Oh. My. Gosh.
Can we say terrifying?
I've mentioned a couple times that God taught me how to confront people, to stop being a people-pleaser, and doing whatever I was told. But today I want to get into some details about exactly how he did that.
So this all happened during the summer when God told me to start going to a new church. If you want to read that story (click here). While God was rocking my world and taking me to amazing new heights in my personal life, he was also teaching me how to talk to the people who were upset about the changes they were seeing in me.
I went on this one holiday with just me and my kids, which I also wrote about because it was mind-blowing, to read about that one (click here). So I get back from that trip and my husband and his farm assistant were messing around on my computer and somehow they had lost my background picture and it was back to the plain boring windows squares.
I need fun in my life. Blue squares do not cut it.
So I started thinking about what I wanted on my new background and I was dreaming about riding horses in endurance racing at the time. I google "endurance riding mustang". I added the mustang because I had just seen a documentary about these guys who wanted to prove how talented wild mustangs are at endurance riding. So they caught a few wild ones, tamed them briefly and then rode them from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. Really cool documentary. It's called Unbranded, here's a link ----> click here.
When I hit enter, the picture I wanted came up right away, right up near the top. It was a woman, like me, riding a grey horse, my favorite color of horse since I was a kid, and it was a mustang.
Now, normally I would just right click and set it as my background but I felt compelled to click on the image and go the website it was on. Low and behold, there was a super cool story about how this lady and her mustang became champions winning lots of races. I had to read it and I loved the whole story. It was amazing. But one thing stood out.
This lady, when she decided to try a mustang, she went to a sale where they had recently caught the wild horses and were selling them. She stopped a man who was working there, helping sort the horses, and she asked him how does a person go about taming a mustang?
One thing was most important, he said. To keep them separate from other horses while you get them to trust you.
"You can't tame a herd of horses."
I had often been asking God, why couldn't I go back to Oyen and get up in front of the whole church and tell them what they were doing wrong. Tell them how to fix their church. And a few days after I read this story, God spoke to me while I was driving and said, you can't tame the herd. You have to get them one on one.
So I was like, okay, I wouldn't have the guts to preach at all of them anyway. And deep down I knew it wouldn't work. And then God started to tell me exactly who to visit. The first one was the lady who had already come to my house and told me that I should be allowing my husband to control me. To be fair, her exact words were: "I just wanted to caution you not to be in disagreement with your husband."
Nobody ever cautioned my husband not to be in disagreement with me. Just sayin'.
So, this lady came to my house to "talk" with me about my decision to go to a new church and now God starts telling me to call her up and go visit her at her house.
You have to understand how hard this was for me.
I've never. . . NEVER . . . EVER in my entire life had the courage to do something like that before. I've barely ever even disagreed with someone in a normal conversation, let alone going over to their house with plans to do it.
Now, before I go getting all over-active-imagination on you. God wasn't saying to go unleash on anyone. These were just normal conversations where we both shared our ideas which were pretty much opposites. It's just that because I was such a severe people-pleaser that even this was incredibly hard for me to do.
But because I could feel how much God was with me, it helped me have the courage. I knew that if I followed his lead, God would guide me in every moment. He was right beside me the whole time.
So I do it. I call her up and arrange for a visit. I get there and we have a nice chat. She is her usual, controlled demeanor with very little emotion (she's not a mean person but she's just not the emotional type - nothing wrong with that). I'm my new self, full of bubbly energy, excited and, honestly, I was probably a little hyper with the thrill of doing something so unfamiliar.
I had even just gotten my first tattoo that day, kind of hilariously. God was like, here, this is the day you're going to feel so good about doing totally new things! Get a tattoo! Talk to a lady who thinks you're totally nuts! You might as well act the part! LOL.
Ah, God is so funny and he makes me laugh all the time.
