“There was a little girl,
who had a little curl,
right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
she was very, very good,
and when she was bad, she was horrid.”
-Longfellow
“God’s going to have to break you one of these days.”
I was told that pretty often growing up. I was the epitome of the kid who was “standing up on the inside.” Even when it looked like I was obeying, I probably wasn’t.
I hated being told I needed to be broken. I internally dared God and my parents to try. I knew there was no way anyone could break me. I was Michelle Mitchell. I was stubborn, scrappy, a little crazy, full of wild ideas and boundless energy. I planned on conquering the world one day, no one was going to “break” me.
A fair amount of rough stuff happened growing up, but it didn’t break me. If anything, it strengthened my stubbornness and self-reliance. It made me tough but it made me bitter. I’d trusted Christ as my Savior when I was three, yet I’d had a buried grudge against God since I was eight. I had unshakeable faith in His sovereignty, which meant I (mostly) subconsciously blamed Him for all the bad things that happened, especially the things that seemed to be His answers to my prayers.
I wrestled with my faith. I questioned whether or not God could be trusted, if He actually cared about me, if He defined “good” the way I would define “good.” I trusted in Him for my salvation, yet I doubted that His love for Michelle Mitchell was truly gentle, kind, or tender. I couldn’t reconcile God’s sovereignty with His goodness and love. In my head, I knew both were true, but in my heart I was scared to trust Him. I was too scared that He would let me down again.
Wholly following the Lord without really trusting Him is kind of impossible. It left a lot of room for the “old man” and a lot of areas in my life where sin had more than a foothold. I knew how God wanted me to live and I wanted to obey Him, but I tried obey Him on my own. I figured I’d fully yield to Him later, when I was older and I’d left all the dark times behind. Once I’d fixed all the things He’d broken, once I’d gotten over the ways He’d wounded me, then I’d be able to really trust Him. So I shoved my doubts and fears deep down where I didn’t have to think about them and hoped one day they’d go away.
I had started teaching at Good News Club and Vacation Bible School when I was 17. I still sometimes wrestled with those doubts and fears when times got hard, but I loved the Lord, was very serious about my faith, and was good at teaching. I soon progressed to teaching Sunday School and becoming the children’s ministry intern at my church.
There were many ups and downs in those years. I wish I could say that is when I finally yielded to the Lord and leaned on His strength, but I didn’t. I desperately tried to – I longed to, but I couldn’t seem to give in all the way. Maybe it’s because I’d been so stubborn for so long, but I was unable to “let go,” trust in His love, and surrender completely. That meant I still wasn’t winning against sin, and sin never flies solo. My chief struggle was with bitterness towards God, but it had held the door open for bitterness against my parents and brother. Bitterness made it harder for me to love and forgive, and that cost me my two best friends. I struggled with honesty and purity of heart, too. I hated how often I failed, how helpless I felt sometimes against my sin nature. I was pretty sure no one would love me if they really knew me. Yet even in spite of me, God was still working in me.
In August 2015, God brought a little baby niece into my heart and home. She quickly became the center of my world, and I loved her more than life. I think it was the overwhelming love I felt for her that finally softened my heart. I tentatively began to trust Him. He continued to work in me.
In June of 2016, we taught about Jonah at VBS. While writing those lessons, I was majorly convicted on the subject of my own lack of forgiveness. This time, I didn’t try to conquer my bitterness on my own, I turned to the Lord for help. I think that was the first foothold sin lost.
By December 2016, so much had changed in my heart. He had brought friendships into my life that were such a blessing and encouragement. I still can’t wrap my head around how much those friendships influenced me. One evening, after working out with some of those friends, we started talking about our resolutions for the new year. I could already see how God had been working in me and the desire He had given me to intensely pursue Him. I decided that I wanted 2017 to be a year I lived deliberately for Christ.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.
Hebrews 12:1
Looking back now, I laugh at how I thought I was the captain of my destiny. I had “my” resolutions. I picked Hebrews 12:1 as my theme verse and said I wanted to start a “fitness program for my soul.” I thought I would be the one doing all the work.
I hit the ground running. There were plenty of trials right off the bat, but I gritted my teeth and held on for dear life. I was determined to succeed.
In March 2017, He took away my relationship with my niece.
That broke me.
