Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of a significant moment in my story. One year ago yesterday was my first day on my then new job at Starbucks. The morning after my first day, I was overwhelmed, afraid and clueless as to what was happening in my life. That morning I wrote a blog post called “Learning How To Die.” I know, dramatic, huh?
But it was real, and I was learning how to die… to who I had become.
Today is my birthday. Well, not MY birthday, but my blog’s birthday, rather. Today, An Idol Heart is one year old!
I started this blog one year ago today. When I decided to start An Idol Heart it was because my world had turned upside down and I wanted to start telling the story, even while it was unresolved.
This time a year ago, I had just walked away from my career of 8 years, I was unemployed, I was two months in to being at a new church and was a little over a month in to diving head first into a community group I had joined. I was struggling with how to let go of the things I had allowed my life to be defined by and I was falling apart.
On why I decided to name this blog An Idol Heart, I had recently come to understand that my heart was indeed “an idol factory that mass produces idols.” That was, at once, a very sobering yet dizzying realization, and one that still reverberates with me today. A couple months earlier I had finished reading Timothy Keller’s “Counterfeit Gods”, a book that, to put it simply, completely undid me.
Going back now to read what I wrote as my first post a year ago was a pretty emotional experience. At that time, I was so afraid. The false bottom I had built in my heart was falling out and I felt like I had nothing to work with… but words. I had no idea what the next day, let alone the next year would look like.
One year later, my story looks very different. I am now working in ministry on staff at Cross Point Church in Nashville, the church I had just come to when all this unraveling began to happen. The ministry I’ve received at Cross Point over the past year has done so much to heal my heart and teach me who I am. Now, I lead ministry teams there and get to help others. The community group I had just come to in hopes of finding new friends when my world was turning upside down has been immeasurably instrumental in how God has reshaped my life this past year. I now co-lead that group of around 150 people and get to regularly share my story of how God rescued me from the pursuit of myself, challenging others to embrace uncertainly, get out of their comfort zones and be intentional about how they invest in this “stretch between” season of their life.
More than anything though, I am learning more each day how my identity does not rest in where my check comes from, but rather where my help comes from and the finished work of Christ on the cross.
I still don’t know what tomorrow will look like and I’m learning to live by faith daily, but looking back over the past year, I know what it was about. God was after my heart. He wanted to rewire it and “make it again into another vessel”.
This past Friday night, Timothy Keller, whose ministry has been such a key part of my story, was in Nashville on a tour for his new book, “King’s Cross”. I went to hear him speak and also had the opportunity to personally thank him for his ministry and how God has used it to wreck and rebuild me.
He made a statement that I haven’t been able to shake since I heard it. Singularly giving perspective to much of the last year of my life, He said,
“Sometimes, the delays of Jesus are because of details and information that we don’t yet have access to. Ultimately, God gives you what you would have prayed for if you knew everything He knew.”
And there it is.
Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. (Proverbs 19:21)
One year ago, my prayers were very different. I’m so thankful that God heard my prayers but still gave me what I would have asked for, had I only known. Not getting what I thought I wanted is the best thing that could have happened to me.
No, I am not a Rascal Flatts fan, but I do often wax nostalgic as I look back at the story God is writing with my life.
I moved back to Nashville two years ago today… Thursday, October 30, 2008. I was on the back-end of a season of my life that ended much differently than I thought it would. This particular season concluded with me staying with a friend in Dallas for 2 months, while all my stuff was in storage in Houston, tyring to figure out what was next for me.
I still vividly remember the series of events that led to my decision to return to Nashville… every lunch meeting, every phone call, every serendipitous and seemingly chance encounter and conversation… they all remain fresh.
Standing where I do now and reflecting, I know that my decision to move back to Nashville, after spending the previous almost 4 years in Texas, was driven primarily by my fear of failure and the idolatry of success and approval in my heart. I didn’t know who to be apart from what I had been a part of. I had been “somebody” and had to keep the momentum going. I am thankful for everything I was able to be a part of in my music industry career, but I am not proud of who I became as a result. I know that while my professional ambitions may have had my heart scribbling notes of perceived significance, God was writing a greater story all the while, allowing me to walk a broken road and find Him.
After 16 hours on the road, I pulled into Nashville late in the evening of October 30, 2008 with a U-Haul filled with all my stuff and a heart filled with the hope that this would be my chance to really find and prove myself.
Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. – Proverbs 19:21
What I didn’t realize then was that in all my attempts to “find myself”, I actually lost myself. It has only been through the breaking and reconstructing of my heart this year that I discovered God in a way I never had before, and as a result I found that I could let go of who I thought I had to be. Once I started learning how to let that go, I began to discover who I really was and how prone my heart is to bow to anything but Jesus.
If you grasp and cling to life on your terms, you’ll lose it. But if you let that life go, you’ll get life on God’s terms. – Luke 17:33
My journey looks nothing like what I thought it would, but I am thankful for every single broken, fearful, uncertain moment that has forced me to wrestle with my heart and fight for my identity. God bless the broken road, indeed.
