Dear Younger Me (Rally The Troops)
Dear Younger Me,
When the battle is raging, please rally the troops! You might rather fight the war alone because it’s easier to not let people in, but when you call for help, you can better stand and fight.
There’s a really cool story in Exodus 17, when Moses needed his brother Aaron and his friend Hur to hold up his hands as the people of Israel fought a major battle. The mental and physical stress and strain on Moses as he watched from above on the hill must have been great. He knew as he watched that if he held his arms up high his people would win, but if he let them down, they’d lose. But he couldn’t hold up his hands on his own for long. Thank goodness he had his buddies on that hill with him to help him! Because, if he lost his strength alone, that would have been tragic for the army of Israel. I also wonder if Moses might have felt like a burden to Aaron and Hur, or embarrassed that he couldn’t do something so simple. Maybe he wondered why God didn’t just give him the strength to do it on his own. But I would hope that Aaron and Hur in that moment were just so ready to support him that it didn’t matter one bit. Maybe God chose not to give the strength to Moses so he could experience being strengthened by his friends instead.
Like Moses, there are seasons you may feel the same way. You might feel tempted to try to fight the battle with your own strength. You might feel like a burden asking for people to come alongside you in your fight. You might beg God to just give you the strength to get through it on your own. But you’ll see when you rally your troops, that you’re not a burden. You’ll see you are loved, and those people aren’t just ready to fight with you, they’re going to fight for you, too. And you’ll see that strength can be found in the arms of others.
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
If God can arrange all the events of time to point to Jesus and if He can arrange all the prophecies of time to be fulfilled in Jesus, He can hold you, too.
All of history led to Jesus. Even the symbols you can find in the Bible, Jesus became Himself. In this Easter week, you are reminded of the many ways Jesus was fulfilling what was spoken of Him centuries before.
What an amazement testament to God’s grand design! He planned all of that and with no less than perfect timing! Where God has placed you in time, you have the great gift of being able to read and know that Jesus was the answer all along.
If God’s timing was perfect then, His timing is perfect now. You may never understand on this side of Heaven why God waited to bring ultimate redemption, and it may be hard to understand why the areas of your life where you want redemption seem to be stagnant as well.
Yet, imagine the people who loved Jesus as they watched Him hang on the cross. As they did life with Him, knowing Him more and more as their Messiah, they had to watch Him die, the one who they thought would be their rescue. What was going through their minds and hearts? I imagine they were grieving and mourning the loss of their friend and teacher and the loss of their hopes and dreams. How could God take Him away?
But Sunday came. Resurrection and redemption came. The impossible happened. In God’s perfect timing.
And the same is true for you. You might be grieving the loss of hopes and dreams and the weight of brokenness, but take heart that Sunday is coming!
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me (The Lessons To Learn From Gideon)
I encourage you to take a little trip in your Bible to Judges 6. There’s a story of a guy named Gideon there, and you’ll have learned about him in grade school and Sunday school, but you won’t fully appreciate this story until later, when you realize you feel just like him.
Cowering. Unsure. Scared. Unconfident.
Yet God sent His angel to meet him there in the place he was hiding, telling him, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” Gideon started questioning God’s sovereignty and His presence, but God said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?”
Gideon had more excuses (he thought he was a pretty weak guy), but the first words out of God’s mouth again were “I will be with you…”. God promised His presence, even when Gideon felt afraid, even when he made excuses for why he wasn’t cut out for the job. But Gideon, with God, was eventually able to see what he thought was impossible.
Victory. Freedom. Confidence in God.
When you feel like Gideon, know that He knows your heart and what He’s called you to. He knows what you’re capable of, and even more so with Him. Regardless of where you find yourself, remember that God can take what strength you have and what weaknesses you have and use it all. When you doubt what He’s called you to, remember to go in the strength you have, for the Lord is with you.
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me (When You Feel Stuck)
You know how you love escape rooms? It’s the fastest hour ever, and every minute counts when it comes to figuring out how to get out. When you have a ton of random clues and gadgets in front of you and you don’t know how to use them, that’s when you begin to feel stuck, and you feel like you are wasting your time.
But, what if you didn’t look at it like a waste of time? What if those moments of being stuck are really for your good? What if it’s an opportunity to learn to ask for a hint from the escape room staff? What if it’s an opportunity to think a little differently and find new perspectives? What if it’s an opportunity to remind yourself of the things you already know?
When life feels like that escape room, and you’re holding in your hands all these things you aren’t sure how to handle, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and stuck. But what if being stuck is good? What if it is a season God is using to teach you to ask for help? What if He’s inviting you to think differently? What if He wants to use this time to remind you of the Truth about who He is so you can find rest?
Remind yourself of the story of King Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20. When the enemy armies were coming, the king gathered the people and prayed. He said, “We do not know what to do, but we are looking to you for help.” The people were answered with the words that the battle was not their fight, but God’s.
When you’re stuck, go before God. He knows how to handle what you’re worried and confused about, and He’s your Defender. Always know that “stuck” is a place God can use.
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
I wish I had the answers.
I wish I knew how to encourage you when you’re frustrated in the waiting and God’s timing doesn’t make sense or how to encourage you when life is happening all at once and your head is spinning in confusion.
