I Lost Myself

I had forgotten who I am.

God sometimes has to push you a little to wake you up. I had this blog written when I heard my dog bark like crazy and oh so annoying at 2am this morning. I was forced to begrudgingly wake up thinking she was just being annoying…then I heard the vehicle crunch on the gravel right outside my bedroom. There was a car sneaking around in my yard. NOW I’m awake, dogs still going nuts and I open the door and step out…

I seem to be missing 8 months of my life and it passed with a blur that I cannot even recollect much at all. In that blur I lost me. I am not sure if I lost me or I got hidden in the dense darkness that covered me.

Oh yes, this is being written with a heart of hurt and grief, a mind full of bewilderment and a face blotched with huge tear laden eyes and very puffy red nose. (Pre-2:00am).

I am in the heart of grieving. I could not even start grieving all the losses of 8 months of life until probably 2 months ago, maybe honestly 1 month ago when the doctor declared me miraculously, cancer free.

Until that time, my family doctor described it as looking down the barrel of a loaded shot gun and wondering if the safety was on. I came to appreciate that analogy very much, because not much else matters when you are fighting for your life.

For me it was a confusing freedom being declared cancer free, it meant that I had a life to live, that I could actually plan the future, but it had all changed over the 8 months and I do not even know how to go forward or to where… with who?

Can I say that I am tired of being by myself. I had someone tell me that they had noticed that I had isolated. It was such an understatement, of course I isolated, I could not sit, walk, lay, drive or even be because of surgery for a very long time in those 8 months. I could not have changed that if I tried. Some loving folks came out to see me, but honestly it was fairly quiet. It was a quiet that spoke volumes. Folks who I thought would be “there” were not. Folks who I did not think were even in my life, pursued me and would not let go – thank  you. God brought back people from my past, like 20-25 years whose relationships resumed with no break in between. It was a bittersweet time, an enlightening time, but in there somewhere, I stopped knowing exactly who I was.

Eight months ago I was Mrs. Wheeler, Brians wife, and while I still am in some ways, it’s all changed. It feels like a long time 8 months but it feels like such a short time because I feel like I might just be able to start processing.

Interestingly enough, I knew and know exactly who God created me to be, that has never left me, even if I am second guessing all the rest. Is that God given message engraved into my DNA? Not sure, but I came across a book that maybe we should all read, “Run With The Horses – The Quest for Life at Its Best” by Eugene H. Peterson. It is a book all about the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah has been called the weeping prophet, he felt strongly for people and for God. This book started to pull my brain back to life, it kicked me in the places where I needed it, it caused me to remember when I felt alive before. It was when I knew my purpose and why my life mattered, and that is totally all about this story that God has dropped us into.

Let me share a couple paragraphs that blew up my lackadaisical thinking…underlining is my emphasis.

“Before Jeremiah knew God, God knew Jeremiah: “Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you.” This turns everything we ever thought about God around. We think that God is an object about which we have questions. We are curious about God. We make inquiries about God. We read books about God. We get into late-night bull sessions about God. We drop into church from time to time to see what is going on with God. We indulge in an occasional sunset or symphony to cultivate a feeling of reverence for God.

But that is not the reality of our lives with God. Long before we ever got around to asking questions about God, God had been questioning us. Long before we got interested in the subject of God, God subjected us to the most intensive and searching knowledge. Before it ever crossed out minds that God might be important, God singled us out as important. Before we were formed in the womb, God knew us. We are known before we know….

The realization has a practical result: no longer do we run here and there, panicked and anxious, searching for the answers to life. Our lives are not puzzles to be figured out. Rather, we come to God, who knows us and reveals to us the truth of our lives. The fundamental mistake is to begin with ourselves and not God. God is the center from which all life develops….”

Then there was this nugget: “We underestimate God and we overestimate evil. We don’t see what God is doing and conclude that He is doing nothing….”

This book was talking directly to me and to my doubts, my questions, and giving me an awakening that I needed, frankly it was resurrecting me.

The sound of crunching gravel woke me up in such an immediate way that I found myself barefoot, in my nightie with only my car keys and 2 dogs driving around the neighborhood, looking. My fighting stance was on, warrior woman was on the prowl. I never found the car, at one point from a distance I saw headlights flash but by the time I got there it was dark again. I texted my neighbor and told them to be alert.

It didn’t take a bolt of lightning or months of therapy tonight, it took being forced into an uncomfortable position to remember who I am. I am a child of God. I am a warrior, you want to come into my yard? I think God kept them safe from me and me safe from them. But I got woken up to more than just my physical.

I could agree that the times in the 8 months where I came alive was in the ministry’s God has blessed me with. The gifts came easily, like the last 8 months had never occurred, it made my blood pump, it caused me to think outside my little sheltered box and it gave me a shot of adrenaline that nothing physical ever could. I missed it! I had not longed for it, yet when it happened I remember crying many times, thinking God is still here. Right here, inside of me, He is not gone, He is not silent.

It was an interesting day when I wrote that blog about my messy, cluttered spare room a couple months ago when God spoke to me and let me know that I was not broken, it was simply because so much had happened in such a short time, that my mind was too cluttered to find Him.

But He never left, He has always found me, He has always been right here, even if I could not sense or feel Him. He promised to never leave me or forsake me and I can honestly tell you, He never has. The situations I found myself in might have appeared too much, illuding to the thought that God has deserted me, but that was the world speaking, that was me talking, that was not true and that is not my God.

Jeremiah was with the Israelites when they went into exile. Forced and taken to a land not their own, to live in a culture they did not accept, they hated it. New people, new culture, new food, forced from the land they loved. What did Jeremiah tell them? Was he sympathic to their whining? Did he lovingly say, “it will get better, just wait….” NO.

Jeremiah told them, this is your new land, learn to live in it. You are not camping, you are not an overnight guest. It is not fair, but it is how it is for now, live in the land, build homes, raise your families, plant gardens, pray for your new land and people and its leaders. He says, you have a choice, you can live in the new land and be miserable or you can live in the new land and actually “live”, you choose.

Tonight I chose: I came alive the moment I thought I was being threatened. I am not going down easily, that is not my style. Brian and I joked for years that if we were surrounded by thugs, I’d push him aside, the 6’5” 300lb marshmallow, and I would handle it. To be honest I know I’d be trying to scrap and he would have won them over talking to them and making friends. Tonight he wasn’t here but God reminded me who I am. Blood pumping, adrenaline rushing and an attitude to match.

I had a lady correct me this past week as I offered up a prayer request that was “whining”. She looked me square in the eye and said, “Jane that is not who you are… God says…” and she started reminding me of who God says I am. She was my Jeremiah, nudging me forward to live in my new land and not hang onto the old.

So, as I approach this question of who am I in this new land? Where do I belong? God lovingly says, “right here, with Me” and I know we will continue this new journey together even if it is so unfamiliar.

It might be uncomfortable, it might have new people, it might have old friends, it might have new places, it might have familiar places, but it will always be right where I need to be, God promises.

Is life too difficult for you today? You long to be out of the circumstances you are in, you wish God would miraculously rescue you. Instead He comes along beside you and says, “Let’s do it together, you and Me.”  Trust Him. He knew you before you were even conceived in the womb, this God who knows you so intimately is walking right there with you, in the story He created before the creation of the world. You have an important part to play, He created you for His purposes, you did not find Him, He created you exactly as He wanted and He wanted you to live with Him in the old places and the new places. Remember who God says you are.