Today I am guest-posting over at Rainmakers & Stormchasers. I was so honored when Jenny asked me to participate in her Man Week blog series. Honestly, it still amazes me that people are actually interested in what I have to say on any level. Sharing my journey in a public forum like my blog has been very healing for me personally. Then for my story to be resonating and finding an audience with so many people who I’ve never met is incredibly humbling.
When it came time to write my guest post for Jenny, I’ve got to be honest, I once again found myself in a “middle” season where I’m living and walking out what I know will be my next series of blogs. As such, I have had a terrible time trying to write about what’s happening right now. So instead of forcing it, I decided to share with you a post I wrote a couple months ago, which adequately describes the stripping process of God in my life, the transformation progression and also pretty much frames where I find myself at this very moment. The words aren’t new, but the message is still fresh and speaks to me every time I read it. I hope you are encouraged and challenged by this piece of my journey.
Over the past few months since I started blogging again, I think I’ve been pretty open and transparent about my story and this season in particular. From sharing my story publicly for the for the first time, talking very frankly about coming face to face with my pride and entitlement while embracing this next chapter of life, to discussing the condition of my heart that led me to this point… I’ve pretty much put it out there. Each post has been increasingly difficult to write, largely because I’m still walking it out. My story has not yet resolved and I still grapple with what that looks like every single day.
I’ll be writing more about this concept very soon, but it all comes down to this… my heart needed a detox. I had become intoxicated with career, high on image, and sick with success. As I’ve shared before, once I became aware of the condition of my heart, I very quickly wanted absolutely nothing to do with my career in the music industry. I wanted out as quick as possible, and out I got.
I do want to be clear about one thing: while every industry struggles with its own varying degrees of dysfunction, the place I ended up had very little to do with the industry I worked in and everything to do with what I looked to it for. The industry didn’t wear my heart out. I wore my own heart out by leaning into my career and work in the industry, looking for it to define and give me worth and identity… something it is ultimately ill-equipped to do.
For most of the past 6 months, the very thought of going back into the music business has almost given me anxiety. I was afraid of it. I wasn’t afraid of the “big, bad industry”, but rather of the “big, bad me” who I became in trying to find who I was in the context of the industry. I was afraid of becoming “that guy” again.
After recently sharing this with some close friends, I was challenged to understand that my reluctance to even consider reentering the industry was entirely a fear-based decision. I realized that if I choose to live out of a fear-based approach to life, that is actually unbelief in the work God is doing in my heart. My fear to move forward in my career was based on leaning on my own ability to not become “that guy” again, rather than leaning on God’s strength and power to mold and shape my heart daily. My decision and reluctance may appear noble, but it is nothing but reliance on self instead of the work of the cross in my life. That was a pretty sobering realization.
In his book, Counterfeit Gods, Tim Keller uses the context of human love to paint a striking picture of the way idolatry deceives our hearts:
If you are so afraid of love that you cannot have it, you are just as enslaved as those who must have it. If you are too afraid of love or too enamored with it, it has assumed God-like power, distorting your perceptions in your life.
Dang.
That’s real talk. While Keller may have been talking about human love, the same principle was certainly at work in my life as I went from being too enamored to being afraid in a matter of days. Thinking that walking away was enough, I failed to see that living in fear of something is just as controlling and idolatrous as living in adulation of it.
I suppose the best way to sum up where I am right now is to say that after months of wondering what was next for me, running from the “monster”, trying to get jobs in anything BUT the music world, my heart has finally turned a pretty significant page.
I’m not afraid anymore.
So now you may be asking, what does that mean, exactly?
It means I have finally found a place of peace with regard to what my heart thought it had to have and what it then was terrified to have.
It means whether I ever have it again or not, I’m not afraid of having it.
It means I know what defines me and what doesn’t.
It means if I do ever have it again, I’m not afraid of IT having ME.
It means I am moving forward.
Does that mean I’m taking a job back in the music world? I don’t know. At this moment there aren’t any jobs on the table to talk about. However, what it does mean is that whether I ever take another music job or not, I’m no longer afraid of what that might mean if it did happen.
If I believe 1 John 4:8…
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
… and if I believe Hebrews 12:6…
“The Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.”
… then I have to believe that God allowed the bottom to fall out of my world because He loves me and wants to realign and awaken my heart to who He is.
In his book, Plan B, Pete Wilson says:
God will allow suffering, pain and crisis in order to detach hope from other things and attach it to himself.
That is 100% what has been happening in my life. Does that mean the struggle is over? Absolutely not. But it does mean I am more equipped to navigate the murky waters of my heart every single day that I wake up.
I’ve loved this song for a long time, but it has recently taken on even greater meaning in my life…
Israel Houghton - Moving ForwardYou make all things new, and I will follow You forward…
