What is my job, and what is God’s job?

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment

What is my job, and what is God’s job? I’ve asked this question a lot in my life. The balance of grace and works has often befuddled me. If God gets the glory for everything — and we know He should — then do I have responsibility at all? 

I confess I have sometimes felt frozen in place, not knowing what I was supposed to do about a particular struggle, because I thought that somehow God was supposed to do everything. He fights our battles for us, right?? 

This question came up again last fall when I was in the middle of a mental health crisis. Was I just supposed to sit alone in my prayer closet, begging the Lord to deliver me from my anxiety and depression? Or was I supposed to do something about it? And if so, what?

I slowly realized that I did need to do something. And oh how many things can be done about depression and anxiety! It can feel overwhelming to a perfectionist like me. It feels like I need to do all the lifestyle treatments both perfectly and often enough while also depending entirely on God to save me.

I had forgotten that all the things that can be done to help myself are actually invitations from God to participate in my own healing. I’d been in that place before and even written about it, but we humans are such forgetful beings, aren’t we?

Interestingly, I first gained clarity on this question while talking with my therapist about my editing business — because I battle the faith-works tension regarding my job too. I often rely on a belief my hairstylist first expressed to me: “God brings me the clients I need.” Her example of faith was an inspiration to me, and her statement has proven true in my life over and over again.

But do I play any part in this?

My therapist said I do. It’s my job to do a good job, to bring all my dedication and skills to each project. It’s also my job to promote my services online (even though it feels awkward). “God can’t do those things,” she said. “Only you can.” God has given me a body and put me on this earth, and there are certain things only I can do. 

In her book Field Notes for the Wilderness, Sarah Bessey writes about the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. The miracle didn’t just happen because Jesus multiplied the bread and fish. It happened because someone offered something small, which Jesus used, and because the disciples participated and handed out the food. The people wouldn’t have eaten without them passing out the food. 

I’ve always loved the feeding of the 5,000, and I’ve always connected it to a child’s act of faith. I had never connected it to the attending and waiting skills of the disciples. The disciples wouldn’t have seen the miracle if they’d clustered around Jesus. Only in moving out from the center did they witness the miracle. 

And so it is with us: Jesus invites us to participate in the healing He performs. The power isn’t ours, but we won’t see the goodness of God unless we take part. The man whose friends lowered his paralyzed body through the roof still had to pick up his mat and walk, after all. And in some mysterious, incomprehensible truth, we only partake of the miracle God is waiting to give us when we join Him in His work.

A few thoughts on trauma…

/ trotters41 / 1 Comment

ABCs of Trauma Healing

A – Acknowledge your reactions

B – Be kind and compassionate

C – Come back into your body

AI Doesn’t Scare Me Anymore

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment

A year or two ago when I started hearing more about AI, my immediate reaction was fear. I’m anxious by nature, especially regarding technology, but this affected my livelihood. I feared I would lose my job to AI. No one was going to pay me to edit their work if a computer program could do it for them.

I thought to myself, These are the only skills I have! What am I going to do when I can’t get a job?! Fear about money and provision has plagued me much of my life.

As usual, I knew I was probably freaking out prematurely. I tried to quiet my amygdala and just keep going. I tried pretending like vocational Armageddon wasn’t just around the corner.

I leaned on my go-to statements of faith for dealing with money fears. I’ve got the Lord’s prayer—”Give us this day our daily bread.” I’ve got manna in the desert—God brings us what we need now, not for the future, and we don’t stock up because it will spoil. I’ve got decades of testimonies of the Lord providing jobs or clients or supporters just when we need them.

But I didn’t seem to be able to trust God when new technology was involved. It seemed too human-controlled, as though artificial intelligence were somehow out of God’s control.

Fast forward to today, and AI is still forging ahead. I’m not sure anyone really knows where it’s heading, but honestly, I no longer care. I decided that I was going to use the talents God had given me for as long as they were useful. If He sent me clients, I would serve them. If He gave me projects, I would tackle them. And if He gave me ideas, I would write them.

Now I think that not only will my profession (writing, editing, book coaching) survive, but that the main future for creativity is in faith-based writing and art. Faith-based writers aren’t looking for a shortcut. They’re looking for the Holy Spirit, and so are their readers. 

They want to tell a true story about what God has done in their lives. They want to pass the peace of Christ to their readers. They want to tell stories of meaning and hope and purpose, and they want it to be their own personal words, based on their own experiences and their own inner life with God. 

AI can never do that for them.

AI might be able to write news and business and economics and current events (albeit poorly at this point). But it can never tell of the transformation God has wrought in your heart. It can never touch the heart of God because it wasn’t made in the image of God. Only humans were made to reflect God’s heart back to Him. A computer program — even a large, sophisticated one — can never do that. 

Part of the thrill of writing and even editing is participation with the Spirit. And part of the satisfaction in the creative process is the work God does in us when we wrestle with the words, with the stories, with the truths He wants us to tell. We honor God not only with our words, but by submitting to this process.

We draw near to God when we write and also when we hold space for other people’s writing. Somehow our words touch the Father’s heart. He is the Word, and we are His children after all. When we write, when we read other writers’ work, we walk on holy ground. And faithful Christian writers — and readers — still want to tread there.

