where waves grow sweet

Hi friends! Long time, no see! I am hoping to share some things soon that are being written on my heart, but in the meantime, I would like to share the testimony I gave at a women’s retreat last weekend. The recording is a little rough, but I’m so grateful my friend took it. My execution is a little rough too, but this is new, slightly scary territory for me so I’m just glad I got through it!

I am so grateful that Tricia asked me to give my testimony this weekend. I think it is such a beautiful thing to share our stories and encourage each other with what God has done for us. The theme verse for this weekend is one that’s very personal to me and has been worked into my heart over the past 30 years. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what is God’s good, pleasing and perfect will.”

I was born into a Christian family to parents who were actively serving the Lord. I was the 2nd of 4 kids. My siblings seemed to want what was good and right, while I was strong willed and wanted what I wanted, which often wasn’t what was good or right. So very early on, I developed an identity as the black sheep of the family. Over time, I came to see myself not as a regular, loved kid who made some poor choices but as a bad kid who was unlovable. I believed that if my parents really knew what was in my heart, they wouldn’t – or couldn’t – love me. I also believed, despite the gospel message that was taught to me, that my lack of goodness disqualified me from God’s love.

On top of that, I fell so short of who I wanted to be or felt like I should be. I was shy and fearful when I wanted nothing more than to be outgoing and fearless. I wanted to connect with people but always felt like I was on the outside and like I didn’t belong. I didn’t like the way I looked. I didn’t like my personality. I was stubborn and selfish. I felt dumb as dirt. I had no discernible gifts. It seemed like God had given everyone around me all kinds of beautiful gifts to do life with and left me with a heap of leftovers that nobody else wanted. So not only did I have disdain for myself but I developed accusation and distrust against God because I believed He had withheld something good from me that was in His power to give. 

Just like Eve in the garden, when the pattern of this world was established, I put my trust in what felt and looked true, rather than in what God said was true, and felt justified to take what He hadn’t given me. To bridge that gap, I started drinking very young. In that moment, I felt outgoing and fearless; the condemning voices were quieted and I felt like I belonged. But it was a momentary fix that almost always brought shame and a greater disconnect from my heart and led to a need for more self medicating. 

When I was a sophomore in high school – not yet 15 – I showed up to a school dance stupid drunk. I lost my virginity in the back seat of the car after the dance to a guy who didn’t love me. I didn’t have a chance to process the loss, which felt devastating, before going to school the following Monday when I walked in and saw on my locker – in black permanent marker – the word “slut.” My friends quickly found me and told me that the guy’s girlfriend was trying to find me to beat me up. I was feisty and stubborn, but I was not a fist fighting kind of girl. I was terrified. And I was so full of shame as this massive moral failure was made incredibly public. 

Do you know those moments in time that mark you? That etch something into your identity that feels permanent? This was one of those moments. I knew in my heart that I had crossed a line that wasn’t meant to be crossed and it was all my stupid, rebellious fault. But instead of acknowledging my pain to myself or anyone else, I built walls around my heart and said that I didn’t care one little bit. It was no big deal. But really, I believed that I was now not only disqualified from God’s love but also from His goodness. I honestly believed that there was no hope for me to have a loving husband and happy family.

You can imagine where my life went from there. It got dark. I drank hard. I smoked hard. I did any drugs I could get my hands on. I cut myself. I starved myself. I gave away my body as if it was loose change that meant nothing to me. I put myself in incredibly dangerous situations because what did it matter if I lived or died? When I was 18, I was abducted by three young men who had given me a line of cocaine in a club the night before. When I escaped, had been interviewed for the evening news and made it back to my apartment, my parents said, “this must have been the worst day of your life,” I responded, “not remotely.” And it wasn’t because I was living out the daily hell of believing my own “truth.”

A week later, I overdosed on heroin. When I briefly came to consciousness in the ambulance, one of the paramedics passionately shared how close I had come to dying. I had the gaul to say to these men who had saved my life and were continuing to save my life… “You aren’t helping!”… before passing out again and waking up in the hospital, alive, thanks to their expert care. It was such a picture of how I felt toward God who seemed like He was sitting on high, judging me instead of reaching down and pulling me out of the darkness. “You aren’t helping!,” my whole life screamed to this God who had given everything to save me and who was working powerfully in more ways than I could know to help me live.

