No Superhero

I am no superhero.  I am no giant of the faith that woke up one day and said “Here am I Lord, SEND ME to ministry and leadership.”

I am the opposite.

I remember it like it was yesterday.  I started having headaches.  They were sharp and painful, sometimes blinding.  I remember the night that I picked up my laptop and started researching what could cause headaches that bad.  And that was the moment that everything changed.

Of course when you look up “severe headaches” the first thing that pops up is “You’re going to die because you have a brain tumor.”  That is what the first 6 pages on the google search page are full of.  Medical forums where people are telling their nightmarish stories of having a headache and then having 2 years to live.  That first night I researched a bit and then decided that it was too much negative to continue.

But something kept drawing me back.  The next day I researched some more in my down time.  Several times that day, when my head would hurt, I would pick up my laptop or my phone and google the feeling that I was having.  Sounds crazy, I know.

Reading here and there turned into an all consuming obsession with researching medical conditions and possible diseases I could have.  What was just a headache above my left eye became Multiple Sclerosis, cancer,  nerve damage, ALS and every other traumatic disease under the sun.  Over time, I began to live life like I was dying.  (But not in the good Tim McGraw kinda way… there was no sky diving, Rocky Mountain climbin…)

The longer I researched the more of a shell I became.  My thoughts were consumed with death and dying.  Every twitch and movement of my body was another symptom that I would have to research.

I stopped sleeping and couldn’t eat.  I was losing my mind.  And then it happened, I actually did lose my mind.

There came a point where my brain just couldn’t handle the stress and constant worry anymore.  I simply checked out.  I kept on researching, secretly, lying to everyone I loved, telling them I had stopped, but I hadn’t.  I was like a drug addict.  I was addicted and couldn’t stop.

My thoughts were only about health, death and dying all the time.  I didn’t speak to anyone.  I sat quietly staring into space.  I was empty.  No energy, no hope, no drive, no dreams.

At the worst it got, I found myself desperately researching and trying to figure out the day that I was going to die.  (I realize that that sounds super crazy…and well it is… but there are actual websites that advertise the ability to predict your day of death…. DO NOT GOOGLE THAT)

Do you want to know the craziest part?  I was a Christian.

I came to know Jesus at a young age and as a teenager decided that I would follow Him with my all.

But, like many of us, my life was more religious than it was anything else.  I went through the motions.  I attended all the Bible studies and small groups that ever existed on the planet.  I was in Bible Drill (went to state EVERY YEAR).  I knew my stuff.

For years, into college, I continued on with a surface faith.  My God was in a nice box with a big red ribbon on it.

And then, everything changed. I was newly married, sitting at our kitchen table with my Bible open and the latest Beth Moore study ( I am a Christian female).  I remember looking over the study for the day and the scripture that was there for me to study.  And I remember very clearly thinking this thought: “I don’t really need this.  I don’t really struggle with anything.  I am a leader.”

I DON’T REALLY STRUGGLE WITH ANYTHING.

Famous last words.

2 weeks later is when I first picked up that laptop and typed in “headache over left eye.”

At the height of my mental illness I was in and out of the ER with crazy vague symptoms, convinced that I was dying and no one was listening.  The DRs were all wrong, the tests were all rigged.  Everyone was out to get me and nobody would tell me I was dying.  I was angry.

I can vaguely remember the conversation outside of my hospital door.  I heard the doctor say that the only thing he could do was refer me to a mental health facility.  I was sedated so I was in and out of reality.  But I did hear that.

Brent, my new husband (good Lord what had he gotten himself into) walked into my room and sat beside me.  He grabbed my hand and began to beg me to listen.  He begged me to come back.  He told me that he wasn’t going anywhere, that he was there, but that if they took me somewhere he wouldn’t be able to be there with me.  He asked me to find it in me to fight.  He told me he loved me no matter what and that he would never stop loving me.

In that moment, sedated and out of it, it wasn’t Brent’s voice that I heard, but God’s.  I had ignored Him for so long, and yet here He was, giving me another chance through my husband’s words.  That night I found a small, mustard seed, of hope and held onto it.

A few nights later, shaky legged, broken, skinny, tired and sick I walked onto my parents porch with only my Bible.

I laid down on the porch, not because I was being spiritual, but because it’s all that I had the energy to do.

I asked, feebly, unbelieving, for God to show me something…..anything.   I wanted out of this miserable pit…..I didn’t care what He showed me…I just wanted something.  I was desperate.

That desperation became key.

I opened scripture randomly, or so I thought, to Isaiah 61.  I read it and reread it.  How had I never read these verses before.  (I had, but my desperation had given me new eyes)

The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me
    because God anointed me.
He sent me to preach good news to the poor,
    heal the heartbroken,
Announce freedom to all captives,
    pardon all prisoners.
God sent me to announce the year of his grace—
    a celebration of God’s destruction of our enemies—
    and to comfort all who mourn,
To care for the needs of all who mourn in Zion,
    give them bouquets of roses instead of ashes,
Messages of joy instead of news of doom,
    a praising heart instead of a languid spirit.
Rename them “Oaks of Righteousness”
    planted by God to display his glory.
They’ll rebuild the old ruins,
    raise a new city out of the wreckage.
They’ll start over on the ruined cities,
    take the rubble left behind and make it new.

Isaiah 61:1-7

He spoke to me that night on my parent’s porch.

He told me, through these verses, that He had come to set me free.  He had come to tell me good news, to replace the broken record of death that was playing in my mind.  He wanted to take care of me, love me and BEST OF ALL He wanted to REBUILD me.  He wanted to take my broken ruins, the rubble that was my life, and rebuild it into a new city.  He wanted to take my rubble and make it new.

He also told me clearly that night, that this restoration He had for me had to happen because He had an assignment for me.  He needed me rebuilt because He had something He wanted me to do and I had to be rebuilt to do it.  He wanted me to be the bearer of good news to others whose lives were in shambles, like mine.  But first I had to be rebuilt.

And there it happened.   On that porch that night God gave me a crystal clear vision for my life.  He gave me hope.  He showed me my future.   I knew I was going to live.

And that is where The Hub: urban ministries (the ministry that I am now Director of) was born.  On that porch, among the wreckage of my life, came the first spark of a vision.

I am no superhero.  I didn’t build a ministry out of my great overflow of knowledge, strength, ability and squeaky clean spiritual record.

I wasn’t given the gift of ministry because I had earned it.  It was the opposite.  I was given the mantle of leadership BECAUSE I had experienced death, destruction, hopelessness and rock bottom and now understood that it was only JESUS that could rescue.  I was desperate for Him.

The top had been blown off of the box that I had God in.

He was real to me and I was desperate for Him.

It was out of that desperation for Him that He gave me the greatest gift of my life, leadership of a ministry that has changed me forever.

You see, God knew that there were people in our city who were in their own pits.  Broken, anxious, lonely, hungry, at rock bottom and without hope.  He knew that it wouldn’t take some super shiny Suzy-Sunday school.  Tweet This: He knew that to reach the most broken it would take someone who had been the most broken….to climb into the dumpster with them and speak from a place of knowing.

And that is the story of The Hub.

I will never forget, all the days of my life, where it is that my strength comes from.  I will never ever believe that I have done what I’ve done because I have it all together or because I have the ability to do it.  It is God who moves and shapes me, who gives me life and the ability to walk in freedom.

I am no Super Hero.