by erika haveman
“What happened with the guy?”
“What guy?”
“The one you told us about in the spring.”
“Oh that guy. I didn’t realize I’d told you about him. It didn’t work out.”
“You overthought things with him and lost him, didn’t you?
“Hm, yes, and you were too strong, weren’t you?”
What happened?
It’s the question I’ve asked myself often in the past few months.
What. Happened.
When my Anglican priest and his wife, an older couple I respect probably more than any other couple in my life, asked me the question on the first day of this new year I felt like I couldn’t, still, articulate the answer. So they answered for me. While their answer might sound rude I can say I felt incredibly seen, known, and loved by their very articulate responses because they were convicting and not condemning. Conviction invites us forward and allows us to feel the pain of dying to ourselves so that we can also know the freedom of the empty grave. But I’m giving away the punch line, really.
What happened?
Warning: today’s post is long(er than normal).
But today is my birthday so I’m allowed to break rules (that’s how it goes, right?).
Today is another chance for a fresh year.
Today will I, again, ask what happened?
For years it felt like there were words unspoken in a story that wasn’t ending. I had to speak the words. I had to end the story. Had to? Maybe actually not. Did I? Yes. Why? Probably because I was impatient. Would things have ended different had I been patient? Who knows. I can’t live in the what if’s and what could have been’s. God is greater than both of those. He sees the big picture and is always sovereign.
I wouldn’t trade the pain of ending the story if it meant losing how I’ve experienced God’s gracious invitation to change and His boundless grace.
Until last year I have regretted one thing in my life: quitting figure skating at the age of 13 because a boy told me it wasn’t cool. I have always viewed regret as weakness and something I wasn’t going to waste energy on.
But a couple days after I sent this guy a voice message – an embarrassingly, arguably shamefully long voice message – I felt regret. I regretted hard. I felt humiliated. I cried for days. I wished I could have taken back everything from the first contact I’d made with him in early spring right through to the long voice message. But I knew there was nothing I could do anymore. Up until that point I had thought “I’ve already made a fool of myself, how much worse can it get?” But I knew, finally, what it felt to be foolish. I’d expended time and energy holding affection for a guy who wasn’t actually interested in expressing any affection for me. And that was on me.
I don’t blame him for rejecting me. I know I struggled to be my true and confident self around him. My insecurities ruled me and led me to overthink and lean into strength rather than trusting Jesus to lead me in my weakness.
The first time, last summer, I saw him I was nervous. I brushed it aside because first “date” jitters are normal. But the next day I saw him I was wildly insecure. The time after that I figured I’d try to be a friend and ignore my heart: keep my distance, try to keep conversation light, pretend I didn’t care. Ugh I felt so fake. That was a completely unsustainable option. The final time I saw him I was paralyzed and numb, embarrassed and exhausted. I had nothing to offer and my mind and heart shut down. I remember feeling like I was floating along, having no idea how to engage with his parents or him. I remember his mom standing there, after dinner when I was leaving, looking like she was waiting for a hug and I couldn’t hug her for fear I’d break down into tears at a mother’s touch and reveal how truly weak I was feeling. I remember how frozen my brain felt and I have no idea what I said or asked or how I acted. Could he see through my facade? Or did I come off as fine? I felt the farthest thing from fine and nowhere near confident.
In these months since I’ve seen him or heard from him I’ve let myself know weakness and all of its friends: regret, humiliation, insecurity, fear, tears, sobs, the unknown. And you know what? I’m starting to realize I don’t need to understand what happened.
But what happened?
At first I focused on what I did. I focused on those “outer world” moments of interaction with him – the things I was doing. But in asking what happened God started to show me the deeper importance of the need for cultivation of my inner world – who I am. This guy did not cause all of this to happen but the experience of being interested in another guy and being rejected again led me to a place of desperation before the Lord that I had never let myself feel before.
God uprooted everything.
The other day a wildly powerful windstorm swept through my town. Hundreds of trees were uprooted, power lines were downed, days later and hydro crews are still working tirelessly and there’s messes of branches that cover the shoulders of the roads. The destruction changed the landscape. If trees had feelings they’d have felt the pain of loss, the humiliation of no longer being able to do what they thought they were made to do, they’d remember the fear they encountered as they fell to the ground with terrible crashes. Yet they needed to come down. Why? Because God can see the bigger picture and is sovereign over creation.
So often I think we want God to change the landscape of our lives but we don’t allow him to uproot the trees that need to be torn away.
That uprooting for me was painful and humiliating, sometimes scary and isolating. Yet it was an intimate process between God and me and somewhere I had to trust that He sees the bigger picture and is sovereign. It felt backwards to let myself know regret, humiliation, fear…shouldn’t I tell those things they don’t have power? Doesn’t God have all the power? But it was almost like I needed to come before God raw, weak and vulnerable to know that dying to myself isn’t a painless process. What if picking up my cross to follow Jesus isn’t about doing something for God as much as it is about being made more like Jesus? And what if being made like Jesus isn’t fluffy and comfortable, but it’s about experiencing Him and how He’s felt all pain because He’s hung on the cross and He gives all freedom because He walked out of the grave?
On the other side I can feel my confidence returning. By leaning into weakness, the one thing I avoided the most, it feels like I am undoing years of incompetence. And it no longer has to do with this guy or dating or marriage. God is establishing the landscape of my life. None of that is by my strength: it is completely in Christ. In some ways I feel like God has been waiting for me to own my insecurity and overthinking and strength so that he could destroy the elements within that needed to be completely uprooted. As a result I’m finding security in Christ in a fresh, hope filled, exciting way.
This year I’m worthy & waiting: finding my value by simply existing before God. I want to be so close to Christ that I can see shame coming and hold God’s hand as He destroys whatever else needs to be destroyed. I want to move slowly to see beauty in everything around me. I want to enter the heart of Christ and see who else is there then settle down for a cup of tea that’s never too hot and never too cold but always just right. I want to invite more people in to knowing Jesus intimately. I’m no longer afraid of feeling regret or humiliation because while they’re wildly unpleasant God is proving Himself faithful in ways I never imagined I would know.
Thank goodness we can ask “what happened?” and He’s gentle enough to answer by cultivating and changing the landscape of our inner life (who we are) rather than our outer world (what we do). Thank goodness for friends who see us for who we are and who God is shaping us to be.
I’m so grateful for another year to do life with Jesus and the wise ones He so kindly puts in my life.
Cheers to 32.
the rambling missionary 