When I was 19, I married a man who had his own hurts, insecurities and addictions that played right into mine. It was a volatile and destructive relationship but it lined up with what I believed about myself so it felt right in its own way. We moved to a small Hawaiian island to try to escape our chaos which of course didn’t work. There were hurts I experienced there that cut deeper than I thought possible, especially because I could hardly feel anything anymore. I felt tired, empty, hopeless and entirely disconnected from my heart and isolated from anyone and everyone who could speak truth into my life.

And then, on Valentine’s Day of 1995, while still living on Lanai, I found out I was pregnant. I know most women in my situation wouldn’t welcome this news but it was the greatest declaration of love I had ever known. I didn’t believe I had any value but I knew this baby did and for some reason I couldn’t grasp, God had entrusted him into my care so somehow, by association to this beautiful little life, I felt loved. Hope popped up like a jack-in-the-box. All that I learned growing up suddenly seemed like it actually applied to me; that for the first time the the gospel, this good news, reached out its hand to welcome me in. I had accepted Jesus into my heart when I was 4, but it was on that Valentine’s Day that I finally bowed my knee and called Him Lord. 

I wanted nothing more than to step into life and to be able to love this baby well. But I was still a broken person with some deeply rooted and very skewed beliefs. The difference was that now I had a relationship with the living God who would lead me step by step into what He said was true and make me whole. Strength rose up through the Holy Spirit in those initial months to start making changes that would be good not only for the baby, but for us too. I started nurturing the body I had beaten down for so long. I insisted we moved back to California to be near family – and actually ended up living with family for a long while.  It challenged my illusion of independence, but it was such a gift to begin to learn the beauty of community and interdependence. Eventually, I found the strength to get out of the marriage that was not a safe place to be.

So Cole Traveler was born and he was the light of my life. I finally had a purpose and an identity that was rooted in something good. But there was a new tension. I wanted to be the person God said I was. This righteous saint in His Kingdom. I tried to be that person to honor Him and show Him my gratitude but every attempt ended in failure, which was such a good thing, because it helped me see that it was not my job to transform myself. That was way above my paygrade. It was His job to do the transforming. My job was simply to yield to His truth at every turn. And I couldn’t even do that without His help.

There were so many struggles along the way and I had to become dependent on the Lord to lead me through. This is really where the renewing of my mind kicked into gear. I learned to lean into the Word and let it slowly change the way I thought and believed. I learned to share my heart with the Lord and listen to His voice and eventually to trust what He said above my own perceptions. I learned to share my struggles with trustworthy people and receive wise counsel. I learned to worship God not because I felt like it, but because He was worthy. My initial conversion felt dramatic, but the years that followed felt like a journey of a million baby steps of surrender.

Those surrenders were a holy exchange. It was about handing over my wants, expectations and fears so I could come into alignment with His, which is where freedom lies. But It felt like such a narrow road and with my incredibly strong will, it was often an all out wrestling match between my spirit that wanted to yield and my soul that didn’t. But every time I would finally yield my will, peace came and trust grew. Bit by bit, I started to see on the outside the transformation that had been happening on the inside.

There was one surrender that was bigger than any other. It was when Cole was about 9 and a legal situation arose that I wholly believed would not only put his well-being at risk, but would entirely undermine my relationship with him. I tried in every way possible to avert this reality, but was told by multiple experts that I had no recourse. I was backed up against a wall, terrified by the repercussions, so I took a long walk in the hills to wrestle down the fear and hash the situation out with the Lord. Through a torrent of tears, I told him that I felt like He was asking me to put my son on an altar and hold a knife to his chest. He spoke very clearly into my heart, “I am. Do you trust me?” 

Everything I had been walking out was tested in that moment. Did I trust him with my most precious treasure… this irreplaceable gift He had given me? I wanted to hold tight and try to be Cole’s savior but I had already seen what came of my own way. From the depths of my heart came the answer. “Yes, I trust you.” In that moment, peace came. The peace that comes not from a certain outcome, but from Jesus. I was forever changed by that exchange before the rest of the story even unfolded. I left a few messages agreeing to the terms but never heard back. The court case evaporated as if it had never existed. I can guess at a natural reason for that but there is no one who could convince me that the Lord hadn’t spared my son with a ram in the thicket that day.

So Cole and I carried on and continued to grow in truth and relationship and navigate the inevitable hardships we faced that were complicated by a difficult relationship with Cole’s father. But it was through that very relationship that I learned the power of forgiveness and the joy of God’s kind of love that isn’t dependent on us – or anyone else – getting it right. Through it, the Lord taught me to recognize things like self-pity and bitterness that would shortchange the way He was using those circumstances for my good, for my freedom and for His glory. I won’t say I enjoyed the process, but wow, was I ever transformed by it. 

