Breaking
The Meadow - Oxford, England 11/17/2023
“Willie, if I don’t break you, I will never be able to take you where I need you to go and lead you to places only you can run.”
“Willie, you’re a thoroughbred. You can run faster and further than I ever could.”
Fall of 2023, sitting across from me at a Starbucks is one of the wisest and kindest men I’ve known. I explained the painful, boring, and seemingly aimless “hallway” season I found myself in, when God gave me these words through Nick:
“You’re a thoroughbred.”
Immediately, it all made sense. In my mind’s eye I saw God calling me out from the meadows of the world and into a small circular pen, where he had me running in small circle after small circle. The conversation between me and God played in my head…
“God, what am I even doing here? I wasn’t meant for this!”
“Yes, I know.”
“No, Lord, I wasn’t made to be stuck in here, running in circles!”
“Yes, I know.”
“I don’t think you understand what I’m saying… I’m supposed to be out there! running hard! running fast! running far! I’m not made to be stuck in here!”
“Yes, I know.”
“Then why?! Why have you call me here, locked me in to just run laps over and over again?”
God replied, “Willie, if I don’t break you, I will never be able to take you where I need you to go and lead you to places only you can run.”
Mic. Drop.
Call it the wilderness, call it the dark room or the hidden place; every person, including Jesus, was led into a period of boring, difficult, often painful breaking before they stepped into God’s fulfillment. Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Daniel…
The season I was begging God to take me from was the very season that was most important, most impactful, most necessary for me to enter. But really? 28 years old, full-time grocery shopper, failed music artist, no degree, left a church leadership position, now living back in my hometown, how could this really be God’s best for me?
Around this time I was reading a book with my cohort discussing “holy ground.” The book asked if we could identify a place and time in our life as “holy ground,” a special place where God met with us. I realized that it was this season and the Costco parking lot (where I spent 40 hours/week waiting or shopping for Instacart) that was my holy ground. It was in the hours of waiting in that parking lot that God had spent the last year speaking to me, mentoring me, teaching me. It’s where became an avid learner, reader, healer, and pray-er. And God would continue to meet me there for the following year and half. If, then, this boring, aimless, mundane, painful, shameful, difficult season of suffering has brought me into such a beautiful, healing, and transformative holy ground then why..?
Why am I in such a hurry to leave?
I’ve learned that God is good. While the workings of “The Breaking Season” is absolutely not what I was made for, it is absolutely necessary for his purposes and plans for me to be fulfilled. I don’t have to emotionally enjoy this season for me to experience joy in this season and to be obedient and faithful. The Good Shepherd knowns what I was made for, whose I was made for. He knows that where he has lead me is incredibly painful for me. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses..”(Hebrews 4:15) But as a race horse learns first to be led, then to bear a saddle, then to carry a rider, then to follow the rider’s leading, so is God training me to run like no one else could run, and go where only he can lead.
