Tag: God

Life

Grieving and Sermons on Friendship

Taia Jo

Do you have those days where you wake up excited just knowing in your heart it’s going to be a good day and then something happens that catches you off guard and crushes your excited spirit.  That was me today.  Despite waking up late I got ready in record speed and was in just a wonderful mood and so excited to start the day by serving at church this morning.  Even as I was walking into the volunteer meeting I was greeted by a very friendly (and stylish) woman who was also racing in and was so warm and welcoming to me despite not even knowing me.  The morning volunteer meeting had concluded and I’m going over my role as the online host for the live stream for Mercy Road Anderson.  I was still feeling so good and decided to check my phone and turn it on do not disturb as the countdown for service was happening.  That’s when I saw it, one of my friends of almost 15 years had passed away.  My heart sank, I felt like I was going to pass out and thought there was no way this could be real life, I had to be dreaming.  

As I was holding back tears I remembered I had a job to do and had to continue going over things for the role I was serving today.  The worship portion of service ends and that’s when I realize that Pastor Mark’s sermon is on friendship.  My heart sank once again and I had to work even harder to not burst into a ball of tears in the production room in front of all of these (very kind and welcoming) men who do not know me at all.  I started to get upset because of all the days to serve, I have to serve after hearing this news AND sit through a sermon on friendship.  I knew that was not the right attitude to have while serving others at church so I used all my skills of disassociating I’ve gained the last 33 years and pushed through to focus on the task at hand.  (Side note: I’m not saying that was the healthiest approach either but I was in survival mode and had to do what I had to do at that very moment.)

Once the first service ended I felt like I could breathe a little and then remembered I had to also be the online host for the second service and my heart once again sank.  I couldn’t imagine sitting through this sermon again and this time without a co host sitting with me going over everything.  Again, I wrestled with why today? Why this topic? Today was supposed to be a good day.  Since I did not have a co host for the second service I REALLY had to pay attention to properly interact with those watching the live stream.  I again wrestled with not wanting to have to sit through and listen to this message a second time and how I just wanted to go home and cry on my golden retriever.

As I’m sitting through the second service though I actually had a huge change of heart.  I wasn’t disassociating but leaning in to my feelings (but not so much that I start bawling my eyes out.)  I realized that God still worked out all of this perfectly because he knew what the day was going to hold for me.  I started to think how I wouldn’t have been able to push through today if my day started off terrible and I started thinking about the impact that could have negatively had on the service today.  I knew if I wasn’t serving today I would have walked out of service the moment I knew it was on friendship because I would have told myself I couldn’t handle that sermon today.  I wouldn’t have experienced the revelation that this is just another way God meets us where we are, and we are capable of so much when we put our trust and our heartaches into his hands.

The first verse that was mentioned was one of my favorites and that was Proverbs 17:17 which reads “A friend loves at all times.”  This is a verse that even my non church going friends try to live by when it comes to friendships because it holds so much truth with so much simplicity.  I began to reflect on my sweet friend and how she truly lived this verse to the fullest with every single one of her friends.  Pastor Mark began to talk about how true friends love you through the good and the bad, they don’t let things like difference in opinion, race or political affiliations get in the way.  That made me smile because that was Heather’s whole outlook on friendship.  If you were a good person, and truly loved others she didn’t care about differences in opinion or political beliefs or religious/spiritual beliefs because she knew if you lead with love you were a good person at your core and someone she wanted to be surrounded by.  This moment brought so much peace and comfort to my hurting heart knowing I had a friend who was the core example of this.

Pastor Mark also said something that really stood out to me and that was that a friend doesn’t run away when trouble comes, they LEAN in.  Although I knew what this meant, God really spoke to me in a different way today.  When I was upset I was serving and couldn’t run out of service when it was on friendship I realized that I was not being a good friend and not properly processing and honoring my friendship with Heather.  God was calling me to lean into the pain and the grief today, so I could allow a space to feel peace and comfort knowing how blessed I was to call her a friend these last 15ish years. 

I’m still not sure where my head is at in processing the news of Heather’s passing.  What I do know is that God used the sermon today to bring me comfort and remind me what type of friend I want to strive to be.  A friend more like Heather who no matter what obstacles she faced, led with love, and set the example of what a friend is supposed to be.  I also am so incredibly thankful to go to a church where the pastor leans in to sermons God is laying on his heart and uses God’s voice as a guide to speak to his congregation.

Tonight I am left processing, grieving and cherishing the memories and conversations I’ve had with Heather over the years.  I am also remembering to let my friends know how much I cherish them and am challenging myself to become the best friend I can be in 2025.  I have some areas I need to improve and probably should try to take Pastor Mark’s advice on learning to just sit with my friends as Job’s friends did in his time of need and not always give my opinion and ”tough love first” approach.  My friends who I am close with realllllly know what I am saying in that last sentence.

