My Story 5-28-18
Somewhere between birth and age 18, I solidified an idea about myself and my reality. The best way to describe it is a bench. I grew up in a small town in New Jersey, a middle child in an athletics driven family. I was a coordinated kid with natural athleticism, but I wasn't aggressive. I didn't have the eye of the tiger. As years went on, I went from soccer to softball to cheerleading to basketball and lacrosse. The last two stuck for the longest. I played on travel teams and went to camps in the summer, and I was decent. Now the girls I school and travel basketball with, they were incredible. All the starters ended up playing in college, and two went on to play professionally after college. I tried hard, but I sat the bench. For whole games at times, for whole seasons - even on the travel team my dad coached.
Through athletics and instability at home, I began to internalize a burden of pushing through. I kept my head down, did what I was supposed to, and was a peacekeeper. The burden became second nature. When I looked up from the floor, I noticed others were getting called into the game but not me. Life seemed easier for them, and for me it was like I was invisible.
My coming to faith was miraculous in a lot of ways because God wooed me for years without much help from my surroundings. There aren't many evangelical is New Jersey. My mom would attend church occasionally and my dad is Jewish. But, for some reason my freshman year in high school, I remember wrestling with this idea of going through the communicant class at the Presbyterian church we attended on occasion. No one invited me. I just heard about it through the grapevine, and even though I knew no one who would be apart of it and never went to a day of Sunday school in my life, I went. Through that year-long process I learned the story of God and the sacrifice of Jesus. I believed. Over the next 7 years, I grew in my understanding that my lifestyle should look like the Christ I said I believed. My junior year in college, I experienced deep authentic community with other Christ followers for the first time ever. I and others were accepted warts and all and we walked together and wrestled with how to love God and love people. That was the game changer for me.
I met Evan in a small group at Virginia Tech. I was working on my Master's in education, and he was a freshman. The age gap seemed crazy at the time, but he and I just fit from day one. We got married exactly 2 years to the day of when we started dating, and for the first 7 years of our marriage, it was pretty charmed.
Four years ago, with 7 month Liv in tow, we moved to Florida. From the time we arrived, it looked like those charmed years were over. We moved because Evan was pursuing a new career path in instructional design, and I could teach anywhere. The only thing was that teaching, something I was loved and excelled at, was a trying and life-sucking experience and so I quit -something I never previously fathomed and it broke my heart. Before, during and after that it seemed like dumpster fire after dumpster fire. The adoption process that we began before Liv was born, the one we felt specifically called in, kept extending in wait-time until the international adoption borders closed in January of this year. Meanwhile we tried for another biological child, and despite a slew of doctor's visits, it didn't work for years until October of last year when I did get pregnant but lost the baby due to an ectopic pregnancy.
I believed in Jesus. I wasn't the same person I once was, so I clung onto verses about perseverance. I began counseling and learned how to gain strength by walking into the dark places and pain instead of ignoring it. However, that old feeling of being on the bench came persisted. I watched others get called into the game - pregnancies, making life choices, when it felt like all of my choices were being made for me. The game clock kept rolling, there was action on the court, but my life felt frozen.
The truth is, I need a new metaphor. A new verse. A new name. I don't want to see myself as a bench-warmer, unseen and forgotten anymore. Maybe the issue is that I've been trying to play in the wrong game. Perhaps the same God that wooed me at 15 was wooing me still, calling me into my own space. My God sees me. Maybe all I need to do is get up and leave the court and go to my playing field - one that is different but spectacularly specific to me and my talents where I am a star player. His goodness may look different than what I expected, but it can still be really good. "Yet I am confident I will see the Lord's goodness while I am here in the land of the living." Psalm 27:13.
All of this brings me back to what solidified my walk with Christ at 21 - community - deep, authentic relationships with Christ followers. I need, we need, someone to remind us of our name and sing our song back to us - we are redeemed, seen, and uniquely equipped to play in our game.
Through athletics and instability at home, I began to internalize a burden of pushing through. I kept my head down, did what I was supposed to, and was a peacekeeper. The burden became second nature. When I looked up from the floor, I noticed others were getting called into the game but not me. Life seemed easier for them, and for me it was like I was invisible.
My coming to faith was miraculous in a lot of ways because God wooed me for years without much help from my surroundings. There aren't many evangelical is New Jersey. My mom would attend church occasionally and my dad is Jewish. But, for some reason my freshman year in high school, I remember wrestling with this idea of going through the communicant class at the Presbyterian church we attended on occasion. No one invited me. I just heard about it through the grapevine, and even though I knew no one who would be apart of it and never went to a day of Sunday school in my life, I went. Through that year-long process I learned the story of God and the sacrifice of Jesus. I believed. Over the next 7 years, I grew in my understanding that my lifestyle should look like the Christ I said I believed. My junior year in college, I experienced deep authentic community with other Christ followers for the first time ever. I and others were accepted warts and all and we walked together and wrestled with how to love God and love people. That was the game changer for me.
I met Evan in a small group at Virginia Tech. I was working on my Master's in education, and he was a freshman. The age gap seemed crazy at the time, but he and I just fit from day one. We got married exactly 2 years to the day of when we started dating, and for the first 7 years of our marriage, it was pretty charmed.
Four years ago, with 7 month Liv in tow, we moved to Florida. From the time we arrived, it looked like those charmed years were over. We moved because Evan was pursuing a new career path in instructional design, and I could teach anywhere. The only thing was that teaching, something I was loved and excelled at, was a trying and life-sucking experience and so I quit -something I never previously fathomed and it broke my heart. Before, during and after that it seemed like dumpster fire after dumpster fire. The adoption process that we began before Liv was born, the one we felt specifically called in, kept extending in wait-time until the international adoption borders closed in January of this year. Meanwhile we tried for another biological child, and despite a slew of doctor's visits, it didn't work for years until October of last year when I did get pregnant but lost the baby due to an ectopic pregnancy.
I believed in Jesus. I wasn't the same person I once was, so I clung onto verses about perseverance. I began counseling and learned how to gain strength by walking into the dark places and pain instead of ignoring it. However, that old feeling of being on the bench came persisted. I watched others get called into the game - pregnancies, making life choices, when it felt like all of my choices were being made for me. The game clock kept rolling, there was action on the court, but my life felt frozen.
The truth is, I need a new metaphor. A new verse. A new name. I don't want to see myself as a bench-warmer, unseen and forgotten anymore. Maybe the issue is that I've been trying to play in the wrong game. Perhaps the same God that wooed me at 15 was wooing me still, calling me into my own space. My God sees me. Maybe all I need to do is get up and leave the court and go to my playing field - one that is different but spectacularly specific to me and my talents where I am a star player. His goodness may look different than what I expected, but it can still be really good. "Yet I am confident I will see the Lord's goodness while I am here in the land of the living." Psalm 27:13.
All of this brings me back to what solidified my walk with Christ at 21 - community - deep, authentic relationships with Christ followers. I need, we need, someone to remind us of our name and sing our song back to us - we are redeemed, seen, and uniquely equipped to play in our game.
Comments
Post a Comment