none who have left mother or father or brother or sister or husband or wife or son or daughter or houses or lands in this life that will not receive more in this life, as well as persecution, and in the age to come, eternal life.  But of course, many who are first will be last, and the last will be first. (Mark 10, Matthew 6).

So come if you are broken and week and destitute. Come if you’re hungry and empty. Come if your womb is empty, if your hands are empty, if your home is empty, if your life is empty. He is here to fill. I used to think “He won’t fill me… He won’t bother with me… why would He bother with me? I don’t mean anything,” but He has shown me that was a lie as well. For I am far more precious than I ever realized. He surely formed my inward parts, knitting me together in my mother’s womb, fearfully and wonderfully. And I praise Him. My soul knows it very well. I was not hidden from Him when made in the secret, the depths, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. He saw my unformed substance. In His book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them, (Psalm 139). I believe that. I truly do. I have not always. It was too good to be true. Fairy tales. It couldn’t be true. And of course, I had made so many mistakes. But I asked God, “is it true?” and He answered. He will always answer that question. He will show us. If we ask Him to show us Himself, to build a relationship with us, He most certainly will… but we must realize we shall certainly suffer some loss- suffer the cutting away of some things to which we cling so close, too close.  For our God is good, but He is not safe always. One must be willing to lose a limb or two, to suffer, to endure some of the craziest things. Even scripture says, if an eye or an arm or a leg, causes you to sin, tear it out. For it is better to enter the Kingdom of God maimed than not to enter at all. It’s like in a movie you see, where the hero is some strange creature from some other world that we’ve never contemplated, and in order to rescue everyone, this creature with his super human strength has to put himself in situations that the normal person would say is completely ridiculous- why would one ever do that? That doesn’t make any sense. But the creature does it. It seems like the most common sense thing to him and he does it, and makes it work- makes a way where there is no way, and thus is a new way is forged, and then everyone is like “ Okay, we’ll just do it this way now. I suppose that is easier…however does he realize he lost his leg back there?” And so we may have to sacrifice an arm or a leg along the way, a dream, a desire, a job, but in the grand scheme of things, even though it’s inconvenient and at times VERY, VERY, VERY painful, it is worth it. To save, or to do, or to go where one has not been before with God is worth whatever He asks us to let go of…. And that is what it is like. Follow God. You don’t know what you may bump into. You can get caught up on the scariest things you could ever confront, but they will turn out okay- more than okay. They will turn out to be your LIFE. I mean, I once ended up on a plane headed to China to teach English when I’d really never been that far outside of Georgia, and I couldn’t speak Chinese, and the one question I had for the person interviewing me for the position was “Will I be able to bring my hair dryer and nail polish with me?” I do not think you can get any LESS prepared for a situation than Megin Lea Williams with only 20 years of life experience going to Hong Kong. That one is a game changer. But in the end, when you end up in the place you never would have gone, and you are there and it all makes sense and fits… and you haven’t a clue how it all played out except….GOD… well THEN You will have your story. Then You will know your God more. You will find yourself hand-in-hand in a place you could not have imagined or even believed were someone to have shown it to you. And you’ll realize you got there by going one step at a time. Not knowing where the next would lead, but knowing that it was what God was asking in that moment alone…  and somehow all the moments ended up adding up into a life and a relationship with God…. You thought you were losing your life, but you found it. Praise be to God.