There are just a couple things about our chat that really stuck with me. She told me that she had been feeling like calling me up to see if we could visit again but she thought she couldn't. That's neat because I had a feeling from God to go see her and I thought I didn't want to but I followed the feeling anyway. Do you see how I followed what I felt God leading me to do but she didn't? Read it again if you didn't catch that.
The other thing that I remember was that I told her that, in my opinion, if her church was going to change and get relevant - they needed to toss the organ. Out the door. Gone.
Be like Elsa people.
Let. It. Go.
The reason I remember that is because, for a person who is very in control of her emotions, she reacted a little emotionally to that idea. Very firmly, and without hesitation, a strong - NO. They definitely did not need to get rid of the organ.
Guess who had an organ from her basement advertised to give away on facebook a few months later? Yup. I think I hit on a sensitive nerve there. I could be wrong. I haven't actually talked to her since and it could just be coincidence.
So that was one lady God asked me to go see, but he also put other people on my heart too.
I went to visit a married couple that were our friends, whom I don't hear from anymore. I had high hopes for them actually because they seemed like they had a little spark of desire to see more happen at their church. They were very nice and I think they kinda maybe encouraged me a little but I do remember that at the end, the husband's reaction was only to caution me that he's heard about other churches that were bad.
It seemed like a bit of a common reaction I was getting from my old friends. BE CAREFUL.
Like seriously people, I'm not joining a biker gang here.
But it wasn't all bad. Another couple from that church, who are older than Brenton and I, randomly came to our house out of the blue and God worked it out that Brenton was miraculously home too! I'm not exaggerating when I say that's a miracle. Just ask our neighbor who comes to visit fairly often and ask him how many times he's caught Brenton at home. It's like one time out of five at best and I'm probably being generous with that.
So they pop in, Brenton is home and we sit down at our table and talk about all the things we see wrong in that old church. They both, whole-heartedly, completely agreed with everything we said. They even agreed that they should get rid of the organ. It was a fantastic conversation and very encouraging to both Brenton and I at a time when we really needed it. I have bumped into them a few times since then, but I haven't talked to them about church. I think they just keep going to the old church and tolerate it the way it is.
There were a couple of other people that God told me to speak to. One couple I knew I should go see but I had been putting it off until I knew it was God's timing. One day, I'm out in our yard and I hear God very clearly speak to my mind - "Go try to start the water pump."
We water our garden and trees with a pump which takes water from our dugout and pumps it up to our watering hoses and pipes. At that time it was broken and I knew I could not get it started.
"God, that's ridiculous. I know I can't get it started."
You know God. He didn't ask me again but when God has spoken something to you that clearly, you know you gotta do it. You just gotta find out.
So I walk over to the pump. It's the kind you pull a rope to start.
I pull, and I pull, and I pull.
Nothing, nothing, still nothing.
My arm gets tired and I stop.
"See! I told you!"
"That's what it's going to be like when you go to visit (so and so). But I want you to go anyway, because I'm asking you to."
Just typing out this story, I can feel that feeling of how strongly I felt God's presence then. He's so calming, and strong, and true. There's literally no room for fear. It's indescribable how deeply you feel anchored, how true he feels.
So I did it and I went. It was exactly like God had said. It was like trying to encourage a spark to start in a broken down engine and no matter how much I tried, I couldn't get it going. But I took heart in the fact that I had been faithful and obedient to God's command.
What did I learn exactly from all of this?
Well, talking to people that disagree with you is not as bad or as hard I thought it would be. And it's worth doing because you feel so much better and you have, at the very least, cleared the air of unanswered questions.
I had always wanted to tell someone about getting rid of the organ. Not just hint about it or suggest, or ask. To tell them straight out - it needs to go. And I'm so proud that I learned how to have the courage to say what I believe.
I feel so much more free and like I really finished that chapter of my life and finished it well.
Looking back now, if I hadn't done that, things would have felt unfinished and I would be sitting here wondering what would have happened if I'd have had the courage to speak my mind. And I wouldn't have had this super awesome blog post for y'all to read.
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