I got lost.

Like leaving a park on a small back road in south Arkansas without a map and no signs to tell me the direction toward home. Like driving in the rain in the dark in South Dallas with no clue where I was and how to get home. Lost like in Dallas with cars zipping by and not knowing what exit I needed or if I was even on the right highway. (Try to think of a life without cell phones and GPS.)

Frightening lost.

Not like in the sense of my salvation.

Like a lost identity.

Who was I after my daughter and my husband died? I had longed to be a wife and a mother. I was now a widow and a single mother with a young son who had a daughter who had passed away. There was no word in the English language to identify me. No one around me had been through those experiences by the age of 33.

I had no clue what to do, where to go, and when to go after my husband died. My days, for the past six years, had been focused on the care and nursing of my family. Half of my family was in heaven leaving the other two here on earth. That was not supposed to happen!

I didn’t want a new beginning, a new “normal.”

I was tired. We had just moved back to Arkansas two months before Slick’s death. My house didn’t feel like my home. I had not had time to find a church that felt like home. I didn’t know my co-workers at my job. I was just lost, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically.

Oh, I looked like I was surviving. I went to work, raised my son, went to church with my mother, ran errands, paid my bills, and smiled. All while trying to find my way out of my huge bubble of pain. I knew God was there. I knew He could take care of and would watch over me. I just did not how to take care of myself or how to allow God to give me direction.

I truly did not understand the level of agony I was experiencing. There seemed to be a thick, heavy fog around my mind and my heart. I began to put up a high wall of defense to avoid having that much hurt ever again. Unfortunately, that wall only imprisoned me. I closed off honesty—with myself, with God, and with other people. I did not want to address the all-encompassing grief I had. I believed that people shouldn’t get close to me because they would just end up dying.

Choices were made by me to just find some comfort. Many of my choices were not the best for me, and therefore, for my son. The choices weren’t illegal or immoral choices, just not the best. I so wished there had been someone with flesh to walk right next to me and tell me what step to take, someone to force me to make the right choice by holding my hand to keep me from walking in the wrong direction. Some people tried for a few moments. But since I wasn’t honest with myself, how would anyone know how to help? I did not know where to find help. I didn’t know to be still long enough for help to find me.

I had not learned to just rest. To just rest in Jesus. Even in the pain.

I continued to be busy. Did I mention that I was a single parent who had to go back to work the week after my husband died so that I would have an income? That my mother had cancer and needed help? That my father-in-law had cancer and gave up after his only child died? That I knew I was facing yet another loss and funeral in the coming months? Where was the time to rest and find my way back? To find who I was? To find my identity?

Having you ever felt lost? Can’t hear God trying to tell you which step to take? Are you afraid the pain will never end and the fog will never lift so you can see clearly enough to see yourself and to see God?

This year, 2020, has brought so much pain for so many people, including myself. So many of us feel lost right now. Deaths in the family. Devastating accidents. Broken relationships. Lack of healthy and honest communication. Sickness and medical conditions that might be fatal. So many people with the panicking fear of confusion.

When the fog began to lift several years after my husband’s death, I could finally understand that God had been waiting on me, holding me, and carrying me. Those trials were meant to refine me and to teach me. God was molding me for a new identity, one that completely trusts in Him, one that can now share His story through my heartache, and one that continues to learn how to rest in the Lord.

An identity that knows how to wait on His direction.

An identity that relies on God’s Word to guide me through any confusion.

Allow me to take your hand and show you how to rest and find your way.

“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.” I Peter 5:17

To cast means to cause to move or send forth by throwing. My mental picture when I become anxious is to pick up a rock, write my anxiety and pain on the rock, and throw it as far as I can. Join me in throwing away your hurt, your feeling of being lost, your anxiety. It’s a command. It works.

“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” James 1:2-4

To consider means to look at attentively, to examine, or to ponder. Joy is the emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good. To encounter is to meet in opposition or with hostile intent, to engage in conflict, and to come face to face with. So, when we have something happen that meets us in opposition or with hostile intent toward us, we are to look at it attentively and examine it with that emotion of expecting to acquire good. God wants to bring good out of our heartache and fear. Expect the good!

“Rest in the LORD and wait patiently for Him; do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who carries out wicked schemes.” Psalm 37:7

“Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:29

Let’s cast and consider together through the trials we are facing in 2020 so we can find rest in the Lord.

Let’s learn to obey God when He speaks through His Word, through others in our lives, and through the Spirit.

Let’s be kind to ourselves, and also, to others. Let’s forgive people “just as God in Christ also has forgiven” us. (Ephesians 4:32) People want to help. God may send them for just a few moments, but He sends them for His purpose.

Let’s be gracious. No one truly deserves grace, but we all desire it.