Have I Wasted All This Time

I wrote this poem (at the bottom) eight years ago when I really thought life was falling apart. We were very close to our pastor and his family. They were our family. We loved them. The church is no longer here and they don’t live close anymore. It was heart wrenching. It was also in the midst of a massive financial crisis. Everything we owned decided to fall apart. The ceiling collapsed from broken pipes during a -17 degree night. If one car was running the other was not. If Molly didn’t have pneumonia it was coming.  

I found myself wondering if I had not heard God right. Was I supposed to be there? Why was I so naïve and dumb to not see the fall sooner.

Eight years later, I sit in a similar place. I’ve sat under the teaching of a man I greatly admired and respected. I believed in the “even unto death” sermons. I hung on every word of the “set the captives free” sermons. I worked out twice a week in his boot camp class. I was part of his “we can build a wheelchair in under five minutes” team in Nicaragua this summer where we all felt close like a family. I loved his passion to get wheelchairs third world countries because “no one should have to crawl”. I became a Big Sister in the Big Brothers Big Sister program because he told us the plight of the community with fatherlessness, broken homes, and drugs. I wanted to do my part. I believed like he said that churches are “made of circles and not rows”. I wanted to love people like he said because “the cross plus anything is nothing.” The recent, “don’t get distracted” message hit home. I had been utterly distracted and my heart was not in a good place. I was struggling.

He said, “people rarely just walk away from the faith the devil gets you out in to the weeds”. My kids took notes and Brandon got saved under his teaching. My friends started coming and inviting their family. I shared his sermons on my facebook page for all of my friends and so many said they looked forward to that each week. They weren’t getting that kind of teaching. I went to baptisms where so many people said they stumbled in to this church and God grabbed a hold of them. My good friend, Rachel, said “its like God keeps drawing me back.”

He walked away from his church, his family, and said he hasn’t even believed for the last two years. He has a new relationship.

Sucker punched. In the gut. A whole church reeling and in shock.

I have been here before. It hurts terribly. If it hurts this bad for us, the families affected are feeling it even deeper.

I was cleaning out my dresser and I found this poem. It’s when I thought we were losing everything, when I was told I was out of God’s blessing and he couldn’t hear me, when I begged him to just take my life, when every day was a struggle to get dressed, and little kids were at my feet.

I thought of Peter and the disciples. Heartbreak is not new to us as Christians. Disappointment is not foreign. Doubt and embarrassment is not a new concept.

I told my kids as they cried all the way home from church, Haley so broken she said, “but I l earned so much from him”, God’s word does not return void. Fallen teachers and pastors can’t cancel God’s word because of sin. Even the best of us fall down. God used a donkey to speak. He says the rocks will cry out.

The disciples listened as Jesus said he was going to be killed. Peter was going to bravely defend him, even cutting off an ear of a soldier. Yet he died anyway. It’s not what they had planned. It’s not how it was supposed to end.

I have been there, when the world comes crashing down. I am left standing there screaming “Have I wasted all this time?”

No. He gives us the years the locusts eat. He builds from our ruins. He gives beauty for our ashes.

Today, so many of my friends are staring at the bare tree, in a pile of rubble, holding onto the ashes asking God, “Have I wasted all this time? Will my life go back the same? Am I part of some God forsaken game?”

No, friends. It’s not how the story ends. We will, like Seth said, Hold Fast to the promises because He is Faithful.

He makes crooked paths straight. We win. We make it. We are being cheered on by a great cloud of witnesses that know our pain, know our struggle, and they say “keep running, friends”. It’s worth it.

We are not alone. Like our friends in the book of Nehemiah, we have to build now. We will work shoulder to shoulder, young to old, neighbor to neighbor.

We can rebuild this place and each other. Our broken pieces make the beautiful stained glass windows the world looks through.

 

Have I Wasted All This Time

What have I been doing? What did this all mean?

Can’t you fight back these men and set yourself free?

You healed the sick, voiced the mute, and lifted up the lame.

You brought hope and beauty to lives engulfed in shame.

You displayed your power and left this world in awe

Open up your mouth, Jesus, and bring this crowd down, show them who you are!

It’s not too late. I see another breath.

Get down from there and end this crazy mess.

I tried to watch, but hid, as they laid you in a tomb

I am hurt angry, Jesus, and so madly confused.

I have been walking through these hills replaying all you said, but I watched them tear your body down and lay you with the dead.

 

Have I wasted all this time? Will my life go back the same? Am I part of some God forsaken game?

Can you hear me? Where are you now? God, I know that you are out there, but I don’t understand.

Give me one more moment, to look upon your face, I never meant to hurt you or bring you my disgrace.

I’d change it all right now, I would take it all back. I need you, Jesus. God, can you bring him back?

I see the holes where they nailed your hands and feet. I hear your voice so steady and so sweet.

My heart is yearning, Lord, for one moment alone.

I failed you, My Lord, I didn’t say a word.

When they asked me if knew you I heard the rooster crow. You said it would, I know.

Finding my new normal, I head out to catch my fish

On the shore you are standing, is my mind playing tricks?

Give me one last chance Jesus, I am swimming to the shore.

I want to make this right, I’ve never loved another more.

You did this for me. It’s not what I had planned.

You were planted like a seed to set a whole world free.