Self sufficiency - Guest Post

Did you have any contact with Mary Ann Hudson, our family coordinator, when Levi was in the hospital? If you did, you would know she is amazing and one of my dear friends. Our church asked her to share about self-sufficiency and identity this past Saturday. It was encouraging to me so I asked her if I could share it with you guys. Reluctantly she sent it :)

My name is Mary Ann, and my current role is that of a stay-at-home mom to three beautiful little ones. I was reluctant to speak to you on this topic today because it has always been and still is such a constant struggle for me. I just want to be honest about that from the beginning as I share my story and the things the Lord has laid on my heart for you this morning.

In high school, everything seemed to come easy to me. Whether it was sports, academics, leadership roles, friends, it didn’t matter. I was extremely driven to succeed in all areas, and somehow managed to do so in many. This drive intensified my sophomore year of high school when my mom passed away due to complications from breast cancer. It was a very quick diagnosis followed by death, and it was a hard, defining time in my life. After that time, this drive morphed into a desire to be self-sufficient, capable, un-swayed by emotions or needs. I worked hard, and I “succeeded” in getting what I wanted.

My time in college and my early twenties was much the same. I met and married Matt during that time, and went on to start a successful career in marketing. Life was really easy. The Lord saved me as a child, but my faith during all of these years was marked much more by head knowledge than heart change. I was serving often in my church; I saw continued growth in my career; my marriage was relatively easy, especially if I compared myself to some of my closest friends; I was proud of my life, my career, all of the things “I” had accomplished and obtained. I had a sense of security in my own self-sufficiency. I felt that anything I put my mind and efforts toward, I could accomplish. And that included everything from my life plan, my happiness, and even the way others viewed me.

That time I snapped a picture of Mary Ann teaching our kids at church. She serves each Sunday as the teacher for the  kindergarten - 2nd grade class and worships in West Seattle in the morning just so our kids can have a consistent presence each Sunday night. This is sacrificial generosity. 

During this time, Matt and I moved to California and enjoyed a couple of years in San Francisco. After that, we moved back to the South. I was ready to begin the next phase of my life plan.  We were ready to start a family, and my sisters and I were finally starting a business together. Everything was going just as I had planned. I was in control, everything was well thought out, and I was sufficient to carry out my plan.

Then the Lord, by His unfathomable grace, chose to frustrate my plans. It was time for us to start trying to have our first child. It was supposed to be easy. We were both healthy, never had any reason to believe that we were not in control of this decision and timing. All of our friends were having kids; no one was struggling, so we assumed the same would hold true for us. However, this was not the case. For no “known” reason, I couldn’t get pregnant. We tried for a couple of years with no success. This was the first time that I wanted to do something, and I simply could not. No amount of effort, no amount of striving, no amount of planning could accomplish what I wanted to accomplish. I was insufficient for this task. I saw myself, my body, as a failure.

The Lord used this to finally bring me to my knees. This “failure” was a wake up call for me to see the beautiful truth that I really was a complete and utter failure. Not just in this area where my body had failed, but as I started examining other areas of my life, I saw the same thing – this identity that I had relied on and built for so long, was worthless. At this point, I pondered these things, but the busyness of life often kept me distracted from the truths the Lord was trying to teach me.

Over the next few years, we ended up getting pregnant and miscarrying 4 times. My oldest daughter, Sellers, was born in the middle of these miscarriages.

Just a side note- had we not walked this road of infertility, my sweet precious daughter, Piper, would most likely not be a part of our family. The Lord planted a desire to adopt in our hearts during that time period. Had having babies been easy for us like everything else had been, we would not have the blessing of the most joyful, creative, beautiful child I know. She is amazing, and the Lord has used her life to refine me, to show me how He feels about me, His adopted child. He has used her to help me understand how beautiful the gospel truly is.  And so, I look back, with a heart full of gratitude that the Lord chose to frustrate my plans during this season.

