Living in a Box

By Danielle McElhinney

I have a confession to make. I told Tori a little lie! When she asked me to write my story for the blog I told her I didn’t know what I would write. That’s not true. I knew what I would write, I just wasn’t sure that I was ready to write it. However it is not by chance that Tori asked me just at this time. God’s timing is perfect.

These blogs are a reflection of the REAL WOMEN in our church and I am one of them. I laugh, I cry (regularly); I love my kids, sometimes I could throttle my kids; I love my husband, sometimes I could throttle him too. Sometimes my reality is amazing and I celebrate those days. Sometimes my reality sucks and I’d rather forget those days.

So let me tell you a bit of background.

I grew up in Mid Ulster with my parents and two brothers. My time was shared between horses and church. My dad was Pastor of a charismatic church for most of my teenage years. We had crazy English youth pastors who constantly challenged us to live “sold out” for God.  Although we were a small group we had big dreams and we were inspired to live them all.

I was a good student, I was a confident, outspoken girl and I felt capable and encouraged at every step. I loved Jesus passionately and I believed that with His power in my life that I was going to take over the world!

At age 18, life was full of promise. I met Graham, fell madly in love and we got married when I turned 20. I finished my English degree; I started my own business and I had my first child, the most beautiful little girl with big blue eyes and curly blonde hair.

Somewhere along the way things started to travel at a tangent to how I thought they would.

After 5 years I closed my business as I wanted to be at home to bring up my kids. This had severe financial implications which we haven’t recovered from yet.

My life began to look very different to how I had planned.

I always loved my husband and my kids and I chose to give that season of my life over to building a secure home life, which I will never regret. However within a few short years I began feeling like someone I didn’t really recognise. I felt myself retreating into an invisible box. The big life I had hoped for seemed as far away from my small existence as anything could be. I felt all my personal abilities and possibilities had been rolled up and packed away in a box.

No one did it to me. I did it to myself. I limited myself. I limited what I could be because I was a mum; I limited what I could say because I was a woman, I limited what I could achieve because I didn’t have money. I set limits all around myself; probably thinking I was somehow protecting myself.

I wasn’t particularly happy in that state of constraint but I convinced myself that this was normal for my stage of life.

If you had met me you probably wouldn’t have guessed these things were going on inside me. I’ve always been strong and confident and I would have been too proud to appear otherwise.

One thing that never changed in that time was God. Without doubt, He has been steadfast and sure. During that time He taught me to lean into His Word like never before. I found out how to search Scripture for myself and uncover wonderful truths and promises to build my life upon.

Even in my self-made box God was at work. He was teaching me how to trust His Word in my heart and not just know it in my head. He used that place as a refining fire and a sharpening iron. No experience is ever a waste of time to God.

This time is summed up perfectly in the lyrics from “Sovereign Over Us” by Aaron Keyes

“You are working in our waiting, Sanctifying usWhen beyond our understanding; You're teaching us to trust”

About 3 years ago I began to sense God stirring up unrest within me. I felt a growing sense of frustration with who I was and what I had become. I actually felt embarrassed that I had not achieved more. I questioned if this was all my life was going to amount to. I felt suffocated inside the box I had made for myself. Sometimes I got angry at God. That just made me even more miserable!

For months I have attended First Thursday for Women at CCV and listened to incredible stories of courageous women who had endured hardship in their lives and yet had encountered God in the midst of it. This only made me feel worse! I had such a secure upbringing, every academic opportunity, a healthy, loving family of my own and most of all Jesus inside of me. What right did I have to live such a boxed in, small life?

I could bore you now with excerpts from my journals and notepads. Records of scriptures that I cling to,  in which God makes personal promises of freedom to me; and notes of encouraging things that trusted people have spoken over my life that resonate with the God promises. Those things I shall hold close to my heart.

It is sufficient to say that God has blown me away in how He has brought me to a place of complete confidence in His power to free me from the box that has contained me.  He has given me a deep sense of resolve to live a BIG life outside the box. 

 

However, I will share this piece of scripture that sums up the place where I stand right now.

Isaiah 54:2-3 NIV“Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left...”

Girls, watch out because I’m stretching out!

As I step out of the box I am reminded of the John Lewis Christmas advert when the bear wakens from hibernation. I’m waking up to everything that God has made me to be. I am not going to hold back from becoming everything that He says I can be, do and say. I am going to take full advantage of all the freedom He has promised to me.

Romans 5:2 in the Message sums up this freedom life so beautifully,

“We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand-out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.”

Not all my circumstances have magically changed. I still face very real personal challenges every day. Not everything in my life is perfect or how I want it to be.

Few things may have changed on the outside but everything has changed on the inside- I am free!

In conclusion may I encourage any women who have placed limits on themselves for whatever reason or in whatever season? Don’t waste time living in a small space, when God has created such a big wide open space for you to live in. 

Listening to Dana Masters last month at First Thursday, I have the impression that I am not the only CCV woman who is experiencing this call to freedom. We can step out of those places of limitation with great confidence in a God who always intended freedom to be our habitation and position.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.Galatians 5:1 NIV