We recently began attending a new church and the lessons have been really thought provoking for me and for my family. Honestly, I could take each sermon and make a blog out of it because they are inspiring me to dig deeper into my faith and in my goal to help lead others out of addiction and to Christ. This past Sunday, our minister, Danny Sorrell, preached on pruning. In his sermon, he discussed how God will prune or take away. There may be times in our lives when we have had something, or someone removed from our life. Our thirst thought is to think we may be getting punished by God for some reason. However, it could easily be that God is “pruning” our lives for our spiritual fruit to flourish. A tree burdened with dead branches will no longer thrive. The same is true with our lives.
In 2015, I made a sudden career move after a negotiation for more pay did not pan out the way I was hoping. More responsibility had been added to my job description, however, the pay rate never budged. Discussions with my boss went nowhere fast and I made the decision to seek employment elsewhere. At the time, I did not have any plans of what my next step would be, only that it was time for me to move on. I did not leave with hard feelings, after fifteen years with the company I felt they had been good to me. They had been gracious with my health and with my eating disorder. Leaving mad did not seem fair, and I chose to leave cordially. I did wonder, though, if I was being punished. Why would they just not give me the small raise I asked for?
Looking back now, I see that I was not being punished, God was preparing me for something else in my life. The afternoon of my last day, I received a call from a company for whom I had applied months earlier. They were finally ready to hire and called me for an interview. I was offered the job on the spot, a spot with better pay and less stress.
The story does not end there. After working there for a few years, my new company hired a young man to be an assistant for one of the plumbers there. He was only sixteen at the time, just one year younger than my daughter. He made a great impression on me from the start because of his politeness and personality. After he had been employed there for a few weeks, he and my daughter met on accident at my office. I am sure you can see where this story may be going. As with most of today’s generation, they both had social media accounts and quickly began talking using those channels. Today, they have been happily dating for four years. A relationship that may not have ever happened, had God not led me away from one career to another, preparing me for a new chapter in not only my life, but my family’s life as well.
You see that career change, as made as it made me at first, led me to a whole new group of friends, people I otherwise would have never met. My daughter’s boyfriend and his family are not important parts of our lives and otherwise we would still have all been strangers. My daughter and her boyfriend visited the church we now are members of before Jason and I did. And that act has also led us to a whole new church family full of loving individuals. God was pruning. He was not punishing.
In addiction, we often take the words of those who are trying to help us and turn them into words of punishment. “” You just want me to stay fat!” and “You don’t want me losing weight!” were some of the accusations I hurled at loved ones who were trying to help me with my dieting addiction. I thought they were punishing me when they took me to counselors and to the hospital. Contrarily, they were trying to prepare me for a life free of self-harm and mental pain. Alcoholics may feel attached when someone questions them about the amount they drink. “You can’t control me” are some thoughts they may have. When in reality, someone who is trying to help is trying just that…to help.
Have you ever had someone in your life die unexpectedly? Maybe, your grief led you to feel that God was punishing you by taking someone away. As I age, I feel that when good people are taken from our lives, it is because God feels they have done their job on earth. I feel that He feels they are ready for their heavenly home, whether we are ready for them to go or not. It is not meant to be a punishment for us, but a reward for those who have gone.
When Jason’s mother passed away just one year after his father, it was too much for Jason to bear. The sudden loss was a heavy load to carry after just having to adjust to a life without his father. However, his mother had grieved tremendously after losing her husband. Her branches of sadness were heavy to carry. She still had great faith in the Lord, because she often talked about seeing Danny again. Losing his mom was not in Jason’s plan, however, it was in God’s plan for her. I feel God had seen her suffering and took her to a place where tears are no more. God’s plan may have very well been to take the good from Jason’s life to prepare him to share with others. It was Jason’s idea to create this blog and share our experiences. God may have pruned us…to prepare us.
I have often heard the phrase “God will break your heart if He has to in order to save your soul.” As Danny stated in his sermon, “pruning is painful, but sometimes necessary.”
If you need help “pruning” your life from addiction or grief, please leave us a comment. We would love to share resources with you to help you recapture your life and most importantly, your soul.