Prayer

Tuning the Radio Frequencies of My Heart

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment

I sought the Lord about a certain question. I brought it before Him every morning. I laid it before Him day after day. Silence. No answer.

I determined to wait. And pray. And wait. Still nothing.

Then I asked why He wasn’t answering. Why He wasn’t moving. I stayed stuck on that one particular request, circling around it like a hawk.

One Sunday during communion I went forward for the bread and the cup and returned to my seat. In doing so, my body remembered another Sunday communion meditation a few weeks before.

I had made a specific request to God and then forgotten about it. But as I sat with the emblems and looked back over the past few weeks, weeks I had been obsessing over a quite different request, I could see three very definite answers to that Sunday morning prayer.

And I realized that God hadn’t been silent. He’d been working, He’d been speaking – but on a different channel than I’d been listening to. My heart had been tuned to one frequency and one frequency only, but God was transmitting on another one.

And since God is God and I am not, I was the one who needed to adjust my frequency. To listen where He is actually speaking, not get stuck on the wrong channel just because it was the one I wanted to listen to.

I had to turn the dial to a different channel, and then all of a sudden God wasn’t silent. He was speaking. He was reminding me of life-giving verses I had forgotten about, like ‘Seek first the kingdom’ and ‘Do not worry.’ And He was answering that specific Sunday morning request I had made.

They weren’t the answers I was looking for – I still haven’t heard those – but it was the voice of God speaking. I simply had to adjust my dial. Tune my heart. Figure out which frequency God wanted to use to talk to me. And as it turns out, that’s not always the one I want Him to use.

For whatever reason, Jesus doesn’t let me pick the radio stations on the road trip of life. But that doesn’t mean He’s not speaking.

Music and Midlife {some recommendations}

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment

I thought I would drop in with a mini “favorite things” post. Here are just a few things I’ve loved over the past few months. ~Elizabeth

The Upgrade: How the Female Brain Gets Stronger and Better in Midlife and Beyond by Louann Brizendine, MD. I saw this book recommended on a menopause website and was intrigued. I bought it on Kindle and practically underlined the entire thing. I have several other books about taking care of physical health in perimenopause and menopause, but nothing ever addressed the mental work of midlife like this book. It was also very hopeful about the second half of life – something I both appreciated and needed.

Inside Out 2. When the puberty button was pushed and all those new thoughts and feelings appeared out of nowhere, I felt like I could relate to Riley. Like her, I thought I had all my belief systems, thinking patterns, and emotions under control, then bam perimenopause happened, and I had to recalibrate. It’s been a lot of work to ride this emotional roller coaster, but it has certainly made me more reliant on the Spirit — which is never a bad thing.

Abide by Aaron Williams. I was seeking discernment about a few things in my life this spring, and one Sunday while we were singing this song in church, I felt like God gave me the answers I had been seeking. A beautiful song that draws us to the heart of God.

Christ Be All Around Me by All Sons & Daughters. At one point this summer I was really craving a prayer that could ground me. I love the prayer of St. Patrick (and I love St. Patrick) and had a distant memory of singing his words once in a song, so I went searching for it.

Same God by Elevation. This song ministered to me after a specific time of prayer about my identity. With so much in my life in flux, I felt adrift. God was basically saying to me, “I’m the same God I always was to you, and you’re the same girl you always were to me. Nothing about any of that has changed.” And I still need this God, the same God who has shown up for His people for thousands of years, every day of my life.

This is Our God by Phil Wickham. I get goosebumps with every verse. I remember the walls, the prisons, the giants – I’ve faced so many of them in my life. But look at what God does! And what a joy to be able to tell the stories of His faithfulness throughout our lives.

Olive Velvet Ashes Retreat image. This is the wallpaper on my phone now. The themes of this year’s retreat matched so much of what God was already speaking to me that I wanted to remind myself of it every time I opened my phone. Plus, those colors made me happy and calm.

When your husband calls you “a shell of a woman” {A Life Overseas}

/ trotters41 / 2 Comments

Elizabeth is over at A Life Overseas today.

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For months this spring I felt like a shell of a woman. I was empty and didn’t have anything to give. Oh, I was still doing all the “right” things. I was still getting up most mornings attempting to connect with God, and I was still relatively consistent with my commitment to exercise.  But I felt dead inside and couldn’t figure out why.

