God Writes Beautiful Stories, Just Not For Me
This is a story of brokenness.
It all started on a bright and brisk Colorado day in December 2019. I was on vacation with my family for Christmas, and in a series of unfortunate events including a snowboard, a lack of precipitation, and a high rate of speed, I fell and broke my collarbone. After the initial shock and pain wore off, I realized my life was about to look completely different than how I had planned it going into a new year.
Since my job as a server relied heavily on my ability to use both arms, I was forced to take a leave of absence while I recovered. I was then faced with the choice of going back to my life in Oklahoma, unable to work, and relying on my brother to help me with everything, or taking my parents up on their offer to live with them in Mexico City while my bone healed.
What I haven’t told you yet is that though I had a freshly broken bone on the outside, what festered within me was a deeply broken heart, too. The truth is, the new pain on the surface of my body only exacerbated the grief in my heart. All my plans were now canceled. All my dreams, crushed. Incapacitation swallowed me whole. Brokenness now encompassed my entire being.
Extremely reluctant and begrudgingly so, I boarded a plane from Tulsa on December 31st at 6:00 am. Sitting by the window next to a sweet and quiet old man, the plane took off as the sun began to rise over the city. My sight became blurred as tears began to fall. I looked out the window the whole flight but saw nothing; heavy drops impeding my view for forty-five minutes straight.
Loss.
Grief.
Failure.
That’s all my eyes could see.
My time in Mexico City was spent picking up freelance jobs, catching up with old high school friends, and going to church.
One Sunday at church, I noticed one of the worship leaders. She sang beautifully, with so much passion, and I could sense her genuine love for the Lord. After service, I pulled her aside and told her exactly that. Almost instantly her eyes began to well up.
“I’ve just been going through a lot, and you have no idea how much that encourages me,” she said through tears.
I gathered that she had been following me on Instagram for some time and had read many of my posts.
She went on, “You have inspired me so much and it means more than you know to hear that.”
At that moment, something happened. Her words entered through my ears and traveled to my brain like honey, a warm and sweet blessing intended to be poured over me. But the second they reached my chest, her words crystallized, becoming thick and cloudy as they pierced my heart.
What was intended to bless me became a trigger that irked me, and in an instant, I realized why. For all my words had been used as a tool and a vessel of warmth and love to her, I felt like nothing had been done, no words had been shared, nothing had been given, for me to feel that way too.
That night I lay awake in bed; bitterness swirling around my mind. My life and my words were being used to build the body and encourage believers, all the while I felt cheated, shorted, and hurt from my brokenness inside.
In an angry prayer I had grown accustomed to praying, I uttered these words:
“God, you write beautiful stories. You write beautiful stories for everyone else, but not for me.”
I went on.
“I know you’re God, but You’re not good, at least not to me. Everyone else will get their redemption, their dream, their happily ever after. You’ve made such beautiful stories out of dust and ashes for everyone around me. They’re all going to get what they want and the beautiful story you have for them...except for me. Only crumbs are left over for me. Only scraps are being used to piece together this story of mine you’re writing.”
The following Sunday came and I woke up with a thick cloud of depression looming over me. I almost made an excuse as to why I shouldn’t go to church, but I went anyway. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about God, it’s that the days I don’t feel like going to church, are the days He’s wanting to speak to me the most.
The preacher, my mother, was teaching from the Gospel of John.
“When they had eaten breakfast, Jesus asked Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said to him, “you know that I love you.”
“Feed my lambs,” he told him. A second time he asked him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said to him, “you know that I love you.”
“Shepherd my sheep,” he told him.
He asked him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was grieved that he asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
“Feed my sheep,” Jesus said.
John 21:15-17, CSB
Her voice rang loud in my ears and God’s prodding yet loving fingers poked hard at my heart.
“If you love me, feed my sheep.”
Jesus, fresh off the cross where he died to give me life, has asked this of me, to “feed my sheep.”
The revelation hit me like a tidal wave and I realized how much I boast of my love for Jesus, and yet the truth of my heart had been revealed.
It has taken me seven months to write this: that though I thought and genuinely believed God didn’t have a good story written for me, I saw in a moment how untrue those words were in light of the cross. I had grown bitter that my life was being used to build the body and encourage believers all the while I sat without joy in the mess of my own life, wondering in my disappointment why none of it was true for me.
And as I heard the words of Jesus, I became painfully aware that my love for him had become conditional, transactional, and superficial at best. My heart’s song had become, “I’ll love you as long as my life is going well,” and, “I’ll encourage others as long as I’m being encouraged.”
I was dissolved into a puddle of repentance and gratitude all at once.
But here’s the catch: my emotions didn’t suddenly vanish in light of my newfound realization, nor did my life very drastically change or necessarily get all that much better right away. It took me some time to ride out the waves of my emotions, hunker down in the truth of God’s Word, and begin to rebuild beauty in my life.
But what did happen was that at that moment, I finally let the Holy Spirit pull me out of the self-pity sinkhole I had purposefully walked into. A long time had passed since he had thrown in the ladder to get me out, in fact, it was there the moment I fell in. But I ignored the ladder because I wanted to stay in there, sloshing around in the mud of my disappointment.
“You write beautiful stories, just not for me,” I muttered over and over, arms crossed and head hung.
My pride told me I didn’t deserve this. It told me I was better than what was happening to me. It told me God owed me a better life and a better outcome because of the way I had been living my life. Pride hissed that I had prayed, and believed, and served, and obeyed. Therefore, God was in my debt.
Pride told me that as long as I was disappointed and felt cheated, I had permission to be vindicated and throw a fit in the self-pity party I was hosting.
But God’s Word did for me in a moment what my Pride in a lifetime could never offer: it melted me. It reminded me of the cross, of grace, of His love. It spoke loudly to my heart that God already did for me the most beautiful act of love any human has ever known. The words of Christ came pouring over me in that sinkhole, like hot molten lava designed to rip open my flesh of pride and strip me to my bones.
And I knew. He already did for me all He had to do, but it is not all He is going to do.
“God writes beautiful stories. And this moment is part of mine.”
“FOR MY THOUGHTS ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS, AND YOUR WAYS ARE NOT MY WAYS.”
THIS IS THE LORD’S DECLARATION.
“FOR AS HEAVEN IS HIGHER THAN EARTH, SO MY WAYS ARE HIGHER THAN YOUR WAYS, AND MY THOUGHTS THAN YOUR THOUGHTS.”
ISAIAH 55:8-9
This moment is part of mine.