Old Testament

When You Don’t Get the Exact Answer You’re Looking For

February 23, 2016 By Michelle

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I recently made a startling discovery. As I hunched over a stack of crumpled pay stubs, invoices, and receipts and punched calculator buttons until my fingertips were numb in an attempt to prepare my 2015 taxes, I realized that I’ve earned less total income this year than last. This is not good for a person who makes her living as a self-employed writer.

The realization immediately prompted a flurry of questions and panicky prayers. Should I start looking for a traditional job? I asked God. Should I wait out this season of uncertainty? Should I try to eke out more freelance work? What’s your plan for me?

The more I prayed, the more specific my prayers got. Tell me what to do, I pleaded. Give me a sign; show me which steps to take.

Moses had a similar heart-to heart with God when the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness. Things hadn’t been going particularly well for the new leader. Not only had his people crafted a golden calf to worship, they were also grumbling non-stop, pestering Moses about where they were headed and blaming him for their miserable existence.

Frustrated, Moses laid it all on the line with God. “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people, but you have not let me know whom you will send with me,” he said. “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you.” (Exodus 33:12-13)

Moses demanded specifics – “Whom will you send with me?” – as well as a clear strategy – “Teach me your ways.”

God heard Moses’ plaintive questions and his yearning for specifics, yet he answered in a way Moses did not likely expect. “My Presence will go with you,” the Lord assured his devoted leader, “and I will give you rest.” (Exodus 33:14)

Like Moses, I didn’t receive a specific answer, detailed instructions, or even the answer I desired from God the day I blurted my panicky prayers. Instead, I was reminded of God’s promise to his people – the promise he made to Moses in ancient times, the promise he still has for us today.

We may want the step-by-step plan, but we get something even better, something that will carry us through even the most challenging circumstances. We get God’s presence.

God is who he says he is: Emmanuel — God with us.

When You Need Someone Else’s Eyes to See

February 18, 2016 By Michelle

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A couple of years ago, I found myself smack in the middle of the wilderness. My proposal for a second memoir had been rejected by more than a dozen publishers, and I had no idea which step to take next.

My editor suggested that I write a much different book instead – a biography of Martin and Katharina Luther. The problem was, I felt unqualified. I imagined a professor writing that biography – someone who wore tweed, smoked a pipe and listened to opera on NPR; someone much smarter than me.

I didn’t write the proposal my editor wanted. Instead, I told him I would “think about it,” and then I swept the idea under the rug.

A few weeks later, I mentioned the biography in an email exchange with a good friend. “I agree with your editor,” she replied immediately. “I think you are the perfect person to write this book. I really believe God is in this.”

When Moses was in the wilderness, he turned to his brother-in-law and asked for help. “Please do not leave us,” Moses begged Hobab. “You know where we should camp in the wilderness, and you can be our eyes.”(Numbers 10:31)

Blinded by uncertainty and anxiety, Moses understood the value of an another perspective. He understood that his brother-in-law could serve as his eyes, to help seek out opportunity in the unfamiliar terrain.

Often when we find ourselves in the middle of difficult circumstances, we turn inward, consumed by questions and self-doubt. Yet God gives us community for a reason. He puts particular people in our lives to serve as guides and advisors, to point the way when we can’t see it ourselves.

Like Moses’ brother-in-law, my friend was able to see what I couldn’t. I hadn’t recognized the opportunity because it hadn’t looked exactly the way I’d imagined or expected it should. But my friend saw what I had missed, and she encouraged me in the right direction. She was my eyes in the wilderness when I couldn’t see beyond the next bend.

Why God Gives Us Boundaries

February 16, 2016 By Michelle

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The backyard of my childhood home bordered an apple orchard and, beyond that, a forest of stately pine trees that swayed and whispered in the wind. My sister and I were allowed to explore to the far edge of the orchard, but my parents deemed the pine forest off-limits.

The fact that the pine forest was forbidden territory just made it all the more enticing. Perched high in one of the tallest trees deep in the middle of the woods was a dilapidated treehouse. Jeanine and I dared each other to climb the planks that were nailed to the trunk, a makeshift ladder leading to a hole cut into the floorboards far above our heads.

