So you've grasped that coveted Good Thing, held tightly to what was supposed to be the will of God, then come to grips with the resounding request of God to uncurl your fingers and relinquish your one desire. You bow your head in obedience. You surrender to the One who made you. Sorrow mingles with shivers of joy as you realize that the very work of surrender is in itself a miracle from God, proof of His Presence, Victory over your own self, evidence of His tireless work to improve and remake you complete and perfect. You're strong and courageous, you tell yourself. And you are. But after a few days, the words don't seem to help much. What happens next? There's a hole in life, to be sure, and it has to be filled with something. Fill it with God, they tell me. What does that look like? How do I do that? Wasn't I trying to do that all along? Walking away in the first place is a tremendous battle, an incredible victory. Then each day after that, as you decide to keep walking and not turn around, is again a victory after victory. How do you keep those daily victories rolling in? Here's what I'm finding...
Recount what God has done. How has He been faithful in the past? Scripture is filled with the command to remember; remember your slavery, remember past victories. Remember His faithfulness to your ancestors. Remember seasons of joy in your life followed by valleys of death and up mountains of hope and joy again. God does not owe you happiness. You are not exempt from feeling darkness. But His faithfulness does endure forever. Remember that the highs and lows of life will each take their turn, and God will remain consistent through it. How do you typically hear His Voice? How do you discern His will? Remember times of His direction, remember the clarity you had then even in the present fog. I had to recount the reasons of my decision to myself every day, often multiple times each day. Each time was sweet surrender.
Don't put emotional processing on a timeline. Some people may try to tell you how much or how long its appropriate to grieve or process something. While there are general measures used in mental health, for the most part you can crumple these "thumb rules" up and throw them away. You may feel elation one day and fresh despair the next. That's okay. You may even go five years and then experience the loss all over again. That's fine. All measures are human means of controlling what seems uncontrollable. We want to manage grief and confusion because they are so overbearing and frightening. Tears are inconvenient, so we mop them up and decide to be just fine. If God is my strength, I should be joyful, right?. Rather, we need to learn to be okay with grief. Hebrews says Jesus (who was perfect) learned obedience by what he suffered. Suffering was good for Jesus. Am I better than Jesus? No. So suffering is good for me. Let's not rush this process. Which leads me to my next point....
Ask God to let you see sanctification through His eyes. The deep water is worth it. I don't know how. I could fill this webspace with poetic metaphors about God's presence, but I know those images don't change things, unless God is speaking to you now. In the last chapters of Daniel, the prophet is being told about the end of days, the darkest desolation in Earth's history. He says in chapter 11 verse 35, "some of the wise will far so that they may be refined, purified, and cleansed until the time of the end, for it will still come at the appointed time." Even the wise in the Lord will stumble. This is a suffering akin to or including death. But the promise remains that they will shine out like stars in the end. The days of darkness will end, and we will shine out like stars.
Drop your plans. Drop them like a handful of fireants. Drop them because plans, though we may pray over them and seek the Lord's confirmation, are often assertions of our self-sufficiency. Times like this demand a denial of self-sufficiency; total reliance on God. God does not exists somewhere in that coveted future. He is Here, NOW, and wants you to turn to fellowship with him in this present moment. I found myself in poverty of planning, unable to fathom any future other than that which I had claimed and which God took away. In my poverty I found the richness of Christ's Present Presence. Don't be quick to trade that nearness.
Know yourself. Finally, spend intentional time identifying and defining who you are. If you've sought this Good Thing very long, it no doubt has become a factor that defined you. (This isn't a bad thing. God made it so that we become like what we love.) Who am I without this in my life? you may wonder. Now you have the blessed opportunity to discover just that. So embrace the season of knowing and of being. don't expect an automatic answer. You are a deep and complex person, and God is still writing your story.
