Thirty, Flirty & Still Circling

Sunday Edition: Apparently, “I’ve Been Through Enough” Is Not a Bible Verse.

I have this quiet belief that I don’t always say out loud because, when spoken plainly, it sounds a little entitled.

I think I’ve been through enough.

There. I said it.

Somewhere along the way, I decided my childhood should have purchased me some kind of lifetime hardship exemption. Like surely there is a punch card somewhere in Heaven, and after ten traumatic experiences, the eleventh one is free. Or better yet, canceled.

I lost my mom at eleven. I know what abandonment feels like. I know what betrayal feels like. I know what it feels like for people who were supposed to protect something precious to me to treat it like it wasn’t precious at all. My aunt and uncle threw away my mother’s ashes because they didn’t want to have a funeral.

Even typing that still feels insane.

Those were my mother’s remains.

There are some things you “get over,” and there are other things you simply learn how to carry without bleeding on everybody.

So yes, there is a part of me that has looked at God during adult hardship like, “Sir. Respectfully. Did You not review my file?”

Because I’ve already done wilderness.

I’ve already done grief.

I’ve already done betrayal.

I’ve already done survival.

I thought surviving all of that meant eventually I would arrive at the part where life stopped requiring so much from me.

Then today the pastor covered Joshua 6 and realized God apparently did not agree to these terms and conditions.

Israel had just come out of forty years in the wilderness. Forty YEARS. If anybody could have arrived at the Promised Land saying, “We have suffered enough,” it was them.

Yet, the first thing waiting for them was Jericho.

A wall.

Imagine wandering through the wilderness for forty years, finally seeing what God promised you, and realizing there is a giant fortified city sitting between you and it.

I would have had questions.

Possibly a PowerPoint.

Definitely an attitude.

Because I think sometimes I have interpreted God’s promise as God’s promise of ease. If He brought me through that, surely this part should be easier.

Except Joshua 6:2 says, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men” (NIV).

Notice the language.

God says He has delivered it before the walls have fallen.

That bothers the part of me that likes visible confirmation.

Because God can call something mine while I am still standing outside of it.

And apparently, a promise does not mean there won’t be a wall.

That’ll preach directly to my little “I’ve been through enough” theology.

Maybe one of my problems is that I have spent so much time waiting for my life to finally begin that I have neglected the life I am actually living.

Basically, I have been Jenna Rink.

“Thirty, flirty and thriving.”

Except spiritually, mine sounds more like:

“When I get there, healed, stable and unbothered.”

When this season ends.

When this situation changes.

When I finally feel secure.

When people stop disappointing me.

When I’m not anxious about what comes next.

When God finally gets me to whatever version of the Promised Land I have constructed in my head, THEN I’ll exhale.

The whole premise of 13 Going on 30 is Jenna wanting so badly to skip the uncomfortable part that she misses the value of actually living through it. She wants the future without understanding what happens between thirteen and thirty.

Honestly?

Same, sis.

I want to fast-forward.

I want God to show me the ending so I can decide whether the middle deserves my participation.

Meanwhile God is like, “No, girl. We are going to live today.”

That hit me especially hard because Joshua knew something about following somebody who came before him. Joshua had watched Moses. He had witnessed victories and mistakes. By the time Joshua is leading Israel, he has history to learn from.

Joshua 1:7 tells him, “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you.”

In other words, this next season required something from Joshua.

He couldn’t simply inherit Moses’ assignment and repeat Moses’ patterns.

There had to be adjustment.

And I think God has been showing me the same thing.

I cannot keep saying, “Look what happened to me,” without eventually asking, “What did it teach me?”

My childhood explains some things about me. It does not get to run everything about me.

That distinction is uncomfortable.

Because survival taught me to anticipate.

Watch people.

Read rooms.

Prepare for loss.

Think ten steps ahead so maybe nothing can sneak up on me again.

Except now I can become so obsessed with preventing tomorrow’s pain that I completely abandon today.

I call it preparation.

Sometimes it’s fear with a clipboard.

Jesus said in Matthew 6:34, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Rude.

Accurate.

Still rude.

Because I want tomorrow handled before breakfast.

Yet, God keeps bringing me back to today.

Jericho teaches me something about that.

God gave Joshua a strategy in Joshua 6:3–5. March around the city. Keep marching. On the seventh day, march seven times. Priests blow the trumpets. Then shout.

What fascinates me is that Joshua did not give the people every detail of the timeline upfront. He gave them what they needed to obey.

That would drive me CRAZY.

Because I don’t just want today’s instruction.

I would like the itinerary, confirmation number, weather forecast, contingency plan and preferably a PDF.

God says, “Walk.”

Me: “For how long?”

Walk.

“Okay, but what exactly are we accomplishing?”

Walk.

“Is the wall moving?”

Walk.

And maybe that is the lesson.

The miracle wasn’t only that the wall fell.

The miracle was that they showed up again while it was still standing.

Joshua 6:14 says, “So on the second day they marched around the city once and returned to the camp.”

Second day.

Wall still there.

Showed up anyway.

There is something holy about showing up on day two.

Everybody loves day seven because day seven has shouting and trumpets and collapsing walls.

Nobody puts day two on a T-shirt.

Day two is boring.

Day two is obedience without evidence.

Day two is, “Yep. Still a wall.”

Day two is doing what God said when nothing around me appears to be changing.

Maybe that is where I have misunderstood struggle.

I keep assuming struggle means something has gone wrong.

Maybe sometimes struggle simply means I am alive and moving.

There is no version of my life that will be frustration-free.

I hate that sentence.

I would like to unsubscribe.

Yet there can be a stronger version of me who shows up inside the frustration.

Because apparently I am always going to be circling something.

Either I am circling the wilderness, or I am circling walls.

The wilderness couldn’t move.

The walls could fall.

Whew.

Maybe my prayer should stop being, “God, why do I have another wall after everything I’ve already survived?”

Maybe it becomes, “God, teach me how to walk around this one differently.”

Because this time around, I know things.

This time around, I know God has strategy.

This time around, I know the thing that surprised me did not surprise Him.

This time around, I know I don’t need the entire plan to obey today’s instruction.

This time around, I know I can be tired without quitting.

This time around, I know His presence is not proven by the absence of walls.

Most importantly, this time around, I refuse to spend today staring so hard at thirty that I miss thirteen.

I refuse to neglect my now because I am waiting on my next.

There are things God is doing in me while I circle that I would miss if He simply dropped the wall immediately.

So maybe the question isn’t, “Haven’t I been through enough?”

Maybe it’s, “Who have I become because I’ve been through it?”

I am not that eleven-year-old girl anymore.

I will always love her. I will always have compassion for what she survived. There are things she experienced that she never should have had to experience.

Still, she does not have to keep standing guard over my future.

God does.

So if there is another wall?

Okay.

I might complain on lap three. Let’s remain realistic.

I might ask God approximately seventeen times whether we’re sure this is the strategy.

Still, I’m walking.

Because Joshua 6:20 says eventually, “the wall collapsed.”

Eventually.

Not immediately.

And perhaps faith is learning that I don’t have to know which lap I’m on to keep walking.

I have His presence.

I have today’s instruction.

I have proof that wildernesses end.

And this time around, I don’t need to skip ahead to find out whether everything turns out okay.

God is already there.

My assignment is to be here.