Thankfully we were both too afraid to climb very high. I shudder to think what might have happened if one of us had been brave enough to make it all the way to the top and stand on the rickety floor of that old tree house. I doubt the rotted wood would have held our weight.

When God blessed the Israelites with his gift of the Promised Land, he did not give them free reign over all the land, but instead named clear boundaries on every side – mountain ranges, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Jordan River. God said to Moses, “Command the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter Canaan, the land that will be allotted to you as an inheritance is to have these boundaries…This will be your land, with its boundaries on every side.’” (Numbers 34:1-2 and 12)

Boundaries often feel negative to us. We feel constrained and limited by them. We might wonder why God is intentionally holding us back by inhibiting us from entering the place we desire to be. But what we fail to recognize is that boundaries are often good for us. Boundaries keep our ambitions and desires in check; they give us time to mature and prepare.

I often find myself wishing for more success as a writer. I desire more readers, better book sales, and more speaking engagements. If God gave me the call to write, I wonder, why isn’t he growing my reach?

Recently, however, when I published a blog post that was shared hundreds of times on Facebook, broadening the reach of my words far beyond their typical range, I got a small taste of what that kind of visibility can be like in reality. The post was more controversial than my usual fare, and it provoked several readers to leave angry comments on my website and Facebook page. Three days after the post was published, I was still negotiating ugly conversations on social media, which left me feeling anxious and angry. Turns out, more readers did not produce the outcome I had desired.

The boundaries God gives us are just one of the many ways he surrounds us with his love and protection. Just as my parents knew that the pine forest was a dangerous place for my sister and me, God sees the potential threats that await outside the boundaries he gives us. He understands our limitations; he knows where we are weak and where we will falter. He knows when we need more time to grow in ways that will help us survive and thrive beyond the place he has established for us today.

God intentionally hems us in, giving us boundaries in our professional and personal lives not to punish us, but to protect us from harm.

This post originally ran in the Lincoln Journal Star in January.

Why You Need Time to See the Bigger Picture

October 1, 2015 By Michelle

RowanOnBike

When I read the story of Joseph in the Old Testament, I often end up thinking, “Man, he had a good attitude! He must have been a glass half-full for sure!”

Think about everything Joseph endured: He ended up crunched into the bottom of a cistern. His brothers planned to murder him but settled for selling him as a slave instead. He worked for years as a servant. He ended up in prison. And finally, after years of suffering, his life began to turn around when he found favor with Pharaoh.

Yet look what Joseph said to his brothers when he told them his story:

“It was God who sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives.” (Genesis 45:5)

And just in case we missed it, Joseph reiterated his point two more times: “God has sent me ahead of you…so it was God who sent me here, not you!” (Genesis 45: 7-8)

Was he simply delusional, or did Joseph really view everything that had happened to him as part of God’s favorable plan?

I thought about this for a long time, because honestly, I can’t relate. I’m glass half-empty, times ten. Had I been in Joseph’s shoes, I surely would not have had such a positive attitude.

Yet I also know this: the passage of time allows for both healing and a change in perspective.

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Leaves

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Last year at this time my publisher informed me that they would not be publishing my next book. For various reasons, they let me go. It felt a lot like getting fired.

It was my bottom-of-the-cistern moment, and I was so far down, I could barely see a pinprick of light at the top. I didn’t know which move to make next, where God was leading me, if God was leading me.

Should I update my resume and head back to the traditional workforce, I wondered? Pitch my book idea to a different publisher? Give up writing altogether? Get a job at Cambell’s Nursery? (I pictured myself watering petunias and phlox without a care in the world).

The path was unclear. I didn’t know which direction to turn. And I certainly didn’t see God in the mix.

I suspect Joseph felt the same way when he was crunched in the bottom of that cistern, and when he was tied to the back of a camel en route to life as a slave in Egypt, and when he was sitting in prison, having been unfairly accused by Potiphar’s wife.

I could be wrong; maybe Joseph had more faith that I give him credit for, but I suspect God’s favor wasn’t clear to him in the very midst of those difficult moments.

You’ll notice that several years had passed by the time Joseph told his brothers this story. I suspect it had taken Joseph much of that time to understand the big picture and to see how God had used even the most challenging moments in his life to move him forward. By the time Joseph was reunited with his brothers, enough time had passed to allow for healing, forgiveness and a deeper understanding of the big picture.