In the days, weeks, months that followed I rejected Him, trusted Him, hated Him, desperately clung to Him, doubted Him, and wished I was dead. He took me to the lowest depths in heart and soul, I could not hold on to any assurance of His real, personal love for me.
He did not let me run away from Him, though. No, I had to keep teaching His truths, His love at Good News Club, Sunday School, and Kid’s Club. I couldn’t get away from Him. Prayer ended up being a topic that came up in both Good News Club and Sunday School. Because I was challenging the children to really dig into prayer, I knew I needed to myself. But I did so grudgingly at first. I wasn’t expected it to change anything. I wasn’t expecting Him to listen. I wanted to trust Him, I tried to trust Him, but I drowned inside my own head again and again and again.
I lived most of 2017 in a fog and I don’t clearly remember much of it. One night, towards the end of summer, I sobbed out, “I just need You to prove Yourself to me. Not your existence, or Your sovereignty or salvation, but I need you to prove that You really do love me. Me, me. I need You to prove that I matter to You!”
A few weeks later, I finally confided in a friend just how much I was struggling.
But what God did… It’s more than I can wrap my head around. I know God is good and never makes mistakes. But my human self says He is cruel and unpredictable and isn’t trustworthy and doesn’t love me.
Why? Why did he answer my PRAYERS like that.
I don’t get it and I’m really tired of fighting this battle.
This friend did something neat. They didn’t give me a pat little theological answer and send me on my way. They stopped. Listened. Pondered. Most importantly, they did not once make me feel guilty for my inability to just “trust God.”
My friend reminded me that my faith couldn’t and shouldn’t be rooted in what I feel or can comprehend with my human understanding. Then, my friend challenged me to get a notebook and every day look up and write down verses that directly addressed my struggles.
I took my friend’s challenge, at first, I think, more to prove that it wouldn’t help, because I knew that my situation was hopeless.
I started a notebook – writing down quotes as well (I really love quotes) and I faithfully wrote in it almost every day. One of the first verses in my notebook was Ephesians 3:16-21. That passage came to have a lot of significance for me.
…that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
The notebook challenge combined with my pursuit of prayer changed my life. I was searching the Scriptures for verses that addressed my doubts. I was reading the struggles and encouragements of deep, solid Christians. And I was praying. I was weeping, I was wrestling, and God was working in me.
By this point, I’d been battling the weeds in my heart for many years, but as much as I hated those ugly, gnarly things, I couldn’t seem to get rid of them. I’d let them grow for too long and their roots were far too deep and strong. Now the Master Gardener stepped in. He brought me to real repentance over my sin and He began uprooting it. It was very uncomfortable. He made me look my sin in the eye, acknowledge it, and reject it. Sometimes it meant weeping, yielding, and praising Him for His ability to change me. Sometimes it also meant terrifying conversations when it was sin that needed to be confessed. There were several conversations in particular, each one more terrifying than the next, that He called me to during that time. Yet even in dealing with my sin and its consequences, He was loving me. Some of those terrifying conversations resulted in me experiencing love and forgiveness like never before.
In December 2017, God convicted me about surrendering in prayer. Slowly, painfully, I had learned how to pray, how to pour out my heart before Him, to pray consistently, intentionally, naturally, but I hadn’t learned how to pray, “Your will be done” and really mean it. Even when I bowed broken before Him, when my soul cried out wordlessly, I didn’t pray, “Your will be done.” I prayed for what I wanted Him to do.
I asked Him, “Does true submission mean letting go of your dreams? To truly yield, must you stop praying for that thing which you so desire?”
It’s a complicated question. God does want us to persevere in prayer (something He has reminded me again and again), but He also wants us to submit even in our asking. That’s hard to do.
I wrestled with that question for a year. God had done so much in my heart, I could clearly see all the ways He had changed me, the way He had stirred me up to take hold of Him. I was frustrated, though, that after all He had walked me through, I still struggled to trust Him. I still wrestled with the concept of His love. Why? What was I missing? He’d broken me and I had finally yielded my will to Him.
Ah, but I hadn’t yielded my heart.
2018 was another long year. There was sorrow upon sorrow, and it wasn’t limited to my relationship with my niece. So many nights I cried myself to sleep saying, “Lord, You took away Jamie – why are you now doing this? Haven’t I cried enough already?” Spring, summer, and fall came and went. He just kept finding new ways to hurt me. I even got shingles.