If you get nothing else from reading this blog please remember this next part. Grief is a weird thing and we all handle/process grief differently. There isn’t a right way or a wrong way to grieve. There isn’t a timetable of grief despite us trying to give ourselves one. There are things I will find comfort in my grieving process that others would never even look to, and vice versa. Grief impacts us all differently and that is okay. Today I needed to be at church serving a bigger purpose in the infancy of my grief, I needed to hear a sermon that was on friendship and very hard at times for me to listen to, and I needed to have lunch with my family afterwards to be surrounded by love. I needed to take that 3.5 mile hike at mounds to connect with nature and a peace only nature can bring, while feeling the comfort from my pup. I needed to come home and organize and deep clean my kitchen to give myself a sense of order and control and I needed to write about the whole process of events today so I can continue to process my grief tomorrow in a healthy way.

To my dear friend Heather,

Please know you have greatly impacted my life and left a permanent mark on my heart.  I will always strive to love as genuinely and as boldly as you did.  I will strive to always live in fierce strength and resilience just as you did, no matter how hard or how many times life knocks me down.  I hope you are at peace and I pray you know how loved you were on this side of earth and that you know just how many people you positively impacted.  The world is truly hurting without your presence and if anything positive can come from such tragedy I hope it is that we all strive to be compassionate, resilient, loving humans just like you.

Uncategorized

January Reflections

Taia Jo

It’s the last day of January and I’ve been doing some major reflecting on things that have happened in the last month or so.  After what I can only describe as a very hard December was nearing its end, I really felt like God was telling me that as I entered into 2024 I needed to let go.  It was time to stop reliving things in my head because there was no way to change the situation or outcome.  Then Christmas Eve morning I forced myself to still go to church despite my papaw passing very early that morning.  The two weeks prior I had really felt like God was telling me I needed to go to a Sunday morning service on Christmas Eve.  My church is in the evenings so I was confused why I felt him leading me towards this, especially when I had no idea where I should even go.  I listened to the call God was laying on my heart and despite not wanting to go I am so happy I listened.  My friends and I landed on going to Mercy Road in Anderson as they were looking for a service to attend Christmas Eve morning as well.  If I would have known the chain of events that would happen following that I can almost guarantee I would have stayed home.  

The message that day hit me hard and I really did not want to hear it.  Refusing to once again cry in a room full of strangers for the New Years Eve service I felt like I needed to live stream at home, God wasn’t quite done using the Pastor’s sermons to speak to me.  The pastor started talking about museums and how they are full of so much history.  He explained how museums allow us to look back on so much history and how nice is it to be able to reflect on the past.  The problem however is that they keep us focused on the past and hinder the ability to look at the future.  He continued on to say the more we live our lives like we are in a museum the more we hinder ourselves from the blessings and plans God has for us.  When I heard that, my eyes welled up with tears, tears of anger.  I felt angry because I knew in that moment the exact situations God was asking me to let go of and why he had been laying that theme on my heart.  I asked God how I could possibly let go and risk losing those things forever?  Which when I think about it is quite silly considering holding on to things, situations or people do not give me any control of the outcome whatsoever.  That’s where I’ve always struggled though, I like trying to control everything.  I find comfort in that delusion that I can control everything and how things turn out, but that is not Godly in any way.  I’ve always struggled with the phrase let go and let God, because that means I have no say or comfort in attempting to control a situation.  With that being said, the sermon continued to talk about various things that fit the theme of letting go and how God is just waiting for us to stop living our lives like we are in a museum and let go to allow his blessing to rain upon us.

During this discovery and very difficult task God was asking of me, I felt God laying something else on my heart, courage.  I have never viewed myself as courageous.  I’m clearly a little bit of a control freak, I think logically about all the bad things that could go wrong before doing something new or speaking my feelings, which I do not like to share…ever.  I am such a scaredy cat I don’t even like being very high off the ground unless I know I’m safely anchored to something, I get nauseous standing on a ladder.  So here I am thinking about how letting go is hard enough to process and now God is throwing courage into the mix?  Hard pass.  However, I realized letting go of these situations was a learning moment because letting go is a step of courage.  I have a really bad habit of not finishing one devotional before starting another (I’m bouncing through 4 right now as we speak) but lately I’ve been really sticking to two.  One about Esther which I felt compelled to do at the beginning of last year and another study about courageous women in the bible I started in the summer but wasn’t feeling it and just happened to start back up early this month.  Esther is the epitome of courage and I’ve been reading through it knowing I would not have handled those situations as courageously as she did.  That was a whole different realization I came to but I’m not getting into that.  So fast forward to this whole month and I kept reflecting on why God was so persistent in laying the ideas of courage and letting go on my heart.  Reflecting, I knew I had scratched the surface because I truly feel I was able to let go of the situations I was hanging on to so tightly.  I also know there was a reason God laid studying Ester on my heart a whole year ago and why I did not feel ready to start it until January of this year.  

I am writing all of this to say that despite not fully knowing the “why” of what God is doing, I am excited to see where continuing to grow in these areas will take me.  That doesn’t come without a little fear because I know there is no growth without pain, and usually letting go comes with a lot of pain.  So instead of doing an end of year recap for 2023 I opted to wait and do a reflection of January and walk outside my own museum and focus on the future year ahead.  Along with what God has been waiting to teach me and show me that he couldn’t when I was too scared to let go of my tight grip on certain things in my life. 

