#TheBestYes, Week 1: My Best Yes

As I began reading #TheBestYes this past week I realized my best but hardest yes were a story I needed to tell. God has given us a manual and road map in His word. As I was writing the story out Jeremiah 6:16 came to mind. I stood, I looked and finally I asked God where I should go and I have been on the tried and true road ever since. 

Go stand at the crossroads and look around.
    Ask for directions to the old road,
The tried-and-true road. Then take it.
    Discover the right route for your souls.

-Jeremiah 6:16a MSG

 

     When it became overwhelming obvious that I could no longer work my greatest fear was I would find myself sitting at home waiting to die. The irony is that was only days after I was hospitalized because I had reached a point in my lack of understanding my grief that I couldn’t imagine living with the secret pain any longer. I have had over the years a basic understanding of why I held onto my ability to work as long as I did but not until this week had it all been this clear. At that point I had heard God calling me to stop working myself sick for over a year. The last year I did work I was on medical leave nearly as much as I was actually able to go into the office but knowing my job was waiting for me, that people were depending on me was often the only thing that lifted my spirits. I was essential to the proper running of my office and like alcohol, smokes, cocaine and sometimes food before the drug to people please and be co-dependently relied on was addicting. While I have only audibly heard God speak to me once the impression He was making on my heart to stop and lean on Him alone, to cling to the promises I read about every day and live the limited life I had left for Him alone was anything but subtle.

     Medically cleared to return to work after my forced mental health trip to the hospital I returned to work for the last time. It was an angel and demon on each shoulder kind of day. There was calm peace flowing through me and I would slash at it, grasping wildly to working. My greatest joy at work was helping customers face one of the toughest days of their lives. Jesus supplied a compassion and mercy that eased even the weariest of victims. That day it was gone. I was frustrated with their pain, after all wasn’t mine so much worse. I was angered by the neediness of my coworkers. I spent most of the day hiding in bathrooms and storage rooms. When I engaged the peace God was giving me I would walk out scared but confident I needed to quit and seconds later determined to fix myself. My boss had been at our corporate headquarters all day, as he walked through the door we made eye contact and tears pooled in my eyes. I knew I had lost the fight. We had been friends before his promotion; I had actually helped him get hired with the company. He spoke the words out loud God had been whispering to me all day. “Melissa you can’t do this anymore. You are killing yourself. Something broke inside of you and the only way you can get better is by stepping down. You have lost the best parts of you over these past few months and I can’t stand to see you in so much physical, emotional and mental pain.” I was disappointed in myself that I hadn’t let God’s whisper be enough. In the hours and days after I was laid off I realized in all of my fighting and arguing with God I never once questioned the finances. I never said to Him but God my medicines and doctors are so expensive what will I do without insurance. I knew He had all of that figured out. It didn’t surprise me when my boss said, “Let me lay you off so you will be covered with insurance through the next month and receive unemployment so you have time to get everything figured out.” I was warned that social security would take at least five months and three rejections before I was approved. It didn’t. First try they not only approved me but because I had started working so young and had worked so hard through college I had paid fully into social security. God had the details worked out and the blessings ready to flow, He was simply waiting for me to say yes, to give Him #TheBestYes I could at that moment in my life. I started intensive Christian counseling a couple times a week through my home church paid in full by our Helps ministry, had unfettered hours with God every day, went away to a friend’s parents’ house in a small town in Wisconsin for almost three weeks and unplugged. When I got back from that trip Lysa TerKeurst’s book “Unglued” had been waiting in my mailbox, P31 was starting the OBS for it and my local Christian radio station was studying it with an intimate group of woman via Hangout once a week. Studying that book was one of the two most healing things in the first six months of this season of my life. Of course, the first was also waiting for me when I got home: Steel and Colton, the two additions that completed the Zeller family and an answer to a prayer that helped sustain me, a precious gift from God that gave me a reason to want to stay here on this planet and live out His will. The phone call from the State letting Traci and Marcus know there were two boys, half-brothers that needed immediate and most likely permanent placement came a week after I walked away from working. God needed me to have the time to give to my best friend and her family as it grew from one boy to three. I forget to often how magnificent God’s timing is, especially when it came to July and August of 2012. 

Go stand at the crossroads and look around.
    Ask for directions to the old road,
The tried-and-true road. Then take it.
    Discover the right route for your souls.

-Jeremiah 6:16a MSG