Catch Me Singing

You always finish what You start You always finish what You start What You have grown into a garden You planted in the dark You always finish what You start

Good things just take a little time Good things just take a little time Your hands are working in the soil And bringing me life Good things just take a little time

I will trust You in the famine I will bless You in the feast When I'm standing in Your victory When I'm on my knees I will praise will praise You at the rising And the setting sun You're gonna catch me singing when the spring time comes

This story has an empty grave This story has an empty grave Jesus the process is mystery But Your promise never fades This story has an empty grave

We will be walking through the fire And dancing on the waves This story has an empty grave

I will trust You in the famine I will bless You in the feast When I'm standing in Your victory When I'm on my knees I will praise you at the rising And the setting sun You're gonna catch me singing when the spring time comes

You've been God for a long time You're the final word You're the finish line Everything's gonna be alright Cause You've been God for a long time

I will trust You in the famine I will bless You in the feast When I'm standing in Your victory When I'm on my knees I will praise You at the rising And the setting sun

You're gonna catch me singing when the spring time comes

It snowed in Pittsburgh two weeks ago. I’m not going to lie, I was bummed. I was loving the spring-like weather. I was feeling less tired, more cheery, and was just so ready for windows down, barefoot weather. And as I got in the car to go pick up some stuff that my church would need for our Good Friday service, the words “Why is this happening? I thought we were over this” left my mouth. And in that moment, God hit me with a reality check.

If you follow me on social media, you know that I’ve been talking about healing. Since the beginning of quarantine, I’ve been running towards healing. I’ve been pushing myself into my past hurt so that I can grow, I don’t want there to be anything that I don’t deal with. But I really haven’t given myself much of a break. And within the past few weeks, I’ve found myself struggling with some past trauma.

In my first semester of college, I was in a verbally and sexually abusive “relationship” (this is something I’ve opened up about on here before). I was in a period where I was trying to figure out who I was, I was wanting to focus on my relationship with God and the several areas of ministry that I was involved with. And when college started, I became friends with a guy who I genuinely thought cared about me. I trusted him with some of the most vulnerable parts of my life, and along the way he took advantage of that. And the confidence that I had built up in the past 5-6 months after getting baptized was slowly broken down. He wouldn’t just flat out cut me down, but he manipulated me, and he fed me lies. He told me that what I said wasn’t important, that I was just a girl and that my thoughts would never matter as much as his. He made me believe that my feelings didn’t matter and that the passions that God had placed on my heart were pointless. He made me believe that my past was too broken, that I was too messed up, and that nobody would ever want me. He told me that I was lucky that someone as great as him could like someone as broken as me. He got me away from my community, he constantly made jokes at my expense, he did things that made me feel shackled in shame for years after. But a year and a half after I got out, I realized what had happened. After a year and a half of blaming myself, I realized that I had been abused. And then came the process of me trying to heal. I had to process everything that he’d done. I had to rewire my brain, replace everything he told me with truth. I had to let go of my shame. I had to stop blaming myself. I had to forgive him. I had to move forward. I didn’t want him to have anymore control of my life. And after a long few years, I finally felt like I was healed from it. I felt free. I learned about real love- the love that God has for me. I learned about my identity as a child of a perfect Heavenly Father. And honestly, I went a really long time without dealing with triggers or thinking about the things that he’d done…and then came that week. And suddenly all the lies were back. When I was talking to my friends, I found myself cutting my input short- because what I was saying wasn’t important. I’d look at myself in the mirror and point out what was wrong. I found myself wondering how someone could ever love me or marry me some day when I can never seem to get my life together, I felt like I’m always struggling with something. I felt like a burden to my friends. I felt like nobody really cared, because how could anybody care about somebody so messed up? And I got to a point where I was just drained. I was tired of fighting all these lies. I was struggling to keep my head above water. I found myself struggling with some pretty dark thoughts. I was tired of a year of dealing with old painful things. And I was beating myself up for letting these lies even be in my head. I found myself asking why I was feeling this way again, especially with something that I thought that I was over.

And as I sat in the car and let those words come out of my mouth, I felt God tell me “Oh, Kendall, that doesn’t mean that spring isn’t still coming.” A slightly snowy day doesn’t take away the past few weeks of beautiful weather that just signify that a different season is just up ahead. A slightly snowy day doesn’t throw off the seasons.