In 2010, the Lord was working in both of our hearts. We knew He was calling us to plant our lives somewhere other than the place where we had grown up. We began praying about this, and ended up meeting with a group of people planning to plant a church in Seattle. I did not want to go, was frustrated by this process because it was not part of my plan. But Matt told me in the spring of 2011 that He felt confident that the Lord was calling us to move to Seattle. By God’s grace in that moment, I said okay (instead of what I wanted to say), and by God’s grace He also later made it clear to me as well that He did indeed want our family to plant our life in a different place.

During this time, we were in the process of adopting our middle child, Piper. And literally the day after we signed the lease for an apartment in Wallingford, I found out I was pregnant with our youngest, Jack.

That first year … in a new city, with a brand new church community that did not yet feel like family, with a just turned 3 year old, an adopted daughter who did not yet feel like my daughter, and a needy newborn … the Lord finally broke down every ounce of self-sufficiency that I had. I was incapable of running the business I had run successfully for the last 7 years. I spoke harshly to my 3 year old regularly. During this time, I could not make myself feel the same love for Piper that I felt for Sellers. I found out at Jack’s 4 month check up that I was not producing enough milk for him. I could not even feed my baby. I had moved to this new city to “be on mission”, to meet my neighbors, to share the gospel with them, to have deep conversation, to see the Lord move in mighty ways, to plant a church. Yet I could not even think a complete thought most days. In my eyes, I was a complete and utter failure in every aspect of my life. Nothing was as planned. I was doing nothing well. I was merely surviving.

And yet, for the first time in my life, I was constantly breathing the prayer, “God help me. I cannot do this on my own. God help me. I need you.”

And the Lord met me there. I saw Him daily, even hourly; sustain me at my weakest point. I had nothing of my own to provide or bring to the table. He did it all.  And he began to show me that my identity was not in my successes or my self-sufficiency. I was not a successful business-woman; I was not a loving devoted mother; I was not the person who always had their act together. I saw my wretchedness, my sin on a deeper level than I had ever seen it before. I saw my need for help from someone much greater than me. And when I asked for it, I didn’t see disdain, or disappointment or rejection, I saw a loving father who was waiting to show me that both my successes and my failures are His. We serve a sovereign, loving father who, by His grace, allows us to fail; allows us to see our sin, our deep need for Him.

It is still a daily, sometimes hourly battle for me to remember that I am not self-sufficient, that I do not want to be self-sufficient. That I must constantly lay my plans, my agenda, my desire for “success” at His feet. To remember that my failures are the most beautiful part of my story, because those are the wounds and the scars that He used to show me the depth of His love. To show me who He says I am, not who the enemy shouts that I am. I am not bothering my Father when I come to him with my needs. He does not want me to get everything together, and then come to His feet. Even in my most successful times and seasons, I have nothing to bring to the table.

And there is great joy and true rest in that. As His needy, dependent child, I rejoice in the truth that I have nothing, and therefore I am required to bring nothing to the table. He alone sustains me; He alone defines me; He alone tells me who I am.

The reality of living a life that is based on a false identity (self-sufficiency, successful, servant hearted, whatever that identity is), is that many if not all of our efforts are spent building up this identity. We go to great lengths and efforts to please others, to make ourselves feel happy or secure, to show others and ourselves that this is who we truly are. But that isn’t who we are – whether your life has been defined by success or by failure – that isn’t who you are. And, no matter how hard we try, we can never live up to that false identity.

But when I live in light of the identity the Lord has graciously given me…that I am the fully ransomed, deeply loved, insufficient, needy child of God…then Christ in me enables me to do all things, to suffer all things, to bear all things, to find joy in all things. When we live with this identity, our energy and efforts are freed up to bear other’s burdens, to speak the gospel in love no matter how hard the situation, to love those who are un-lovable, to seek to please only the Lord and not man.

And that is a beautiful way to live life. We no longer live a life characterized by the prison of self-performance - by short lived happiness over temporary successes, despair over failures or setbacks. Our lives instead are marked by deep rest, by joy, by confidence in the One who defines us.

sweet picture I caught of Matt (Mary Ann's husband)  and Piper  (Mary Ann's daughter)  last night at church . It was hard to hold back tears as I saw Piper clinging to her dad's neck while worship music played and thinking about what Mary Ann had shared the day prior. Also thinking about how God placed her in this family from China and the beautiful picture it represents of how we are adopted children of God.