Lessons Learned in the Trenches (of Doctoral Studies)

I started this post series in November. I decided to pull it out and dust it off since it's encouraging stuff I really want to share!

As I wrote a couple of days weeks months ago, I have recently been processing our whole school/Ph.D./dissertation experience at a deeper level. Honestly, I've been thinking to myself, "It's about time!" I have been wanting for some time to write about our experience, desiring to give personal testimony to the faithfulness of our mighty God. But the thoughts just would not flow. I didn't have a single idea for how to take the enormity of our experience over the past 11 years (and more specifically the microcosm of the past 2-3 years) and condense it into a meaningful composition. So I didn't write anything.

This morning it hit me: "Lessons Learned in the Trenches." Yes, that was the angle I had been searching for! God truly has taught me so many (many!) lessons, especially over the past 3 years which have easily been the hardest of my life. For so long the road seemed endlessly hard and the progress (especially in my own sinful heart) depressingly meager, but finally emerging from the shadow and standing here on the other side has allowed me to recognize just how much God has done in my heart. And so, as a testimony to God's amazing faithfulness and love, I would like to begin to share with you some of the lessons I learned in the trenches.

1. God is faithful, good, and loving all the time.

This sounds cliche and churchy, but it is truly the core of what I learned in the darkness. I found my belief in the validity of this statement challenged on more than one occasion as I processed the many, many challenges, setbacks, and disappointments of the final stretches of this hard road. But what I have come to believe, more firmly than ever, is that the human response of "how could God let this happen to me??" exists when we have a wrong view of God. It all comes down to who is on the throne of your heart.

Truthfully, I must admit that during the periods of greatest discouragement I wrestled with thoughts that maybe we were on our own; maybe God didn't care much about our misery.One of my recurring questions was why God would continue to allow setbacks and difficulties that were completely out of Seth's control to prolong suffering for our family. We prayed fervently that God would reward our diligence by orchestrating a timely end to the dissertation. We heard, "no" in answer to that plea several times before God finally gave us the desire of our hearts. More than once I looked at the long, dark tunnel still ahead and felt abandoned by God. One night as I expressed my feelings of abandonment to a friend she reminded me I was in good company--Jesus expressed precisely that anguish when he cried, "My God, why have You forsaken me?"

I don't pretend to know why God allowed Seth's Ph.D. work to drag on for so long, but I do know that for as long as I entertained any hint of the thought that the reasons were grounded in God's lack of concern and love for us I was tortured and miserable. Even as my faith was weak, again and again in the darkness God offered me rays of the light of His Truth. And the Truth was/is, it's not all about me! God's purpose for me is good, but the way that His purpose fleshes out in my life is about his world-wide agenda, not necessarily my moment-by-moment comfort. In tiny increments I began to understand, and finally to fully embrace beyond a doubt, that God is faithful, good and loving, even when I don't understand how that could possibly be true. Feeling abandoned by God is sometimes part of life (let me point again to Jesus), but that even in that pit God is there; the feeling that He is not does not alter this truth. Further, belief in truth I do not understand is a choice. When things are going badly I can choose to entertain lies that tell me God doesn't care about me or I can choose to simply say, I don't understand it, but I'm going to trust Him.

Stay tuned for:
Lesson 2: There's Always Something....