And so I’ve been trying to remind myself of that. That just because I’m struggling with this again does not mean that I haven’t grown from that place. Just because I’m having a difficult week does not mean that I’m going back into that place, because if the past few years mean anything, they show that I’m going somewhere greater. It’s not “so much for spring”, and just settling for being in this place again.

My best friend came over last week because she knew that I was having a rough week, so we sat on my couch and talked about everything that we were going through, and what God could be doing through it. I told her how I’d been feeling tired of fighting for the past year, for all these old things being pulled back up so I could deal with them, I just wanted to stop fighting. She paused and then said “I wonder if you can.” It confused me at first, but she explained that maybe I just needed some time to not focus on past hurt, and just spend some extra time just learning about myself and loving myself. And then I realized that there would be times within the past year that I wouldn’t feel such heavy stuff, and in those times I would tend to look for what was next to heal from. I wanted so badly to deal with all these things, to not have any part of them holding me back from who I’m meant to be, and in the process I stopped giving myself the time to rest. Nothing grows all year round, things grow in seasons. I can’t expect different from myself.

I thought back to Holy Saturday. The day between Good Friday and Easter, it’s one of my favorite days. I know in the moment that it had to have been so hard for the disciples and the people who loved Jesus to just be grieving, to be in this weird waiting period. But Holy Saturday was also a sabbath. And on this day that all the disciples wanted to do was grieve, they had to just rest. They had to be still. And on Holy Saturday last week, I had work at 5am, and after work I got home and planned to get other stuff done, but I fell asleep. I wanted to be awake and doing stuff, but all I could do was sleep. All I’d been wanting to do for the past year was heal, and in one of the days where I was feeling stuff so deeply, all I could do was sleep. The thing about Holy Saturday is that it’s in between a bad day that soon would be called good, and the day that Jesus would be resurrected. Saturday is in the middle. It’s in the middle where you can feel overwhelmed, where you feel like you’re just as far from the start as you are from the end, where it’s most tempting to give up. But Jesus is in the middle. Jesus wants to show up right in the middle of what you’re facing.

When I was at work on Holy Saturday, there was one point where I had to totally redo the aisle that I was working in. A bunch of products had been mixed up or piled in random spots, and I had to take everything that was messy off of the shelves, organize them in my cart, and then put them back in the correct spots. And the thing is, I needed to take everything off of the shelves in order to fix them, I had to take everything away in order for it to look better. And looking at an aisle without all the clutter was satisfying, but looking at the cart that I’d have to reorganize was just overwhelming. It was going to take a long time to get it done. But can I also say how important it was for me to take breaks along the way? I couldn’t just do it all in one run (I mean, I guess I could, but I would have been totally exhausted, and I would’ve found myself getting really aggravated or discouraged along the way), it was a process. And so maybe me cleaning that aisle doesn’t guarantee that it will stay organized forever, but it still needed done. And me doing it today would help me to create a better system to clean and organize next time.

So sometimes bad thoughts are piled in your mind, or maybe old habits, and you have to refix your mindset, rewire your brain. But you have to take care of the bad stuff properly, you have to remove it. And looking at everything you have to rewire may feel overwhelming, and it may take some time, but when it’s done it will be so worth it. Even if you have to take a bunch of breaks. Even if, in the future, the mess may seem like it’s coming back. Because now you know how to handle it better, so let yourself rest and trust the process.

And maybe my process will look different from yours. Sometimes the process is a mystery, but His promise never fades. He finishes what He starts, good things just take a little time.

As I wrap this journal up, can I be honest about something? Last week, there were many times where I’d feel drained and tired of fighting, and I would get this feeling that I just needed to get up and worship. And for the first few days, I ignored it. I tried to distract myself with other things or I’d let myself sit in my feelings. But then one day when I had that feeling that I just needed to turn on a worship song and dance, I did. And it changed everything. Because when we truly worship, we are locking eyes with God. And when my eyes are fixed on His, how can I be looking at myself as anything less than His reflection? What if they catch us singing when the spring time comes NOT because life was happy and perfect all along, but because there really was no other way? What if they catch us singing when the spring time comes because that is how we go to war, because it’s how we fight our battles. We sing louder than what’s going on around us, we sing in the presence of our enemies. We believe that as we worship that fear and darkness must flee, that we are raising a weapon as we raise our voice. In the ashes. In the grief. In the trauma. In the process.

Whatever you’re going through does not change that something more is ahead. Maybe it feels like it’s snowing, but spring is coming.