What I Thought I Wanted, What I Got Instead

Tag Archive - trust

What I Thought I Wanted, What I Got Instead

June 4, 2010 in Faith, Life with 81 Comments

After walking away from my career and spending months trying to figure out what was happening in my life, I finally got hired and started a new job 7 weeks ago. I’m thankful to have this job, but I applied and interviewed for jobs that made MUCH more sense to me, but I did not get them. What I have now is NOT the job I hoped for, but it is the job that hired me. It was NOT what I wanted, but it is what I got instead.

Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. (Proverbs 19:21)

The past 7 weeks have been a bit of a blur and a series of one hard lesson after another. On almost a daily basis I come face to face with the deep-seeded entitlement that has been wedged in my heart for years.

Entitlement… It’s “what I deserve”.

Lately I’ve been trying to dig deeper into why my heart has struggled so much through all this. The truth is, I know exactly why: deep in my heart I think I’m better, think I deserve better and think I’ve earned the right to not have to work this kind of job at this point in my life. I’ve “been there” and “done that”. How’s that for honesty?

The idolatry of what we think we deserve is a thief, robbing us of perspective and truth in the moments God uses to deepen our lives.

There have been moments over the past few weeks when I’ve had brief glimpses of revelation and lucidity (bonus points for use of “lucidity”), but for the most part I remain clueless about where my life is headed right now. Some days I find myself being able to embrace the uncertainty of this season better than others, and some days my heart feels like it is in an absolute free fall. There are days when my heart is full of fear, simply because it is more prone to reach for ANYTHING other than God as an anchor and source of hope and security.

The other day I was hanging out with my friend Wes, who has quickly become a close friend of mine. I was sharing (er, venting) with him about how I felt about what all is happening right now, and I said (in frustration), “THIS just isn’t where my life is right now!” As if to say, “at THIS point in my life I should have THIS job with THIS income, THIS life…” Wes’ reply? “But Grant, this IS where your life is right now.”

……….

@#$%@*!

Reality check.

He was right. Regardless of how I feel about where I should or shouldn’t be at this point in my life, and regardless of the expectations I have formed in my own heart about where I feel I’m entitled to be at this point, you know what? This is exactly where my life is right now, and being frustrated, stubborn and ungrateful isn’t going to change that.

I am learning that my entitlement makes me a slave to the expectations that exist only in my heart.

Sara Groves has a song called “What I Thought I Wanted” that beautifully underscores the heart of Proverbs 19:21.

Sara Groves - What I Thought I Wanted

I love the lyric where she says:

When I get to heaven I’m gonna go find Job
I want to ask a few hard questions, I want to know what he knows
About what it is he wanted and what he got instead
How to be broken and faithful

I am learning A LOT about my heart right now. I am learning things about myself that I don’t know if I would have ever learned had the bottom not fallen out.

I thought I wanted a job… but instead I am getting character

I thought I wanted a check… but instead I am getting change

I thought I wanted my story… but instead I am getting His

I often wonder if I would have had the opportunity to see this deeply into my heart had I gotten what I wanted. But I didn’t, and here we are. It is painful, but it is purposeful. Though the bleeding persists, I am grateful for the wound.

So, what I thought I wanted, and what I got instead leaves me broken and grateful.

Are you grateful for what you got “instead”?

When Everything Falls

April 29, 2010 in Faith, Life with 12 Comments

“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” – John 16:33

The Weaning Of My Heart

March 17, 2010 in Faith with 6 Comments

For those of you who live in the Brentwood and Franklin areas of Nashville, did you hear all the commotion last night??? Gunshots, helicopters, artillery fire, flashes of light from IEDs, what sounded like a brigade of foot soldiers… it was crazy! Something straight out of an Oliver Stone epic, I tell you! It was nearly deafening! Surely you heard it and were wondering what in the world it was! I’ll tell you what it was… it was the war in my heart.

When I decided to start blogging again, I purposed in my heart that I wanted to be very honest. Since much of what I’m writing is very much what I am experiencing present-tense, it helps me weed out a lot of potential pretense and just share what is happening in my life and heart right now. So, when I write about things like being in “the middle”, it’s because that is very much where I am. The “middle” is rarely pretty or glamorous, but it is often the tension of “the middle” where the battles are fought, ground is taken and enemies conquered.

In his book Waking The Dead, John Eldredge said:

You won’t understand your life, you won’t see clearly what has happened to you or how to live forward from here, unless you see it as battle. A war against your heart.

As I’m walking out this “middle” season of my life right now, it is very much a constant heart battle between two realities… one that brings faith versus one that brings fear. What I am learning is that both faith and fear produce worship. Where my heart focuses, that will it also esteem. Faith is a focus on the unseen, on God, which produces a heart posture of worship directed toward the object of my focus. In that same way, fear is also focus and a form of worship as well.

I am not someone who is prone to much anxiety. Quite the contrary, actually. By nature I’m a very passionate, but also very easy-going, guy. As I was laying in bed last night trying to sleep, I was overwhelmed by an unrelenting barrage of “what ifs” and imagined outcomes. I was restless, breathless a few times and consumed with an over-all sense of helplessness, not knowing what “the middle” may hold for me. Through prayer and some time in my Bible, I regained my focus on God and found great comfort in 2 Corinthians 4 and Hebrews, as I reminded myself who God was and that He is in absolute control of what I’m walking through.

As I was recounting this experience to a friend this morning, I said something that gave me great perspective on what was happening. “I know what this is,” I said. “It’s the process to wean my heart off dependence on everything and everyone but God.”

Wow. There’s a visual for you.

I remember once hearing a preacher talk about the Hebrew roots of one of the names we use for God, El Shaddai. “El” points to the power of God Himself, while “Shaddai” is derived from another word meaning “breast”, which implies that “Shaddai” is “the breasted one” who nourishes, supplies and satisfies. It signifies ultimate sufficiency.

By definition, to “wean” is to:

accustom (someone) to managing without something on which they have become dependent or of which they have become excessively fond

When trouble or struggle comes, our my tendency is to latch onto what may be comfortable or familiar. These are usually things or people where we I have previously found a degree of solace, but which are ultimately insufficient to the anchoring of our my heart. These things may pacify, but do not satisfy. I know for myself, when life happens and throws a curve ball, my heart can tend to latch on to anything but Jesus. Meanwhile God, El Shaddai, the breasted one, stands by patiently desiring to wean my heart off what I can see in exchange for what I can’t see, the ultimate sufficiency that is found only in a heart that trusts and depends exclusively in Him.