It’s been a year since my original publisher let me go. After eight long months of wandering and questioning, I signed a contract with a different publisher to write a different book — one I never intended or expected to write. It’s not the plan I had in mind, and the road has certainly been full of bumps and unexpected detours. As time passes, though, I feel my perspective beginning to shift. I am beginning to see and understand how God is present, walking with me on this path, helping me navigate its twists and turns.

Perhaps as time continues to pass, someday I’ll say, like Joseph, “It was God who sent me here.”

Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Create in Me a Clean Heart. Again.

October 20, 2013 By Michelle

[31 Days resumes tomorrow]

Sometimes reading the Bible is a little like reading a newspaper article. We get the five W’s – the who, what, when, where and sometimes the why – but we often hear little more than the basic facts of the story.

Take the reading from yesterday – the story of David and Bathsheba. We learn that David stays in Jerusalem while his men go off to fight the Ammonites. He is enticed by the sight of a beautiful woman bathing on a rooftop, sleeps with that woman and gets her pregnant, and then tries to trick Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, into sleeping with his own wife so the pregnancy can be attributed to him. When Uriah refuses, we learn how David schemes to have Uriah killed in battle and then marries Bathsheba himself. Later, after the prophet Nathan rebukes David, we observe how David confesses his guilt to God, comforts Bathsheba after their child dies, and then gets her pregnant again with the child who will be born Solomon.

These are the facts, but I want to know more. I want to know what’s going through David’s head, not only during this debacle, but even more importantly, after it’s all over. The way this story reads, David simply picks up the pieces of his broken life and moves on, forgiven by God and never tempted by pride again. He gets the miracle cure. He learns his lesson just like that, in one try, and then takes his clean heart and rides off into the sunset.

I don’t buy it.

I’ve wrestled with the same temptation on and off for the past five years or so. Sometimes this temptation merely simmers in the background, sometimes I even wonder if I’ve nipped it in the bud for good. But when I least expect it, the temptation rears its ugly head again, sending me straight back to square one.

Like David, I am tempted by pride. I yearn to be important and well-known, a big-wig. I want to be in the “in-crowd,” included and respected. Not on the fringe, not over here in my own quiet little corner. In. The. Center.

Last week, this temptation roared out of hibernation, and once again, I succumbed. Badly.

Long story short, there’s a new Christian writers’ conference that’s got everyone abuzz, and I wanted to go. Initially I said no, which was the right decision. My family is my first priority, and because of that, I try to choose my travel obligations wisely. But then I heard my friends were going, and other writers I admire, and other people I respect, and suddenly, I felt left out. I was bitter and angry and a little bit panicky, a stream of anxious regret running through my head – I’m the only one not going, I’m the only one not there, I’m never going to make it as a writer if people don’t know me, and no one even notices that I’m not going because no one even notices I exist…

If that angst over feeling left out wasn’t enough, at the same time I realized I’d fallen prey to the same old sins, the same old temptation I’d been wrestling with on and off for five years. I’d fallen victim to pride, self-importance, envy and greed. Again.

Good grief.

And then, just when I thought I couldn’t feel any worse, I read about David. “Well that’s just great,” I thought to myself. “He gets a clean heart and never has to worry about temptation again. How nice for him.”

But that’s when I began to wonder if perhaps the Bible doesn’t give us the whole story down to every last detail. If David is anything like the rest of us – and he is, because he’s human – I suspect he wrestled with temptation more than once after his bad Bathsheba decision. I suspect pride and self-importance were an ongoing struggle for him. Temptation, in my experience, doesn’t simply disappear just because we repent and are forgiven. Temptation is an ongoing threat, sometimes a lifelong struggle, something some of us wrestle with again and again.

I suspect the day David penned the words, “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” wasn’t the last time he spoke that prayer in his heart. Although the bible doesn’t tell us so for sure, I bet David, like the rest of us, returned to those same lines again and again.

Questions for Reflection:
Do you ever find yourself tempted by the same sins over and over again? How do you try to break the relentless cycle, and how do you forgive yourself if you fail?

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Old Testament

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