Grass Roots Worship- part 2

 My sister, a 26-year-old missionary, died unexpectedly in Malaysia in 2010.

When all the hard things you've walked through before come to a screeching halt in the face of the pain in front of you, it causes a crisis of identity, of faith. At least it did for me.

Shattered into a million pieces, but still required to function on a daily basis, I did what everyone does. I went through the motions. I kept putting one foot in front of the other.

One day, driving somewhere, worship music playing, I remember hearing a song with the words from Romans 8:28. "You make all things work together for my good..."

I reached and turned down the sound. I even said aloud, "But why this? Why does it have to be like THIS? How is this for my good?"

For nearly 2 years, whenever that song played (and it was popular at the time so I heard it a lot) I couldn't bring myself to sing the words.

They stuck in my throat. I rejected them. Because I didn't WANT them to be true. And somehow in my mind if I didn't sing them, if I didn't agree with them out of my mouth...I was successfully letting God know exactly how I felt about what He had chosen to work for my good.

For even longer than that, I struggled with stories about healing, and singing worship songs that praised God for being a miracle worker, a healer, sovereign.

I knew all fo that was true. I believed it.

But also, also my sister died, while we prayed for her healing. He hadn't healed her. We had not seen a miracle. His sovereignty at work felt like being slashed through the heart. That's honestly how it felt to me. I was so confused and shaken.

And somehow I simply couldn't bring myself to really MEAN the words that proclaimed what I knew to be true. It felt false to sing them. And so, I forced them out when I HAD to, but mostly avoided them at all cost.

A faith crisis finds us all, at one point or another, and while everyone has different circumstances that lead them there...God is always faithful to us in them.

My kids had a terrifying experience in the snow a few years after Joy's death, and as I sat with them, snuggled in my bed while near-hypothermia lingered, I remember thanking God for protecting them, for sparing them, for miraculously intervening and keeping them from drowning in the sub-freezing water they had fallen into.

And hope sparked back to life.

The Holy Spirit gently reminded me that my God still did miracles, had never stopped, and maybe my spiritual eyes needed some adjustments.

I sat kissing the cheeks and hands and blonde heads of my kids, crying and saying "thank you" over and over for the warmth returning to their bodies, and I saw the Lord's faithfulness, as if for the first time.

Songs began to resonate deeply again. I remembered...I remembered that even in the valley shadowed by death, He was with me. I had not died of a broken heart. And that was a miracle. Joy had not been healed the way I asked for, but she was healed and whole in heaven. And that was a miracle, even if it wasn't the one I wanted. 

My grief journey lit a newness inside me, a longing to understand how to worship in spirit and truth, even when it felt like the words coming out of my mouth were in direct contrast to the feelings inside me.

Because if God was still true even when it felt like nothing was, I should be able to worship Him, even in the valleys. Maybe especially in the valleys.

The little girl who sang fearlessly and shamelessly to cows, because she had only known the beauty and hope of God...she was still in there. And she longed for a way to throw back her head and see His goodness again.

And I wondered if maybe, maybe my worship became MORE true, more powerful, if I could find my way to praise Him with abandon IN SPITE of the fact that there had been valleys. Was there power in worship that was believed and clung to, even when the feeling of it was missing? There had to be something to the verses that said to offer a sacrifice of praise. (Hebrews 13:15, Psalm 116:17) Sacrifices were painful. They cost something. But they were still worship. 

The question I asked myself became: Do I worship God because it feels true, or because He is worthy of worship?

Such a healing season, the next few years. Discovering, as if for the first time, that He Himself was the prize to be sought, the reason to open my mouth, the breath in my lungs. 

He is worthy of worship because He is God, even if nothing good ever comes to me from His hand. I found new revelation in Job's words: "Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him." (Job 13:15) 

Such a gift, the fire, the pain, the upheaval. Such a miracle, the learning to cast myself on His sovereignty because His hands, with all the pain that may come, were hands that loved me.

He had worked together for my good, even when I rejected that truth.

And still, still there was more to come.