 I truly don’t know what 2024 will bring but I do know that God is orchestrating it.  I’ve always struggled with letting go and being courageous but if God is being this loud about growing in these areas, I know something big is in store.  I know it’s time to stop living in the fear of the “what if I let go” and lose things things/people forever but instead focus on knowing God will bring greater blessings to me in being faithful.  I think the book of Esther would have played out much differently had Esther had the same mindset and fears that I do.  So for the remainder of 2024 I chose to step out of my comfort zone, let go of the things I cannot control and courageously face the year ahead.

Lifestyle

Living in the Bottom of the Canyon

Taia Jo

Tonight I was sitting in the closing service of Family Camp.  For those of you who don’t know, family camp is basically a week long church camp for families in simple terms.  My family has gone to this event generation after generation so it has just become a tradition for us to go every year.  It’s truly so much more than just a church camp for the whole family but you have to actually go to Fairmount Wesleyan Campground to truly understand the significance.  If you are ever in the central Indiana area during the end of July I highly encourage you to experience family camp even if it’s just for one night.

Tonight during the closing service the speaker/pastor Nathan Metz was telling a story about how he hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and explained the phenomenon of how if you spend enough time at the bottom of a canyon you begin to feel like the bottom is ground level.  I knew exactly what he was talking about because I experienced that myself when I hiked Bryce Canyon.  I remember the hike down was fairly quick, I didn’t even realize how far down I was going into the canyon.  

When we had started our hike at ground level it was quite chilly but once we got down to the canyon we were shedding layers because it was so warm.  I started to become comfortable in the bottom of the canyon and started to tell myself I didn’t want to come back out because I didn’t want to face the colder weather or the grueling hike out.

The bottom of Bryce Canyon became comfortable, a place I didn’t want to leave.  When it was time to make our hike back up I truly did not think I was going to make it.  That is still the hardest hikes I have experienced to date.  My asthma with the elevation changes I was convinced was going to kill me and the temperature change also added a unique challenge.  I remember I kept (semi) jokingly saying out loud “God take me now, I am not going to make it back out of this Canyon”.  Everything in me wanted to just stop and set up camp in the bottom of that canyon, I did not feel I had the strength to come back up.  

I started shifting my plea to ask God to just take me now and ended up praying for Him to give me strength to make it back to the surface.  There were older couples, couples with kids etc that lapped me on my hike in and out of the canyon and I truly could not believe how fast they got down and back out.

Nathan’s story resulted in me reflecting on my own experience of that same phenomenon.  His statement of “being in the bottom of the canyon begins to feel like ground level” really made me reflect on a few things.  I stopped to think how we as humans allow rock bottom in life to become our ground level.  How often do we let our anxiety, depression, addiction, feelings of being inadequate keep us in the bottom of the canyon?  I stopped and asked myself if it is so hard for us to get out of that rock bottom, that bottom of that canyon because we stop seeing it as the bottom and see it solely as our ground level?  

We accept those things as our baseline and as a result become content with those things controlling our lives.  We develop such a skewed idea of ground level that we do not realize God is calling us to think outside the walls of the canyon.  We are not meant to see the canyon walls as mountains but we allow ourselves to remain in our pity party in the bottom because we have altered our reality and think those walls are mountains that are there to protect us on ground level.  The thing about canyon walls is that they are so large we become isolated, from friends, God and life in general.

So then I further sat there contemplating the idea of being in the bottom of a canyon and that being my new ground level.  I wondered if accepting this new ground level is what results in us feeling empty?  Has it caused us to have a broken relationship with God?  Has living in the bottom of that canyon allowed our spirits to die?  Have we become totally blind to even being in a place that we need to hike out of?

I then circled back to thinking about those who climbed down and out of that canyon at such a faster pace than myself.  As I was trying to figure out why I kept thinking about that I felt God speak to me again.  He reminded me that just like everyone hikes at different paces and difficulties we cannot compare our life journey to others.  Some people come out of the bottom of their canyon faster than others, but it doesn’t make the slower process less of an accomplishment.

What matters is that we stop living in the comfort zone of pain, suffering and sin and choose to climb back out of the canyon.  We choose to no longer accept the bottom as our new ground level.  No matter how long that hike out takes us, the important thing is that we have taken our life back (with God’s help) and the victory is in coming back to the true ground level.  Allowing us to come out of those canyon walls that have isolated us from everyone we love, the walls that isolate us from God and further separate us from what he desires for our lives, the same canyon walls that lie to us that all of these things that make up so many hardships in life are ground level.

We do not have to live a life full of constant pain and suffering.  The bottom of the canyon we are living in does not need to be our new ground level.  We can come back to the surface and start living a life on our true ground level.  It’s not to say hardships won’t still happen in our life or that we won’t experience pain or suffering.  What it means is that we are no longer accepting that as a permanent baseline, and that ground level is so much more beautiful than the delusion of the canyon we’ve learned to become comfortable in.