When you are in the center of God's will and your eye is still twitching
When one of my daughters was in second grade, she told me that her eye was doing something weird. Then I realized, she inherited my eye twitch. I explained about how our body sends us messages to tell us when we are stressed. Apparently she went in the next day and told her teacher, "My eye is twitching, but my mom says it's a stress indicator."
Most of us have some kind of a physical stress indicator-- the knot in the stomach, the tension carried in your shoulders, a battle with insomnia. Not that it's bad to have physical symptoms of stress-- they help us to tune into what's going on.
Our bodies are speaking to us, if we stop to listen to them. If that knot in your stomach had a voice, what would it say?
Most often, my eye twitch has pointed me towards my tendency to overcommit. It invites me to learn how to set better boundaries, to create more margin between events, and to discern when my 'yes' is motivated by something unhealthy. Thankfully, my eye doesn’t twitch as much as it does in my 30’s and 40’s as I’ve learned to live a more balanced life.
But I want to talk about the times when your eye is twitching because you are in the middle of a season of life or storm that is unavoidable… or even a situation that God has asked you to carry.
Right now, our newest team members are stuck in the USA, waiting for their visas to be approved. And in the two years since they set their sights on moving to Spain, they’ve had a post-delivery medical crisis that almost took her life, multiple surgeries, repeated setbacks and changes in the visa process, a diagnosis of Lyme disease, and lived with their lives packed in storage moving from family member to family member with a toddler. This is an eye-twitching season AND they are dead center of where God wants them to be.
We’ve learned to view suffering as something to avoid or eliminate, but the truth is, we will all encounter valleys in our lifetime.
Sometimes its not about self-care. The theology of self-care over recent decades has been a needed contribution to the resiliency plans of full-time Christian workers. We have needed to learn how to care for our bodies, to find ways to refill our empty cups, and to acknowledge our decisions may more often be motivated by people-pleasing or striving than God's call on our lives.
But other times, we find our life unfolding with something we cannot control, and we find that God is asking us to live beyond our limits. For many, self-care is a luxury. We may be dealing with a ongoing demands of a person with special needs, navigating back to back rounds of chemo, working multiple jobs to cover the rent, living in a war zone, or raising children all alone.
I’m not saying we don’t find ways to care for ourselves or that we needlessly suffer, but I am saying, our pain tolerance is going to need increase in order to face the world on the horizon.
Sometimes it’s not about perfect alignment with your wiring. A big part of my calling is helping people to discover who they are and to align their lives more fully with their wiring, passions, and gifting. I'm all about helping people find their "sweet spot" in the vocation.
But sometimes we are not in a season that aligns with our sweet spot. You may be a strategic thinker choosing to stay home to raise our children (you can a post about this season of parenthood here). You may be a quiet, reserved team leader leading a team of highly extroverted, emotional people in crisis .You may be a single person who hates finances, but has no spouse to help budget and manage money. You may be a peacemaker pastor who has been leading a divided congregation through Covid and other divisive political issues.
There are seasons of ‘misalignment’ with our strengths or resources that God uses to form our character, to deepen our dependency on Him, and to transform our understanding of God or ourselves. Though honestly, sometimes we may never understand why that season or circumstance was woven into our lives.
Sometimes the invitation is not about our 'happiness' or avoiding pain. This is a completely counter-cultural for most of us living in the west. Written into the American constitution, is the line that we are all ENTITLED to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
There will be multiple times in your life where the life we’ve been given is at odds with our personal happiness. You may have to stay in a marriage where you feel ‘unseen’. You may have been planted on a team that drives you crazy. You may need to work multiple jobs pay for university while your friends all get the summer off.
When we are in the middle of seasons of great formation, pain will be unavoidable. Just like when you want to get in shape, the grueling workouts are literally breaking down your muscles in order to rebuild them. Not all pain needs to be avoided, especially on the path to transformation.
Sometimes the invitation is to discover who Jesus is… in the middle of the suffering. I remember a season where the predominant image in my prayer time was Jesus leading me up a steep and winding mountain trail. At times, I was on a narrow ledge, flattened with my back to the rock wall. I followed Him on a steep trail, day in and day out. I didn’t know where we were going. I didn’t know how much longer until we would reach our destination.
But most of us will find ourselves out on ledge, clutching the side of a mountain at some point in our lives. You will be asking God many questions. You will wonder if you heard Him wrong, because this surely can’t be the plan! And if you are like me — you’re looking for how to “fix” things or how to make sure I’m going after whatever junk is surfacing that God wants to heal.
As Protestants, we love to emphasize the empty cross, the resurrection, the victory, the life AFTER the suffering is done. We can easily start to view the suffering as something to avoid or eliminate. We are incredibly resolution oriented.
But at some point, you will have to quiet yourself and surrender to the mystery of suffering. Catholics would go as far as to say we need to embrace the suffering. When we turn and fix our gaze on the crucified Christ on the cross, we will experience Him (and our own suffering) differently than if we just focus on an empty cross. In fact, most Catholic Churches have what is called "the stations of the cross” — 10 different scenes from Jesus’ journey through the crucifixion. Each scenes captures a different facet of His suffering. Each station teaches us something about who God is in the middle of suffering.
Whatever your ‘eye-twitching’ situation is today… loneliness, sickness, depression, financial crisis, conflict, grief, disappointment — I invite you to meditate on the crucified Christ and the huddle of figures found at the foot of the cross, like Jesus’ mother and his beloved disciple, John.
Maybe stop trying to figure out how to avoid and minimize your suffering. Release trying to figure out what God is doing and see if you can discover who He is in the suffering while right in the center of God’s will. You will encounter a different Jesus there. And we will have a different Jesus to offer to others on the other side of your own suffering as well.