My husband noticed. Where before him once stood life and life abundant, he now saw a shell of a woman. He even suggested another round of counseling. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what to do about it or even what it was. I was unhappy in life and unmotivated in work. Was it depression? Burnout? What???

I felt especially dead at church. That was a strange feeling, because corporate worship has always quenched my thirst and nourished my soul and made my spirit come alive. But I just buried that newly incongruous feeling and ignored it. I tuned it out and refused to listen to it. I ran to the nearest screen and numbed out on TV and Facebook and solitaire games instead.

Finish reading here.

A Letter for the One Who’s Waiting {Velvet Ashes}

/ trotters41 / 4 Comments

by Elizabeth

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You in the waiting,
Yes, you
And yes, me too —
For we are all waiting for something —
Dear sister,
Beloved one,
You in the waiting,
This much I know:
There are no shortcuts to healing.
There are no shortcuts to wholeness.
For we can’t know God as Healer without first being wounded.
And we can’t know God as guide without first being lost.
We can’t know Him as counselor without first being confused.
And we can’t know Him as comforter without first sustaining pain.
We can’t know Him as intimate companion without first feeling abandoned.
And we can’t find our identity in Christ alone without first losing it elsewhere.

You in the waiting,
Dear One,
This much I know:
There is no way around the ache of the human soul.
There is no detour through the pain.
When we walk through the valley —
And we will all walk through the valley —
None of us gets to skirt around the edges.
We are completely baptized in sorrow,
Fully immersed in its grief.
For there are no shortcuts to healing,
No shortcuts to joy.
There is only Jesus.
If anything, He is the short cut:
He is, after all, our Way home
Even if that way be long and broken.

So you in the waiting,
Keep waiting.
Keep seeking,
And keep asking,
Even in the silence —
For there may be silence —
And even in the darkness —
For there may be darkness —
But don’t you give up Hope.
Hold on to Hope.
Hold on to the name of our Jesus.
This waiting, it takes time.
It takes space.
And, I wish I didn’t have to say this, but —
It takes hard work too:
The hard work of shedding the lies we believe about God,
The hard work of shedding the lies we believe about ourselves,
The hard work of being honest with Him about the injuries,
And the hard, Spirit-assisted work of letting go of our entangling sins.

So you in the waiting,
Yes you —
And yes, me too —
For we are all waiting for something —
Dearest sister,
Beloved One,
You in the waiting,
This much I know:
There are no shortcuts to healing,
But in Jesus there is healing.
And there are no shortcuts to wholeness,
But in Jesus there is wholeness.
So we hold on to Him,
We hold on to Hope,
And together, we wait.

Originally published here, reprinted with permission.

When the lights go out {A Life Overseas}

/ trotters41 / Leave a comment

Elizabeth is over at A Life Overseas today . . .

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I want to do all the things. All the very good things there are to do in this world. So I overcommit myself. I don’t say “no.” I say “yes” instead, and spread myself too thin. Then my soul suffers. My work suffers. My sanity suffers. My family life suffers. My spiritual life suffers.

I suffer in silence, thinking I’m all alone. I’m the only one failing at everything. I’m the only one who can’t pull it together. I’m the only one who can’t catch my breath, who can’t catch up on work, who can’t catch up on school, who can’t catch up with friends, who can’t catch up with the God I say I love so very much.

And I, insecure missionary blogger that I am, am afraid to tell people.

To top all that off, the heat in Southeast Asia has been crushing me. The past two months have held record highs here, and we get a lot of power cuts. I echo Ramona Quimby in Ramona the Brave who shouted out “Guts! Guts guts guts!” when she wanted to say bad words. Instead, I yell “Cuts! Cuts cuts cuts!” and very nearly lose my mind.

After one particularly grueling 12-hour all-night power outage, something inside me broke — flat out broke. I lost my hope. I began to question everything. Why are we here? Why can’t we live in America? Why exactly do I serve this God of mine? And where the heck is He when I can barely sleep or even breathe in this heat?

I was struggling under the weight of all the expectations I had for myself: be a good mom, be a good wife, be a good home educator, be a good missionary, be a good team leader’s wife, be a good friend, be a good writer, be a good editor, be a good Christ-follower. And I couldn’t do any of it.

Finish reading this post here.