My mind, which had been such a ruthless courtroom, increasingly became a place of peace as I learned to take each thought captive and hold it up to the grace and truth of Jesus. The numbness I had felt for so long began to wear off as the Lord reconnected me with my heart and I learned how to feel again – yes, the hurt I’d pushed down for so long – but also the joy and playfulness and even the passion God had given me for his purposes. 

When Cole was 16, I married a man who loved the Lord, valued me and accepted Cole as his own. I got an amazing step-daughter out of the deal and we had another son together. There was such a sweetness to our blended family. I can’t imagine that anyone looking at our family would have any idea of the miracle it held: That the Lord had destroyed the lie I had believed that I was disqualified for His goodness. It’s still a miracle to me. It’s not that I got things right and became deserving but that I was finally in a place where I could let God do for me what He had always wanted to because He was the One who had qualified me.

A few months after high school, Cole went into the Navy to train to work on a sub. Letting go of having him as a buddy in my daily life was hard but I pressed in with the Lord and connected with Cole as often as I could. The next couple years were filled with a whole new level of surrender as Cole spent his free time riding very fast motorcycles, getting his arms plastered with tattoos and drinking a lot. During that time, he had to deal with the loss of two friends to motorcycle accidents and one to suicide. All I wanted to do was bring him home and help him heal from all he’d been through but the military doesn’t work that way. He had committed to 8 years of his life on their terms. 

When he got his job assignment in Virginia, things got bleak for him. He was under poor leadership and was being worked to the bone and, like me, had established his own way of coping. He began having panic attacks, was struggling with depression and hadn’t gotten leave in a year and a half. After one particular text, I dove headlong into mama bear mode and intended to show up on his doorstep the next day, but the Holy Spirit helped me recognize that fear was leading the charge and I knew that it wasn’t God’s voice. So I spent the next morning in worship and prayer with a friend where the Lord’s presence was profound and I once again surrendered Cole’s well-being to the Lord.

Things didn’t get any better for a while but then I had a conversation with him that set my heart at ease. He wasn’t doing great but so much better. I breathed a big sigh of relief. We had made it through. Less than a month later, I was standing in front of my kitchen window doing dishes when I saw naval officers walking up my very long driveway toward my door. And I knew in that moment the news they brought. This amazing boy God had used to save my life had taken his own. 

I had wanted the outcome to be different. I had expected the outcome to be different. I thought my trust would have a happy ending like it always did. But I had already learned that peace was in Jesus, not an outcome. There was so much I didn’t understand and there was a lot of pain I was going to have to face, but what I knew that day was that I would be okay. Not because I was brave or strong or up to the task. And not because I was in denial of how immense the loss was. But because the God I serve had shown Himself faithful in every single circumstance, no matter how impossible. 

I was determined not to define the loss myself or draw conclusions based on my own understanding or feelings. I’d done that as a teenager with disastrous results. This required constant conversations with the Lord about how He saw my circumstances. I took each thought and emotion to Him and He kept meeting me with grace and truth, like manna for each day. It was not easy, but I have never felt so loved in all my life as I did during that time in the Lord’s tender care. He spoke to me in so many ways – through His Spirit, through worship music, through my community, through His Word – and held me close when there were no words to say. People told me I would hurt forever, and I knew that was the natural way of things, but I believed that God could and would heal my heart. Because He gives beauty for ashes; joy instead of mourning; praise instead of heaviness. I know this to be true. 

It has been 5 1/2 years since Cole passed away and the Lord has continued to heal my heart and set me on His firm foundation and demonstrate His goodness and mercy to me. My life is full of more joy than I ever dreamed possible and most of the time, I do not hurt. What the enemy meant for evil – to destroy, defile and discourage me, God has used for good – not only mine, but those who have seen His work in my life. I believe when I stand before Him one day, I will understand all of it and I think I will marvel at His ways, but for now I will continue to trust Him and praise Him and let Him continue the transformation He has begun.

I don’t know what you are walking out right now. What circumstances you are up against or what beliefs are challenging your freedom. But I do know that you are not disqualified from receiving his love, his goodness and his forgiveness and there is nobody who can define your identity and your future but the lord. So I encourage you to lean into the Lord, to put his truth before your mind, to yield your will, and to let him transform you and bring you into the fullness of what he has for you.