Identity & Clarity

I’ll be honest, I have written this blog in my head many times over the last few months. I just couldn’t bring myself to actually write it out. It seemed like such a delicate thing - how do you write about a season that was filled with doubt, struggle and the end of an engagement while being honouring to everyone involved? And while I always try to focus solely on my journey with the Lord and how the Lord is growing me and refining me, I feel that is especially critical in conveying what has happened in the last several months. And so, I hope that in all of this, my heart is evident. There is no ‘bad guy’ in this story, no one to be blamed. Just broken people (myself included), in need of a saviour. I write this to share with you what an incredible God we serve, a God who loves us and refines us, who is always with us, who is working out all things for good. As the song Good & Loved says “You’re not afraid of our stories, You turn it all to glory. You’re not afraid of the whole story, You turn it all to Your glory.” So here is a messy story for you, one that He is redeeming and using for His glory.

As I mentioned briefly in my last blog (written almost 10 months ago!), through my school program, I was provided the opportunity to spend the summer in The Netherlands - working at the Canadian Embassy in The Hague. And while I could write at length about that experience (working mostly on our chemical weapons file), the short version is that God used the experience to allow me to try something that was very much a Renée dream (working in the Canadian foreign service) and show me that it was not at all something I would like to do. But beyond that, it was an opportunity to experience Dutch culture. And oh boy, I have never experienced this level of culture shock. It`s one thing to live in another country (and have the benefit of coming back to a Western hospital Ship every night) - it`s another thing to try and become part of a Dutch family. Near the end of my time there, I read a book explaining Dutch culture and it helped me understand what I had experienced (I probably should have read it before going!). Very broadly I will just say that my family of origin culture, which included sayings like ‘‘swim toward the sharks’ (ie. be different for the sake of being different; thanks dad) bumped up hard against a traditional culture that has sayings that translate to ‘just act normal, that’s already crazy enough’. Add in my stubbornness and pride, and it made adapting next to impossible. 

This led to one of the most confidence crushing seasons of my life. All the things that I had considered my strengths - my ability to communicate well, to ask questions, to read people's nonverbal cues - were all perceived negatively due to cultural differences, or impossible due to my inability to speak the language. All the ways I tried to love and care, were not received as such, and vice versa. Those who know me know that confidence is not something I struggle with. But this experience was crushing. And you know what the Lord did through all of that? He showed me that my identity is as a child of God. He stripped away all the other things I found identity in, and showed me the only one that mattered. There was nothing I could do or say that would make Him love me more or less. One Sunday in the midst of all of this, we had a guest speaker at church. He talked about being children of God and he was speaking specifically to the women when he said, you are a princess, not because you are marrying a prince but because your Father is the King. I needed to hear that word. He then began to pray. We were in the second row and I had my eyes closed and my head bowed when suddenly I felt a hand on my head. He prayed powerfully and specifically over me, about how the Lord was approaching me in the crowd and inviting me to come and dance. It was a word that had been spoken over me before during our onboarding field practice in South Africa. I was precious and beautiful to the Lord, simply because He had made me, and that was enough. He used that season and that experience to strip me of many of the identities that I had been holding onto, of the areas where I had been relying on myself and not Him, and He has brought me back to that truth over and over in the months since, as people projected their thoughts, feelings and perceptions onto me. I am a child of God. I hope you hear that truth and believe it, deep in your heart. 

As I came home from the Netherlands in August, I remember telling a friend, I feel like God is telling me that this will be a season of clarity. Looking back, I’m blown away by that word. It was my lifeline as I continued to wrestle with doubt about the engagement. Everyday I laid it at God's feet, trying to be as obedient as I could and discern what He had for me. A season of clarity. Well let me tell you, the Lord rarely works how we think He will. The season that followed was absolutely a season of clarity, but it was not at all what I was expecting. It was basically the opposite of what I was expecting, as far from my own plans as you could imagine. Through everything that has happened I have said, it is not the story I would have written for myself, but it`s the story He is writing and it is so incredibly beautiful and beyond what I would have imagined for myself. His ways are so much higher than my ways. 

Ending the engagement was a very hard, but mutual decision. I’m a very loyal, committed person (or at least I perceive myself to be), and I don’t like to give up on things. This felt like failure. A wise friend spoke a word a needed to hear in this moment: It isn’t failure. The point of the engagement period is to find out if you should be married or not. You figured out you shouldn’t get married. So you succeeded. That certainly flipped my thinking on its head. I spent a lot of time praying and putting things before the Lord and He showed me how I had fallen short in so many areas. He showed me that I didn’t really understand what compromise meant. I thought I was compromising but I really only compromised about 10% and expected other people to meet me the rest of the way. When I felt like I was falling short, I reacted by finding faults with others and being sharp with my words. The same tongue that can encourage, can also discourage. God stripped me of the idols of marriage and finding satisfaction in another person. 

I struggled with the absolute uncertainty of the future. I had had everything planned out - now the future was a black hole. I reached a point where I felt so discouraged that I thought maybe I could never successfully do a long term relationship. But God always knows what we need. Right when I was at that moment of feeling the most defeated, was the evening my mom took me to a Rend Collective concert. I had never listened to them. She had bought these tickets a while ago. God’s timing is so good! One of their songs, called More Than Conquerors really spoke to me:

Nothing is impossible

Every chain is breakable

With You, we are victorious

You are stronger than our hearts

You are greater than the dark

With You, we are victorious

Here’s an excerpt of what I wrote after that concert: Singing that song made me realize that I was believing the devil’s lies. Nothing is impossible, every chain is breakable. Do I believe that? That God has the power to break the chain that is holding me to my sin, to my old self. Yes! You are stronger than our hearts. I love that image. God is stronger than our sinful, prideful, lustful, fickle hearts. He can even conquer our hearts. He has the power to overcome. I am a new creation, and in His strength, I can battle against my own sinful nature. With You, we are victorious. Let me believe that fully Lord. That in Your power, I can be victorious against my own nature, against my old self. I am a new creation. I am not bound by those chains. I can do better, I can BE better.

The Lord broke a lot of chains for me that evening. The season that has followed has been one of absolute joy. That feeling of being in the centre of His will and exactly where He wants You. Of rejoicing over His goodness and gentleness. Right when things ended, in the midst of feeling defeated, I did something very unlike me. I googled something along the lines of “broken engagement God” (to get a Christian perspective) and read about some other people's experiences. It was actually really helpful, and one had a saying that really stuck with me: Everything will be ok in the end. If it’s not ok, it’s not the end. It brought to mind how Jesus is refining us and making us beautiful. If it’s not beautiful - if I’m not beautiful - then He isn’t finished yet. I am a work in progress. I am being refined. The journey isn’t over. All I need to do is trust Him.