Hudson Taylor, pioneer missionary into inland China, had "hidden years" where God was teaching him lessons before he was released into greater Kingdom work. And so we have had our hidden years...hidden in the mountains of north Georgia in a house tucked neatly into the woods on a quiet street whose only traffic is mail delivery and trash pick-up.
When we first unpacked and settled into our home, it was a place of healing and restoration for us. Having come out of a dry desert place...both physically and spiritually...we were enveloped by the peace in our woods. Many hours I passed on the porch swing with eyes closed, listening to all the sounds...scurrying squirrels, rustling leaves, melodies of scores of birds...and breathing in the woodsy smells. And so my soul began it's mending in one of God's most beautiful hidden places. Many a time, I'd simply thank Him for this place, the sounds, the quiet, the peace, this cocoon.
After a time of healing, restlessness began to settle into my spirit...absolutely craving that my life was meant for more than this comfort. Oh, thank the good Lord that He does things on His time table and not ours...because I would have jumped out of my cocoon long before it was time! The cocoon years have been loaded with trials and walks of faith...our stillborn son, the ups and downs of our adoption process, severed friendships, strained relationships, changes in churches, deaths in the family (3 just in the past year). Pain and growth dominated these 7 years in the woods, all the while being nestled in the cradle of the peaceful surroundings. God really IS so good to have supplied this beautiful environment for us to walk out these trials...always surrounding us with His peaceful woods and all they held dear to us. Truly a gentle cocoon.
And He layered the trials lasagna-style with teachings that exponentially grew us....sermons by David Platt, Francis Chan, Eric Ludy, as well as our own pastor met us right where we were and pointed the direction...always, ALWAYS pointing the same way: Lay down your life to find it, dying to yourself. One message from Eric Ludy we heard last summer still reverberates through my mind. It was about being crushed as grapes to fill our King's cup with choice wine. I still read and reread notes: "I am built strong to be poured out...my purpose is to be poured out...crushed to give life...the cross was the wine press for Jesus and rivers of living water came out...God could then live in us...we must be crushed...I am a grape made to fill my Father's cup...." And the scribbling notes in my notebook scream out the very utmost lesson in these hidden years: "Comfort comes though suffering...when suffering increases, so does strength and grace...we bear His dying in us in order to express His life in us...death works in us (squeezing the grape) but life works in those around us as we are squeezed...we are crushed to give His strength away to the poor, widow, orphan, those around us. Learn to embrace the crushing...if the grape clings to the branch, it cannot fulfill its purpose...learn to be crushed well and without fear."
Learn to embrace the crushing...
And oh how the flesh wants to run from the crushing! The tiny grave dug for a child...the sting of a friend's betrayal...the stabs in the back we weren't expecting...the death of someone after fervent prayers for healing...the falls and scrapes and knock-the-wind-out-of-you encounters. Sometimes it's the absolute realization that we are getting the short end of the stick...being the spouse who gets hurt, being the one who has everything we've worked hard for ripped out from under us right before retirement, being the one facing a health issue we'd never have expected, being the one rejected or the one who has to suffer in a silent personal prison. It all just blasts: NOT FAIR!!! We do so hate the crushing, don't we?
And yet is this not my purpose? Simply put, if I follow Jesus, is it not to live as He lived? He was crushed and poured out. "To live is to hold the juice of Christ within...to be crushed is to give the juice of Him to others and to fill my King's cup with pleasure." (notes from Eric Ludy's message)
And so the 7 years in the woods have brought me to this point...to the place of no longer fighting this crushing but of beginning to actually EMBRACE it as my purpose. In the Bible, 7 is always the number of completion, and so we are finding that to be the case in this part of our lives too. Our 7 hidden years are closing up, and we watch as God begins to shift the very plates of ground we stand upon...moving us on toward a new chapter, aligning situations and people in just such a way that a door begins to open into the corridor leading elsewhere. And I trust that these hidden years, our cocoon years, have readied us for whatever it is He is moving us on toward.
Yield to the crushing. Embrace it. His life will flow out.
