Influence Conference Recap: My Heart

I spent the long weekend in Indiana at the 2014 Influence Conference. It was good. It was hard. It made me ugly cry in the darkness of a hotel ballroom as 300+ women sang. I left feeling tired and wrung out and hopeful. It was a welcome change.

The purpose of the conference is to focus on the influence each of us has right where we are in life - no matter the stage, place or circumstances. It's a blend of talking about our online lives (cause everyone is online whether they're a blogger or not), and our every day lives and our dreams and our faith. I bought my ticket earlier this year, thinking it would be good for me to invest a little in myself and this blog, but also to have a chance to get away from my normal  responsibilities and be able to think and reflect on what I want to do next and what I feel called to do. The opportunity to really take stock of my life is rare - I either am too busy or too tired or I find something else to do to avoid the time it will take. A few months ago I wrote how I have been trying to find the balance between being self-absorbed and overly analytical versus just checking out entirely and living an unexamined life but to be totally honest, I haven't been examining anything as of late.

Well this weekend there was no avoiding the examination of my heart. This last year has been really tough on my faith. Not like what I went through with infertility (where I knew God was good, but couldn't match up his character with my dire circumstances); this was more connected to watching people around me who were leaders in the church, leaders in my community, those who led worship and helped teach children, fall flat on their faces in a very public, very horrifying way. And then the aftermath was just... well it was yucky, and brought out the worst in people. Like the ugly, disgusting worst. I thought that nothing could surprise me anymore, but this did. Watching people I respected and loved in the faith royally screw up and not handle it well really shocked me. And it rocked my already shaky faith. No one is perfect, I get that, but what I witnessed made me wonder if it was even mattered to live as God asks us to since it seemed to make no difference in what did or didn't happen to any of us.

So I hated God when my adoption failed and the conception of my daughter brought me back from the brink... but I still struggled with understanding why all of that happened to us. And now I am struggling to understand why justice sometimes does not happen to those who have clearly and intentionally hurt and destroyed others. I know God is love, but shouldn't his love protect and restore and reconcile?

So this weekend I brought all that crap with me - my weary mind, my half bitter heart and my shaky faith. I had my lines rehearsed for the questions I knew I would get, "Where do you live? What do you do? What is your story?" I had my smiles and my jokes ready. I had my answers to the even tougher questions so I showed just enough vulnerability, but also just enough to stay protected. I was afraid. Afraid of what would happen if I was honest with these women who wanted to know me, who were trying to connect to my heart. Afraid that the flood gates would open and all the muck and mire of my heart would spill out and make a mess I could not clean up. Afraid that if I was real, I couldn't come back to the version of myself I had created over the last year - the woman who, from the outside looking in, had her crap together.

God broke all that down in me this weekend, piece by piece, slowly through the care of the people I met, through hearing stories of loss that led to something even better than they could have imagined, through words that rang of hope and joy and a love that encompasses you until you can't do anything but fall on your knees and confess.

On Saturday night during worship as we sang, "I will call upon your name, and keep my eyes above the waves" I saw myself drowning in the sea, the waves tossing me back and forth, the foam and water clouding my eyes and filling my mouth. But God was there too, sitting in a small wooden boat, his hand outstretched and his eyes pleading with me to take it. He didn't explain the reasons why the storm was raging around me, or why he wouldn't just stop the storm since he had the power to; instead he just offered his hand. And I fought it at first, thinking that I could continue to manage, as I had all these months and the years before that, and that if I got in that boat nothing would change, not really. I was so tired of fighting with doubt and fear and anger. I could not swim anymore. It was time.

So through my tears, I grabbed hold.

Something shifted in me this weekend and the hard places were cracked a little, just enough to make room for some good. I still have so much to process, to plan for, to figure out, but I remembered this weekend that God loves me, loves me so much he is willing to come after me again and again and that is enough.






I know I have probably written about this too much over the last few years, and I'm sure you all are tired of hearing me talk about my struggle with my faith, but this has been something that I cannot seem to process quickly. These things take time and I promise I'll write about the speakers and the conference in another post soon.