In The Midst of My Mess
By Michael Lennox
We all want something. At any given point in time, we are pursuing a goal or setting our lives on a certain trajectory. Right now you might be getting ready for college, or to get your driver’s license, or to get a job. If you’re like me, you like to have a plan. I don’t plan out my every move, but I tend to have a few steps I know I need to take to get where I want to go. It’s comfortable having a plan. It makes me feel like I’m in control.
I set myself on the same trajectory for years. As I finished high school, I was 100% focused on the next step – deciding on a college that would be my home for the next four years. I knew that it would be daunting to go to a new place with new people, but I was ready to make a change. And so I decided on Seattle Pacific University, figured out my finances, and I was off just like I had always dreamed. I made some awesome friends and I finally started to feel like I had found the community that I had been seeking my whole life.
Everything was great, until it all started to fall apart. Toward the end of my sophomore year, I realized that unless something drastically changed, I wasn’t going to be able to afford to stay. Not only that, but many of my friends were going to be leaving Seattle at the end of the school year for good. Over the course of the following four months, everything unraveled. The community that I had so desperately wanted was vanishing. By June, I had to move back in with my parents, transfer schools, and leave SPU and my best friends behind.
This was just the first of many life-altering situations for me. Over the course of a year I had to take a semester off of school to figure out finances, which was a huge academic setback for me. Furthermore, I started working full time, I had to learn how navigate life in my parents’ home again, and I had to adjust to not being surrounded by my close friends. And then in November, one of my friends suddenly and tragically died.
I’d had enough. The emotional highs and lows of my year had pushed me further from God than I’d ever been. On the outside I may have looked fine, but on the inside I was falling apart. When my friend died, I lost it. I felt just like David in Psalm 13 as he pled: “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” Unfortunately, I turned my anger and frustration toward God and spent months wallowing in depression, anxiety, and deep grief.
I truly don’t remember the following months very well. My mind and body shut down and I floated through life, shutting down emotionally. I allowed anger and resentment toward God to fester in my heart. One day, I snapped out of it and realized that I didn’t recognize myself anymore. What had happened to me?
In this season, I allowed myself to subscribe to the belief that I had been wronged by God and that he had intentionally caused all of these bad things to happen to me. Somewhere along the way, I had decided that I had DESERVED everything that I had, and that God had slowly taken it all away from me. I blamed him. As I realized this, I found myself on my knees, begging God to change the condition of my heart and bring me back to him.
I realized in that moment that the reality is that the only thing that I have ever deserved is hell. I am a sinner in desperate need of the saving grace of God. So, in the midst of my mess, I asked God to save me from what I was becoming.
It would be nice if I could say that a switch flipped and everything started to get easier, but the reality is that I still faced a lot of life-altering changes & trials right after the ones I have already mentioned. The thing that changed was my attitude in the face of them. I started to trust that God really did have my best interests at heart and that no matter what came my way, I could rely on him to see me through to the other side. Additionally, I saw how he used my mess to teach me invaluable lessons and to draw me closer to him.
While, I wish that I could change how I responded to some of the hardships that I have faced, I recognize now that God used my darkest moments to teach me to rely on Him more fully. He seeks out and offers salvation to us when we are in the midst of sin and shame. We cannot do anything to deserve the amazing grace that he so freely offers. I love the words of Ephesians 2:4-5: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.”
Additionally, this season of grief was an opportunity to live by the words of James 1:2-4: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
So back to that tendency to always have a plan. Let’s just say that I learned that it’s good to have a plan, but it’s also important to remember that God might have a different plan. And whatever that plan is, I want to be a part of it.
REFLECTION
Are you in the midst of your own mess right now? Read and Reflect on Ephesians 2:1-10.
Wherever you are at right now, God is reaching out to you. He cares for you. In what ways does the passage from Ephesians emphasize God’s love for you?
Have you reacted poorly or blamed God for hard seasons in your life? If so, take a moment to confess to the Lord and ask that he would teach you to live by the words of James 1:2-4 when you face trials
Listen to the song Oh But God and worship God for what He has done!