I know a beautiful young lady who is in the midst of a brave faith decision. The kind that stirs your soul, you can’t sleep, you can only think about it, and it is one that will change your life forever. But is it a yes or a no?

I’ve been here many many times. It is the marker of my life of making brave faith decisions. I told her so. I told her how honored I was that she would take her life with God so seriously that she would feel this amount of holy tension, seek wisdom from others, and take the time to figure out the yes or the no.

I asked her to write down her processing thoughts that she could barely verbalize to me. I didn’t understand the decision she was wrestling over but I knew the feelings in her soul that were overwhelming and the importance of this decision. I asked her to write down what she wasn’t able to verbalize. She did. It took over three hours. She sent me 34 pages.

And she bolded, God doesn’t waste anything.

Everything brought her to this brave decision point. Everything. Even the most painful things are now a part of this brave decision.

You have much to learn from your long life.

Even if you are 22.

You still have 34 pages to write of the good, the bad, and the regrets. When you do, you see the Larger Story God has continued to write your story. Not even the regrets have deterred that story. There is a throughline that God has made you, spoke words to you before you were born, and continued to guide you to this point…through it all. Through all those decisions you did make and didn’t make, the ones you regret and the ones you are proud of.

Holy, holy.

God’s being and nature are consensual. It must be so because love is consensual. True love cannot be coerced, it emerges in participation. Love is consensual and God is love.

God works in the world with human partners, not in spite of them. God is moved and responds to the free choices we make, which may feel shocking or surprising to you. God is continually guiding us into his direction that we were created to be.  

God is impacted by the decisions and actions we make. The throughline of the Bible shows us repeatedly that God accommodates and consents to us all of the time. God works in participatory and consensual ways because God is most interested in us—in reunion and relationship.

Holy, holy.

Yes, you got real things wrong. You also limp, your heart aches, and you notice things no one else does. You bravely get curious and then God pops an idea into your head or the next step becomes obviously clear (and scary). This thing is so stirred up inside of you that you find yourself daydreaming in this direction, you feel the fear that you can’t make this decision, and you also feel the dread of how empty your life would be if you don’t make this decision. You are overwhelmed. You even decide to fast to help with discernment and “this” only becomes more clearer, which increases your overwhelm. You invite your wise gift of people in to help you discern and they see this in you because they always have, long before you knew.

You have all the feels of holy tension to get you to this point to join God consensually for this next great story.

Then you realize, in the beautiful gush of overwhelmed emotions, God doesn’t waste anything. This is where God has been leading your life the entire time.  

The Healing Time

Finally on my way to yes

I bump into

all the places

where I said no

to my life

all the untended wounds

the red and purple scars

those hieroglyphs of pain

carved into my skin, my bones,

those coded messages

that send me down

the wrong street

again and again

where I find them

the old wounds

the old misdirections

and I lift them

one by one

close to my heart

and I say

holy holy

by Persha Gertler

Through the work of the Holy Spirit today and every day since, God moves the universe to make beautiful things out of the messes we create of our lives. This is the movement of God. To make beautiful things out us.

And God doesn’t waste anything.

Holy, holy.