But, in your cry of “God, I don’t know what you’re doing!” remember God’s all-knowing, good character and the promise held for you in Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
You don’t know the answers, but you know the One who does. You can trust His timing is perfect, because He is. You can trust He’s got you, because of His promise He’ll never leave you. So in your confusion or frustration, hold onto the God whose timing is perfect. In hope and faith, the confusion and frustration will someday give way to celebration when you get to see with your own eyes how His actions were exactly on time.
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
You are not replaceable. Don’t let the fear of being replaced on the court, in your job, or in any situation ever make you feel like YOU are replaceable or unworthy. You have this underlying fear that if you don’t perform well, you’ll be benched or demoted. The truth is, it does happen. But those times don’t define who you are.
Because you are so much more than a performance. Remember that band competition in fifth grade and your first saxophone solo? Afterwards, you could only think of everything you did wrong, not everything you did correctly. And not just with that solo, because you do that with every sports game, too. I wish for you that you would have grace to see the good things, confidence to believe that you can do what you’re doing, and the utmost certainty that your value and worth go far beyond what you do.
Your performances do not make you who you are. Your mistakes don’t, either. Because you are a child of God, one of His chosen people and a part of His prized possession, as it says in 1 Peter. Even with all the mistakes and faults, Jesus wants you in His life. He doesn’t demote you or replace you in His life when you mess up. He’s got open arms for you!
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
When your heart is racing in the middle of the night, and you’re so unsure of how to handle what you’re worried about, remember the voice of God calmly saying, “Trust me.”
As you spin your head in circles, you forget that you have someone in your corner who knows exactly what’s up. He knows your story, He knows your next move, and He holds your heart, too. No one else knows you better, and He knows all the pages. Remember those choose-your-own-adventure books you used to read? You would get frustrated trying to choose the right pages to get the ending you wanted. Even now, you might know what you want and aren’t sure how to get there, but you really don’t know what adventures God has planned for you, either. You can’t fast forward to know the ending or skip ahead to read the pages you’re anxious to read, but you can trust that God knows.
Because if God gave you a remote to fast forward or He presented all the pages of your life for you to read, you’d not lean on Him. You wouldn’t learn to trust. So when your heart is racing as your mind is spinning and you’re trying to tackle all of your problems in your own hands at 11:30 p.m., remember the voice of God calmly saying, “Trust me.”
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
When the curveballs come, and you keep striking out, remember God makes everything beautiful in its time. You won’t always know what the curveball will turn into, but you can know that the situation is going to be used for good. It might take time to see what the “good” is, but you can trust that He will.
When the curveballs seem to come all at once and it seems like nothing is going right or how you planned, feeling defeat and discouragement is natural. It takes a little more of you to think that God has something to turn them into. But I’ve seen Him turn them into reasons for joy, reasons to trust Him, and reasons to see that I’m not in control. Sometimes those reasons showed up in hours, and sometimes those reasons showed up in months, but I encourage you to take the curveballs with grace, knowing there is a reason for them.
Remember Ecclesiastes 3:11, “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” What a promise, and what a comfort. Though you don’t know what’s going on or how it will all stack up, trust that God knows exactly what He’s pitching to you and how the game is going to finish. He knows.
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
Be thankful for the still waters. When you’re in the season of raging seas, all you want is for things to settle down. However, the irony is that when things are normal, you long for change. But goodness gracious, let yourself rest. God has each season in your life placed as it should be for a reason. So when you exit the rapids, appreciate the time just to float. Instead of enjoying it, eventually you’ll long for what’s around the riverbend. When you forget about being Pocahontas for a second, and you remember that God “leads me beside quiet waters,” you can realize there is such peace and goodness you should enjoy right here.
You might complain that you “have nothing going on,” but if you look a little closer, you’ll see the “nothing going on” is really something. It’s resting. I think you’ve been so busy that you don’t understand how to do that.
Hold onto Psalm 23:2-3, which say, “He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.” It feels pretty silly to long for what’s next when I’m reminded that peace is a good thing. By the peaceful waters, let Him refresh your soul. Let Him remind you He is enough. Let Him remind you that rest is what you need.
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
As much as you want life to be fair, being the “Fair” Queen isn’t fulfilling. Growing up, you always wanted things to be equal among you and your sisters, but that wasn’t always the case, instigating your jealousy and Mom’s common quote, “Well, life isn’t fair.”
Now that you’re older, you still feel those feelings, less so about the silly things of your childhood, but instead seeing everything around you that you don’t have yourself. You see friends in different life stages and want what they have, and you want to ask God if He’s holding you back, like a child repeating the same grade. It’s easy to think it’s not fair.
But even if you had all the things you want, I think you know deep down that you still wouldn’t be fulfilled. Happiness doesn’t come from life being fair. Happiness doesn’t come from having everything you want. No matter what you experience, your soul is going to long for what can’t be found in this world. Your soul is longing for the ultimate love and satisfaction that is met in Jesus. On this side of eternity, your heart is still human, and you struggle to fully grasp it, but knowing this, I hope you’ll have a better understanding of your feelings.
So in the wishing and longing for what others have, keep bringing your heart to Jesus. He knows how to take care of your heart and knows exactly what you need and when.
Love,
Megan
