Are You Living Life with Holes?

Soon after we moved to Rochester, NY, my husband told me that he had been looking for bloggers from Rochester and he had come across one that he thought I would love. Turns out that he was absolutely right. Although Beka and I have not met in person, I have been so blessed by her words, by her creativity and by her love for Jesus. She has been a blessing in my life and I look forward to meeting her in real life someday!

In this post, Beka shares her perspective on legacy and what God has been teaching her through a difficult and unexpected time in her life. I have no doubt that you will want to follow her blog and her beautiful Pinterest boards.

For the "Leaving a Legacy" series, please join me in welcoming Beka Watts...

A few months ago, my parents had some plumbing issues in their upstairs bathroom. To get to the problem, the plumber had to tear out a sizable chunk of the ceiling in the downstairs bathroom. 



See?

It was only supposed to be like that temporarily because even though the initial problem was resolved, there was still more work to be done. But you know how repairs go. The non-essential ones always get pushed to the back burner of “eventually.” And thus they’ve had a large hole in the ceiling for months.

In the beginning, the hole was the only thing you noticed when you walked into the downstairs bathroom.  It’s an attention-grabber when you’re used to ceilings with no holes in them. But over time, the repair-in-progress became less and less prominent, to the point where no one even notices it anymore. Our expectations changed. It used to be normal to expect the whole ceiling to be there, and now it’s normal to expect there to be a substantial piece missing.

It concerns me that I’ve practiced the same shifting of expectations in my own life.  I’ve gotten used to certain parts of me being broken, different than they were when they were whole. It was startling at first. I was quick to notice the obvious change in circumstances. But now that I’ve gotten used to being that way, it’s just a mere fact of life, like the fact that I have brown hair and brown eyes.  I have brown hair…and I have paralyzing self-doubt. I have brown eyes…and I have a tendency to run as fast as I can from commitment. They’re not holes anymore; they’re ingrained aspects of my personality.

I’m in the weirdest season in life right now. Everything is in flux. Literally everything. My career path is slowly evolving and I don’t know exactly where it’s going to end up. My geographic location is completely up in the air. And apparently I’ve reached the age where my lack of marital status and offspring invites people to ask me if I’m afraid I’ll die alone, and if so, will I get cats?

(For the record, the answer is no…and no.)

So I’m in this place where nothing is figured out. Which is probably the only place the Lord could put me where I’d be frustrated enough to stop and ask, “HEY. What are You doing?!”

If I’ve learned anything so far in life, it’s that I don’t know what He’s doing. I’ve been encouraged by what Jesus says to Simon Peter when He washes the disciples’ feet in John 13: “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

One can hope.

But if I could venture a guess this time around, I’d say He might be throwing the train brakes on my legacy so I don’t unknowingly drive it off the tracks. It was never His plan for me to live with holes in the ceiling, and if left to my own devices, I’d never schedule a repair. Turns out He scheduled one for me and named it “Detour You Were Not Expecting And Will Not Like.”

And I don’t like it. Not one bit. But I do appreciate it. Because I don’t want my life to be defined by holes. I don’t want my future family to have less of me just because I refused to go through the process of being made whole again. I don’t want to settle for, “that’s just the way I am.” I want to be able to leave a legacy of the power of the Lord’s salvation made real in my life.

This season has presented me with a much-needed opportunity to change my expectations for myself. Where I usually expect brokenness, I can choose to expect restoration. And isn’t that what Jesus implores us to do?

“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. – Mark 11:22-24

We’re all bound to have a few holes in the ceiling over the course of our lives. And we’re all likely to let them stay just as they are because the repair process is much too daunting. But what if, instead, we changed our expectations, and confidently asked the Lord to be the foreman in charge of the repairs? What if we chose to leave a legacy of redemption, the kind of legacy that honors the Lord and encourages those around us, by living a real-deal life of brave authenticity?

I think it’d be so much better than living with holes.