To the Young Person Wondering How to Live Your Life

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment

Dear young person wondering how to live your life,

Now is the time when you have energy and passion. So do the work. Pour out your heart. You won’t regret the castles you build in this phase of life.

Someday your energy will wane, and you’ll have children and mortgages and responsibilities — and all of that is good. But you can build something now that you’ll be proud of later. 

So work hard, in whatever you do, as working for the Lord.

And build your life on Jesus Christ. You’ll never regret laying that foundation. But don’t be afraid to question, to doubt, to seek God in your questions. He will meet you there, purify you, strengthen you.

I heard someone talking about the house they built, a metaphorical house that crumbled in midlife. They listed all the things that house was built on and then asked if it was any wonder the house fell down in the storm? It had been built on the wrong things — the inessential things.

And I thought to myself, Your house doesn’t have to crumble in the storm. Not if you build it on the essential one, Jesus. And allow Him to prune you of the inessentials as you go. 

I look back and am glad I built my life on faith and examined my beliefs and expectations as I went. That purity culture that my husband and I taught so earnestly in the early 2000s? By the 2010s, gone. Those American-centric assumptions? Pulled out of us by preparation for the field and life on the field itself. 

That works-based understanding of sanctification? Dross that was burned away by grief work (with the help of a Christian counselor) in the early 2000s. Beliefs about the equality of men and women in the church? Whittled away by the realities of marriage and life in an international church. Beliefs about how the Holy Spirit works? Slowly expanded as I learned to trust God more.

Now, in my 40s, I look back and am so glad I built my life on something that will last and that I let that Someone prune my belief system as I went. My faith is sturdier and calmer than it was before, but I started in the right place, with the right Person.

It’s not that I haven’t had faith struggles. I have. And that’s the point — we have to keep pressing in. It is through those struggles that faith is strengthened, if we surrender to the process.

The truest, most important thing about you is your soul. Neglect that, and you’ll lose yourself, lose touch with the person God created you to be and still calls you to be. Return to your first love, and you’ll return to yourself — even if you have to evaluate a few beliefs along the way.

When I struggled during re-entry, when I veered away from my foundation, my first love, I also strayed from my true self, my true nature.

Only when I returned to my first love did everything in my life click into place. And I was so glad that I had built that foundation so long ago. It was something sturdy to fall back on, to return to, to rebuild with. 

I’m so glad I committed Scripture to memory and planted hymns in my heart when I was young, when my mind was young and pliable. Truth embedded in the brain will not fail to bear fruit as the calendar years pile up. Your body may feel the wear and tear of more trips around the sun, but your spirit can keep growing stronger. 

So take your young energy and do something meaningful with it. Pour into your community, pour into others, give of yourself. And in the background quietly build your faith. Commit Scripture to memory when you’re young. Carve out time to talk to God. Practice listening to the Spirit. Spend your life on something worthwhile.

You’ll be so glad you did.

~~~~~~~

Don’t let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your Creator. Honor him in your youth before you grow old and say, “Life is not pleasant anymore.” Remember him before the light of the sun, moon, and stars is dim to your old eyes, and rain clouds continually darken your sky. Remember him before your legs—the guards of your house—start to tremble; and before your shoulders—the strong men—stoop. Remember him before your teeth—your few remaining servants—stop grinding; and before your eyes—the women looking through the windows—see dimly.

Remember him before the door to life’s opportunities is closed and the sound of work fades. Now you rise at the first chirping of the birds, but then all their sounds will grow faint.

Remember him before you become fearful of falling and worry about danger in the streets; before your hair turns white like an almond tree in bloom, and you drag along without energy like a dying grasshopper, and the caperberry no longer inspires sexual desire. Remember him before you near the grave, your everlasting home, when the mourners will weep at your funeral.

Yes, remember your Creator now while you are young, before the silver cord of life snaps and the golden bowl is broken. Don’t wait until the water jar is smashed at the spring and the pulley is broken at the well. For then the dust will return to the earth, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.

That’s the whole story. Here now is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty.

Ecclesiastes 12:1-7,13 NLT

Weird Animals

/ Elizabeth Trotter / 2 Comments

Weird animals adorn my house. I love them. In the beginning my family thought it was odd, humorous. But the bison made sense; as a child my family would stop at a buffalo reserve “on post” on our way to and from church. Even the llama made sense. It’s a character in a classic Disney movie — and the theme of a favorite coffee shop.

But then I just kept falling in love with other weird animals, and I realized it’s actually me: I like weird animals. 

The musk ox. The platypus. The llama. The bison. Even the turtle is weird and strangely addictive for me, much like the moon. When I see a turtle, I just can’t tear my eyes away from it. A turtle doesn’t belong to the modern world any more than the moon or a human soul does.

Then one day I realized that if God took the time to make weird animals, He must like them. Which means He must like me. Because I’m weird. I don’t fit in a lot of places. I never have.

Weird animals are ugly and cute all at the same time. They’re common and yet uncommon. And they don’t even know they’re weird. They are gloriously unselfconscious. They just do what God made them to do. They don’t know any other way.

Jesus never intended for us to be normal, to conform to culture. He wants us to be unique, just the way He created us to be. He even likes it that way.

So now I look at my beloved weird animals and smile, knowing that I am also a beloved weirdo to the God of the universe. The designer of all that weirdness looks at me and smiles. How great is that?