“You are in the green pasture now, Ana. It is because God has you in this place that it is determined to be a green pasture. Where He is, is good.”
~
I don’t think I’ve ever needed to hear anything more than I needed to hear (read) that. Especially because “this place” doesn’t refer to Mount Hermon. It refers to a season – my season.
This is one of my favorite parts of the letter. I’ve read it more times than I can count and each time, the Lord opens my eyes wider, makes my perspective broader, my heart softer, and my knees weaker. He makes it easier to open my hands, palms up, and I realize how tired they are from holding such a tight grip on the things I spend an excessive amount of time and mental energy waiting around for and wondering about.
Elan and Darci came to visit me briefly in Santa Cruz one weekend over the summer. We walked and talked and laughed, ate really good ice cream with torched marshmallow topping, threatened to get tattoos on a whim, and prayed together in the car before they left. Elan prayed that Christianity wouldn’t become dull to me; that I would always know and believe Christ to be the source of my everything, especially when my desires for other things seem out of control and all-consuming. Maybe like they did that day, as much as I tried to hide it. They could tell my heart was heavy. Everything we had talked about provoked my brother to thought, more prayer, and eventually to putting pen to paper within the following week, prior to their second visit, this time with my parents. Upon that next departure, he handed me a manila envelope and said something like “I wrote some things down for you.” I barely had it in my hands and already I was suppressing a floodgate of tears. Somehow my whole heart knew exactly what it was about.
They left and I went up to my dorm, envelope in hand, and sat on my bed and wept as I poured over six pages of everything I needed to hear from the one person I valued hearing it from the most. My brother and I might be polar opposites in many ways, but our differences will never outshine some of our greatest similarities. On a surface level, we like the same food, have the same love for San Diego, the same appreciation for the pre-modern English language (before it was tainted by “text lingo”), and the same talent and love for writing, which lends itself to the same appreciation for being articulate. In colloquial conversation, we jokingly verbalize things like “lol,” “jk,” and “brb” really fast, using the same mocking tone of voice because we like to pretend for a moment that we’re not millennials and instead make fun of our own “kind.” We think we’re pretty funny sometimes because that’s the other thing, we share the same sense of humor. Except his is way better. No one on God’s green earth can make me laugh like Elan or my dad (they are insanely similar). Put them in the same room and within forty seconds there’s really just no hope for my lungs or bladder, and it’s best thing ever. Anyway, of course, the most important commonality is our love for Jesus and how we communicate the convictions we share as followers of Him. It is because of this that Elan understands me so well, and why I will forever consider him one of my best friends.
In his letter, he spoke very poignantly and with such incredible wisdom to the part of me that struggles to understand what it means to be complete in Christ; that no other broken human can or will be my “answer” or “remedy;” that a life with Jesus is abundant no matter what season He has appointed me to be in; and that Christ Himself and Christ alone is and always will be my treasure and greatest gift. For “His plan is infinitely good, his possibilities and blessings… are abundant and just beginning, His love is flawless and unconditional, His existence commands the earth to cry out in worship, and there is no telling what comes next” (pg. 6).
But whatever it is will really just be a bonus.
I spent the next several days dwelling on the first few verses of Psalm 23.
“The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake” (vs. 1-3).
It’s no coincidence that before David says that God “restores [his] soul,” he first acknowledges that as his Shepherd, “[God] makes [him] to lie down in green pastures; He leads [him] beside the still waters.” God actually guides us into places and seasons of rest, at times before He does the restorative work. Maybe to prepare us for it; maybe so we’ll actually recognize that part when it happens. Even when we don’t deserve it, we fight it, don’t want it, or straight up don’t recognize it because we’re too busy looking at or for other things, if rest is what we need, that is where He’ll lead. For awhile I failed to recognize that this is what He’s been doing for me – inviting me to stop worrying and striving; to rest with Him. He did give me a brand new experience, and maybe I took it and ran with it, letting myself suddenly expect to just receive everything new under the sun. But God’s not in a hurry the way I am. I’ve spent so much time asking all the questions, inevitably letting my heart remain restless when He’s been saying, I gave you this summer to show you that I hear you; I know better than you what you like, what you love, and what you want, but I also know what you need and when, and that is what I give to you.
I was complicating everything.
Having all of my expectations met was what I wanted, but not what I needed. No part of that would have taught me what it looks like to rest when I don’t want to. No part of that would’ve taught me what trust feels like and what refined faith looks like when the current of doubt is dragging me farther away from lands with green pastures, and deeper under the water of my cares. No part of that would’ve allowed me to appreciate the patience, gentleness and persistence of the Lord and His invitation to not only rest with Him, but to experience the joy of all that He is, circumstances aside.
Before it sounds even remotely like I finally “arrived” and waltzed out of Santa Cruz with a heart of newly refined gold and not a concern in the world, let me be very clear that I’m still learning to accept this invitation. I’m a “pursuer” and I’m impatient, which makes this constantly one of the hardest things to do. Some days I think I have accepted it, and other days I reject it again. My incessant inability to rest is the most annoying thing I’ve ever dealt with, and it is making it really difficult to navigate my independence well. Any time spent reading any of my other posts will reveal this about me fairly quickly. It’s the common thread they all share in some capacity because this part of my character is the thorn in my flesh; it’s the one thing I can’t seem to shake. I believe that’s on purpose because God uses it to bring me back to Himself. Through it, he teaches me what feels like the same lesson over and and over again, yet somehow He still brings something brand new from it each time.
This summer was my green pasture, not because I received everything I’ve ever wanted in life, but actually because I didn’t. It was green because God led me to where He is, and regardless of where anything else that I could possibly look for may be, “where He is, is good.” And where He has me now is good; it is both the beauty from the ashes and my green pasture.
And I’m still in it.