I Have Decided

You probably can’t tell, but that’s me in this grainy photo in the ocean at Isle of Palms on September 9, 2012. If you didn’t know the backstory, you might see this picture and imagine a sweet and tidy story of a girl about to be baptized. I used to look at people following Christ as if they had arrived at some sort of peak of goodness and were somehow worthy of now taking this step. But the place I found myself as I stood in the waves that day was definitely not a peak, but the very bottom of the deepest pit I’d ever been in. And that is exactly where I needed to be. 

At this point in my life, I had spent most of my 26 years trying to get it all right all the time. Perfect was the standard and I was always up for the challenge. My biggest fears were failure or letting someone down. I believed that love was earned and I had to be something or achieve something if I wanted to receive it. I needed to be pretty enough, smart enough, and good enough. Always people-pleasing and approval-seeking.

Though I believed in God, I viewed Him mostly as someone else I needed to please, just more distant than the rest. 

I was always checking off the boxes – doing, buying, and accomplishing. It was as if somewhere along the way I had created a list in my head of all of the things I needed to be, have, and do in order to be considered successful. And as soon as I would check one box, I’d move on to the next. The degree, the husband, the car, the job, the house. Because I was using those fleeting things to make me feel like I was enough, I was never satisfied. So by the time I was 26, I found myself exhausted from years of trying to fill my soul with feelings of accomplishment. I was entitled and self-absorbed, focused always on what needed to happen next. I could never just “be”. I would have said then that God was in control, but my constant striving revealed who I really believed made this all happen – me. 

Because I was so focused on what I was accomplishing, I didn’t pay too much attention to who I was becoming.

While things looked great from the outside, inside my heart grew increasingly harder and farther from who I was created to be. As my relationships started to crack, especially my marriage, I was too proud to notice or do anything about it. There was a lot of “following my heart” that ensued as I allowed myself to be pulled in all sorts of new directions while I refused help, pushed everyone away, and attempted to sort this all out on my own. I shared about this in more detail several years ago in this post. When I realized that approach wasn’t working, I decided to turn to God for a little help. I truly expected that if I just started performing again and did everything He wanted that He would fix all of this. But when I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to control the outcome, that no matter how hard I tried God was still going allow my marriage to end, I got angry. Fine, I thought, instead of working to please God, I’ll run as far away as I can. 

I was still running when a girl from Michigan showed up in South Carolina on a college mission trip. Her name was also Lauren and she would talk openly about her faith as we worked alongside one another that summer. I never opened up to her about anything that was going on in my life. She had no idea that I was in the middle of a divorce and that my life was in shambles, but she invited me to her college worship nights and to church on Sundays. I made excuses at first but then slowly I started to say yes. As I listened, I started to see that maybe I’d had this all wrong. I began to hear about a God who loved me no matter what and didn’t expect me to be perfect. I learned that He was inviting me into a real relationship that wasn’t based on my performance. And I started to believe that I was still worthy, even without all of the things that had always propped me up, and even if I wasn’t getting the outcome that I was hoping for.

I finally realized that my Father defines me – not my failure. 

On the day of my baptism, I had not arrived on any mountaintop. I didn’t have it all figured out and I still don’t. But at the lowest point in my life, I stood up in front of everyone wearing a shirt that said “I have decided.” I decided that I wasn’t as in control as I thought I was, nor did I want to try to be any longer. I decided that none of those things I had been chasing were going to fill me and that being in constant pursuit of them wasn’t truly living. I decided that whatever God had planned for me was far better than anything I had planned for myself. That day, I decided to follow Christ wholeheartedly and it’s been the best decision I have ever made.