“Hey Heather, can I interrupt real quick?” Dillon asked. Matt and I were talking with some close friends at a church leadership conference with about 300 other church leaders. We all turned our attention to Dillon. 

“Sure.”

“Do you know Laura?”

“No, I don’t. Hi, I’m Heather.” I introduced myself. 

“Laura shared something with me and I think it is for you.” Dillon shared. 

“Oh, ok.” 

“I have to go, but I think it would be good for Laura to share and then for you all to pray for, Heather.” Dillon suggested to our small group. 

“Sounds good.” 

I was taken aback and encouraged at the same time. I felt humbled and grateful to Dillon for taking the time to bring Laura and I together. I felt sought out by God. I knew he was pursuing me. 

For months prior to the leadership conference, I had been walking through a season of questioning if we were meant to be doing what we were doing. Raising a big family in Chicago, raising a severely disabled child in the city, church leadership in a time where the church at large had dwindled and leaders across denominations had been walking away due to the pressures and hardships of the pandemic. I had been asking God to speak to me. Clearly. Deliberately. Undoubtedly. I needed a fresh vision.  

For months he had seemed silent. Far away. I had prayed and prayed and questioned and questioned. My mind would swirl with accusing questions and thoughts…

What have we missed?

Is this what we are meant to be doing? 

What more could we do? 

Is this worth it?  

Raising 4 kids in the city is hard enough, let alone church leadership and special needs. 

Only 20% of special needs christian families even go to church let alone lead one…what the heck are we doing? 

My brain would whirl until I was sucked down, down, down into a pit of despair and I would lay there for hours, sometimes days, sometimes weeks. 

During the pandemic, it had been reported that in suburban areas churches were seeing 30% of their people move on, and in urban areas 60-70% of people. Our church was no different. Over the course of the pandemic, a staggering amount of our people were MIA, or had moved on. People left for various reasons. Matt and I understood, we sympathized, and we grieved.  For everyone, all over the world, it has been a time of deep loss and we have all done the best we know how to get through these unprecedented times.  Living in Chicago is challenging in good times, let alone pandemic times. In the stress and pain of the pandemic, our church went from a couple of hundred, to just thirty the first Sunday we reopened. Over the past year, and only by God’s grace, more have slowly returned, and new people are joining, but it was a dramatic shift.

“God what are you doing?” The thought would rattle around in my brain. We knew we were learning a lot through everything but it just kept coming. “Are you shutting this church down or are you doing something new?” For months these questions had plagued me. My soul felt like it was fading. The vision that God had given us thirteen years ago for starting a church in Chicago seemed blurry.  I was desperate for God to show up. 

There had been glimpses of hope sprinkled through the last two years. A word from a dear friend about God doing something new. At the time, it was unclear what kind of “new” that meant. Encouragement from another friend who had a picture of our church going through a catastrophic storm (aka pandemic life) and after the clouds and rain cleared out and the sun came out, there was a small plant left, it was small but it was alive. 

For me, these encouragements paled in comparison to the pain. I would remember them and hold onto them only to receive more bad news. I wanted to trust God, but my circumstances overwhelmed my heart. I’m sure my vision was skewed. All I knew to do was to keep turning back to Him, asking for Him to help me, inviting a few trusted others into the pain and receiving strength and courage from them. I had done that for months…

Now, as I stood before Laura, a lady who I had never met, she did not know me, she did not know our story, I felt like God was showing up in an unexpected way. She shared…

“I saw a picture of a candle. The wick of the candle was very small. It looked like it was about to go out. I saw God slowly cup his hands around the candle and gently, gently blow on the wick to bring it back to life. This was gentle and deliberate.”  

Tears welled up in my eyes. I knew I was the candle. My wick felt like it was about to go out. I had not described my situation like this before, but it was the perfect illustration of how I felt. I did not want the light to go out. I wanted to burn brightly. As long as I can remember I have wanted to be a bright light, one who loves others well, despite life circumstances. I have always desired to burn brightly, to love others and God with my whole self. I felt like I was living in a season where the light was threatening to go out and I did not know how to get it back. I wanted to live the life God had called us to, but when I looked at the landscape it seemed too unpredictable. The energy that is demanded of a special needs family is exhausting, the energy it takes to lead a church in good times is exhausting. Just surviving through a pandemic is exhausting. I had come to the place (once again) where I did not know if I could keep going. I felt as if I was days away from not getting out of bed from sheer fatigue. I was devastated that I was in such a low place again. Yet here God was, showing up in a stranger, reminding me that he knows me. He knows you. He knows us. He reaches out, pursues us in unexpected ways and says, “I’m here. I see you.”

“Well, I can tell you that is totally for me.” I laughed and cried at the same time, caught off guard by how deliberate and gentle God was being with me. 

“I would just like to pray for you,” she said. 

“I would love that.”

“I also felt like he wanted to read Isaiah 61:1-3 over you.” Now I was really a mess. Isaiah 61 had been a chapter in the Bible that I have loved since I was a teenager. It is a portion of scripture that God has used to encourage me over and over again. 

Laura read: 

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

  because the Lord has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor;

    he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

    and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,

    and the day of vengeance of our God;

    to comfort all who mourn;

to grant to those who mourn in Zion—

    to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,

the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

    the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;

that they may be called oaks of righteousness,

    the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.”

After she prayed a friend shared that he felt God was going to restore the passion that I had when I was younger. He had no idea this was something I have been asking God for. 

“You are small in stature, but the passion that God is giving you will be mighty.” He shared. 

“Actually, the last verse I read says, “and they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.” Laura shared. 

That verse has been prayed over me and shared with me countless times over the course of my forty years. And it’s not something I have shared with other people. Laura did not even know me. She was from another state, another church, had other friends, we weren’t even facebook friends. She could not have known. God knew. He knows the very thing that will speak to our hearts. He is so kind and gracious to us. 

Now, Laura did not say, “God says to stay in Chicago.” Yet, what she shared gave me hope and life to continue to embrace the call I knew God gave us thirteen and a half years ago. The words she shared reminded me in a deeply personal way that God sees me and knows me. I knew God had not told us to do anything else. I knew that He had not given us peace about going somewhere else. I knew we were clearly called to Chicago and I knew if we were to ever leave, there would need to be a clear call to go.  

At times it can feel like God is so far away. It can feel like he doesn’t care, that he has forgotten us, that He doesn’t hear our prayers, and turns a blind eye to our pain. But He has not forgotten. He hears every prayer. He collects all our tears (Psalm 56:8). Our tears are precious to Him. When we least expect it, He shows up and can speak beauty into the most painful parts of our story. In a moment we can go from feeling like our light is about to be snuffed out and our hope is gone, to feeling hopeful and strengthened and reminded that He is good and faithful to us. 

When we are at our weakest, God shows up. When we are at our lowest, He is there. When we feel like we can’t go on, He gives us strength. We can believe that if only our circumstances would change, everything would be ok. Sometimes that is true. Sometimes circumstances need to change. But even when circumstances change, we are still the same people and will face the same or similar challenges. The beauty and grace of God is that He steps through the fabric of time to let us know that we are seen, we are known, He has a purpose and a plan for us, that is not about us, but is about Him and what He is doing. And in those moments, our circumstances are exactly the same, but somehow it all seems different. Nothing changes but everything changes. 

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• Calling
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• cerebralpalsykids
• churchleadership
• godwhereareyou
• grace
• Grief
• leaderswife
• pandemic
• pastorswife
• questioningyourcalling
• Specialneeds