I kept waiting for Him to stop. I kept waiting for morning to come. I told myself if I could just hold on long enough, He would fix everything and I finally could trust in His love.
I had it backwards. I needed to trust Him now while it still seemed hopeless. I was STILL waiting to trust Him once I didn’t really need Him anymore. I needed to trust Him while everything was still broken. I needed to trust Him in the dark. Through sermons and my daily devotions, He set the question clearly before me.
God hedges in His own in order to protect them. Yet often they only see the wrong side of the hedge and therefore misunderstand His actions. And so it was with Job when he asked, “Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?” (Job 3: 23). Ah, but Satan knew the value of that hedge! He challenged the Lord by saying, “Have you not put a hedge around [Job] and his household and everything he has?” (Job 1: 10).
Onto the pages of every trial there are narrow shafts of light that shine. Thorns will not prick you until you lean against them, and not one will touch you without God knowing. The words that hurt you, the letter that caused you pain, the cruelty of your closest friend, your financial need— they are all known to Him. He sympathizes as no one else can and watches to see if through it all, you will dare to trust Him completely.
Streams in the Desert, January 12
I wrestled with that last thought for a week. It dug at me like a splinter. “Dare to trust Him completely.”
Could I? Could I truly trust Him?
Yes. I could.
What comfort my soul found in that trust. Everything that made me cry still made me cry, but I trusted Him and somehow I could bear it.
Then He very gently asked me if I would stop praying so hard for what I wanted. He asked if I would trust Him even to the point of simply praying, “Your will be done.”
How an old harpist dotes on his harp! How he fondles and caresses it, as a child resting on his bosom! His life is bound up in it. But, see him tuning it. He grasps it firmly, strikes a chord with a sharp, quick blow; and while it quivers as if in pain, he leans over intently to catch the first note that rises. The note, as he feared, is false and harsh. He strains the chord with the torturing thumb-screw; and though it seems ready to snap with the tension, he strikes it again, bending down to listen softly as before, till at length you see a smile on his face as the first true tone trembles upward.
So it may be that God is dealing with you. Loving you better than any harpist loves his harp, He finds you a mass of jarring discords. He wrings your heartstrings with some torturing anguish; He bends over you tenderly, striking and listening; and, hearing only a harsh murmur, strikes you again, while His heart bleeds for you, anxiously waiting for that strain–“Not my will, but thine be done” — which is melody sweet to His ear as angels’ songs. Nor will He cease to strike until your chastened soul shall blend with all the pure and infinite harmonies of His own being.
Streams in the Desert, January 28
Could I?
For nineteen years I had not trusted God with my heart. Could I really, finally, utterly let go of my doubt and fear and fully yield?
Like Aslan’s breath on Lucy’s face came a peace and strength I had never had before. Yes. I could.
That evening, I sat in the empty sanctuary at church and asked God to please, finally, let me know His love. I quoted from Ephesians 3:16-21 and told Him, “Lord, if I could have one thing from You, it would be to know Your love – to see me how You see me.”
Within the next few days came several tests of my newfound total surrender. By the grace of God, each time the tests came I still trusted Him. I still managed to whisper, “Your will be done” and truly mean it.
A few days later, two different friends randomly shared Ephesians 3:16-21 with me. That prayer I sobbed out one night in 2017 was still being answered.
It’s been a couple years now, and I can see how the hurt over my niece was the good hand of my God upon me. There is so much I don’t understand about the things God has done, but He has taught me about His love.
I know I never would have reached this point in my relationship with the Lord if He hadn’t first broken me. I am so thankful that He did. I was so sure that no one and nothing would ever break me – but I was born broken, and so many of the decisions I made just contributed to my brokenness. When God broke me, it was so He could put me back together the right way.
I am thankful for the things He has done in my life, and the work He continues to do. So much of what He has done for me has been on the inside, it hasn’t always been big, obvious changes visible to others. But oh, what He has done in my heart has been nothing short of a miracle.
I want to shout from the rooftops what He has done for me, I want to sing of His love forever. I want to share the story of His goodness and power in my life. It’s a story that I can’t fully explain but one that I never get tired of telling.
He is good and He does good and He loves me.
Do you know my Jesus?
whileiwrestle 