Captivated Me

I was doing laundry a couple of weeks ago, after heaps of it had piled up in my closet with the chaos of a busy schedule. While sorting everything into colors and ranges of delicacy, I found my mind wandering and reflecting on 2018. Between the intensity of the holidays and preparing for a busy entry into 2019, I had not yet taken the time to think back on the 365 days of 2018 that had passed so quickly. Now was that time. And in the process of thinking back,  praising God for His work and help, and seeking Him for understanding or peace about some moments, I was struck deeply by how frequently my reflections and memories – even the good and joyous ones – were lined with traces of sadness and brutality. We all go through seasons in our journey, amen? And 2018, despite God moving in mighty, many, and gracious ways as He always does, happened to be particularly full of hurt and heartache.

What a whirlwind year it was. It started with a season of interviewing for my dream job as a physician, a dream that God placed on my heart at a young age and had so faithfully directed my steps and opened doors toward over the past two decades. Simultaneous with this was a season of preparing for new depths of love and relationship, which was a true and deep struggle at times. Within the first three months of the year, I had completed residency interviews, met inspiring Nicaraguan women and children alongside an inspiring medical missions team, applied to my favorite residency programs, and matched into the program I had dreamed of entering since my college years. The two months that followed involved many life transitions, surrounded by such precious and supportive friends, and then graduation from medical school. Weeks later, there was the official move to my home state, where I had not lived consistently since graduating college in 2011. Within weeks of that relocation, it was the start of a new and joyful job, which by the nature of the current season requires a time-intensive schedule, changing gears every month to new environments, and constant adaptation to new situations. Former chapters ended and new chapters were begun. And in the midst of this itinerary of change and transition, there were heaps and bundles of unresolved grief and hurt that were being issued, suffered, processed, and worked on in the background.

If I may, let me then touch on the emotional and spiritual undertones of our hearts, that so often are eclipsed and overshadowed by the changes, rapid pacing, and responsibilities we are tasked with on the surfaces of our lives. It is easy to busy ourselves through life, only momentarily savoring the joys, and only momentarily grieving the hurts, disappointments, and losses. I find that over the past year, the latter experiences – hurt and a sense of loss – have prevailed, and I am only now, over the past several months, making a point to slow down and address them.

Healing is hard, especially when we don’t take time to quiet our hearts and give them space to grieve and heal well. To our detriment, we so often cast hurt aside in order to tackle the challenges of the day, not realizing that the hurts are piling sky-high like a stack of laundry and beginning to tower over us. Some days, we may indeed need to just power through in survival mode. But if this becomes our only pattern of coping, our unresolved griefs and heartaches get louder and more numerous, begging to be sorted through like dozens of unpaired socks in the dresser drawer. In a culture where strength and bravery is advertised as the ability to “push through” and to keep those socks shoved in the closed drawer, the truly brave thing to do may be to pause. To intentionally quiet the noise, to step away from our busy circumstances, to open that dresser drawer, to purposefully allow our hearts and hurts the space they need to spill over and be seen, to permit the held-back tears to fall, and to courageously tackle the challenge of sorting out the colors and socks of our hearts so that we can move forward.

Gratefully, blessedly, we have a Helper in this (Hebrews 13:6). One who loves us unconditionally (Romans 5:8), cares for our hearts to the point of giving His Son over to death so that we could be saved and reconciled to Him (John 3:16), and sent His Spirit to guide the direction of our hearts and our steps (John 16:13). One who strengthens us with strength not our own (Isaiah 40:28-31), fights on the front-lines for us so we can rest and be still (Exodus 14:14), and heals the deepest heartaches we can imagine (Psalm 147:3). One who restores brokenness to beauty (Isaiah 61:3) and will never leave nor forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6).

As I sat there sorting clothes and socks, and as the machine progressed through its cycles toward the end, the last of the water drained into the sink beside the washing machine. The machine then began pounding through its rapid spin cycle. I couldn’t help but feel as if my 2018 was analogous to that spin cycle. I progressed through and ended the year dizzy with confusion from feeling swept in circles in my personal life, heavy with discouragement like clothes soaked with water, tangled in a mess of hurt and lies, stretched out emotionally, and feeling like so much of my color had bled into the water around me and drained down the sink, leaving me far dimmer compared to before the cycle had started. The heaviness outweighed the sweetness for a time; some days it still does. But what a precious God we have who walks with us through these seasons, through any season, and as we learn to rely on Him, our hearts dry and regain their true, renewed form. We become more light and free, just as we were made to be.

Praying this would be a year of freedom, growth, restoration, and joy for all whose hearts are aching for these things.