{"id":93881,"date":"2020-12-26T10:59:06","date_gmt":"2020-12-26T15:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/discovergrace.com\/?p=93881"},"modified":"2022-08-13T20:48:42","modified_gmt":"2022-08-14T00:48:42","slug":"finding-the-beautiful-story-in-the-midst-of-struggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/discovergrace.com\/finding-the-beautiful-story-in-the-midst-of-struggle\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding the Beautiful Story in the Midst of Struggle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My biggest struggle? Not eating an entire bag of chocolate pretzels in one sitting.\u00a0<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8230;Just kidding. I mean it is, but if only it was that simple. If only my biggest life\u2019s problem could be solved with a quick fix like: Just don\u2019t buy chocolate pretzels.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">for real <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">biggest struggle? Perfectionism. Hyper-responsibility. Wanting to fix and control everything. Never slowing down enough to process things. Those struggles are proving to be a lot harder to solve these days. They\u2019re the struggles that make me stop and say, \u201cWhat the heck, God? Whatever You\u2019re doing right now isn&#8217;t part of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">MY<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> perfect plan &#8211; so do it <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">MY <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">way or don\u2019t do it at all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I cannot tell you how many times God and I have had these talks. (It\u2019s embarrassing to admit.) As of late, His plan for my husband, Carter, and I doesn\u2019t include children &#8211; yet we live in suburbia and are surrounded by so many of them. (Infertility is the worst.) When things get messy in life &#8211; crushed dreams, failed expectations, broken relationships, (feel free to fill in your own blank here, too) &#8211; it\u2019s hard to be ok with it. It\u2019s hard to be confronted with these harsh realities of a broken world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s hard to feel like you have a beautiful life, a beautiful story.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">BUT. The cool thing about God? He desires a beautiful story for all of us and sealed the deal on that promise with His Son Jesus. Check it:\u00a0<\/span><br \/>\n<i><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him (1 Thessalonians 5: 9-10).<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And a cool thing about Jesus? He knows that the mess and all-too-sudden imperfections of life &#8211; like the death of His friend Lazarus &#8211; are hard too. Check it:<\/span><br \/>\n<i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. \u201cWhere have you laid him?\u201d He asked. \u201cCome and see, Lord,\u201d they replied. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, \u201cSee how He loved him!\u201d (John 11:33-36).<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Read this: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jesus wep<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">t. I cannot tell you the comfort for me in these words alone. Like, shout out to whoever translated this for us because they left that entire sentence in a verse of its own (v. 35). It highlights the free hall pass God gives us to stop and grieve too. To be like Jesus and mourn over the messy parts of life, the not-so-beautiful parts of a story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">See, in God\u2019s infinite, omniscient power (omniscient = He knows everything), God sees the messy moment and looks beyond it to the end of the story. Because He sees the whole story, we can trust that God is working out every detail to make sure it <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">IS<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> beautiful in the end (Revelation 21:4). Because He sees the whole story, God knows that we need the same power that raised Lazarus from the dead to sustain us until the end of our story, too (John 11:43-45). And because He sees the whole story, God reminds us to just hang on and believe:\u00a0<\/span><br \/>\n<b><i><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Then Jesus said, \u201cDid I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?\u201d <\/i><\/b><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(John 11:40).<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My biggest struggle? Not eating an entire bag of chocolate pretzels in one sitting.\u00a0 &#8230;Just kidding. I mean it is, but if only it was that simple. If only my&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":106092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-93881","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-christian-life"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Finding the Beautiful Story in the Midst of Struggle - Grace Church<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/discovergrace.com\/finding-the-beautiful-story-in-the-midst-of-struggle\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Finding the Beautiful Story in the Midst of Struggle - Grace Church\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My biggest struggle? 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