One of the greatest gifts of being human is that we have been given the ability to hope. To have faith. To love. To imagine that who we are today doesn’t have to be the final version of who we become.

Sometimes those thoughts are going to come to us best when life finally gets quiet. When we close our eyes to reflect. When we pray. When we think about where we have been and where we believe God may be leading us. In those moments, we can separate what we currently are from who we believe we could become.

Then Monday morning comes.

Responsibilities return. Problems show up. Someone disappoints us. We disappoint ourselves. The phone rings. The bill arrives. Something breaks. Someone says something they should not have said. And suddenly the vision becomes much more difficult to hold onto. I know that the difficult days and my actions in the middle of them reveal far more about what I truly believe than the good days ever could.

It’s easy to believe I am being patient when nobody is testing my patience. It is easy to believe I have faith when everything’s working. It’s easy to believe I am compassionate when nobody’s hurt me.

But who am I when I’m tired? Who am I when I get scared? Who am I when I feel betrayed, or frustrated, or embarrassed, or overwhelmed?

Those moments have a way of exposing the space between the person I hope to become and the person that I currently am.

And maybe that’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes getting beat up by life shows me much more clearly what still needs to change in me. The problem is that I am not always prepared for the process.

I want wisdom, but wisdom usually means admitting when I was wrong.

I want patience, but patience requires something worth waiting through.

I want courage, but courage does not grow where there is nothing to fear.

I want stronger faith, but faith grows when I have to trust God with things I can’t control.

I want to become the person God is calling me to be, but I’m not always excited about the shaping required to get there.

Sometimes that shaping comes through the choices of other people. Sometimes people make decisions that hurt us. Sometimes I am the one who makes the poor decision.

And sometimes nobody did anything wrong at all. Life simply happened. We live in a broken world where sickness, loss, disappointment, uncertainty, and pain are part of the human experience.

And I think we need to pay close attention here. Every painful thing that happens is not God personally sending suffering into our lives so He can teach us some lesson. People have free will. People make terrible decisions. We make terrible decisions. Things happen that God does not desire.

But I do believe God can take things He didn’t desire and still use them to form something within us that glorifies Him.

That is where my choice begins. When life becomes painful, what am I allowing the experience to produce in me? Is it producing bitterness? Fear? Resentment?

Or am I still willing to believe that God can shape something useful from what I’ve endured?

Oswald Chambers wrote about being willing to be battered into the shape of the vision God’s given us. That image really resonated with me.

Imagine a sculptor working with stone. That stone cannot yet see what the sculptor sees. It only feels the shaping. If the stone could run away, I imagine there would be moments when it would.

Because I know I have.

There have been seasons in my life where I’ve wanted nothing more than a little peace. Just make the storm stop. Just let things settle down. Just give me a chance to breathe.

There is nothing wrong with wanting peace. God knows we need it. But I’ve noticed something about myself. After going through a difficult season, I can become so determined to protect my peace that I begin avoiding anything that might disturb it. And if I’m not careful, protecting my peace slowly becomes avoiding growth.

I begin choosing the easier path. I avoid the difficult conversation. I stop taking risks. I stop challenging myself. I become so grateful to be out of the storm that I forget I still have somewhere to go and someone to be.

The waves pushed me around long enough that I became focused entirely on surviving the water instead of remembering the destination.

That is why I need quiet time. Not entertainment. Not scrolling on my phone. Not another distraction. Actual quiet. Time to pray. Time to think. Time to ask what God may be doing in my life while everything around me feels confusing.

Because it is easy to become so busy surviving life that I never stop long enough to notice how it is shaping me. And when I finally do become quiet, there is another voice I need to pay attention to.

My own voice, too often, telling me.

I’m tired. I’m scared. I’m frustrated. I’m exhausted. I’m not good enough. I’m never going to get there.

There are a lot of sentences in life that begin with the words, “I am.” But sometimes I can become so consumed with my little “I am” that I forget the Great “I AM.”

God said, “I AM WHO I AM.”

That does not mean our emotions don’t matter. They do. Again, we are human. There will be days when we are exhausted, afraid, discouraged, angry, and confused. We shouldn’t shame ourselves for experiencing those things. But we also don’t have to let temporary feelings determine the direction of our lives.

Maybe my prayer is not always:

“God, show me what You want me to become.” I think a lot of the time I already know.

Maybe my prayer needs to become more like, “God, when You begin shaping me into what You have already shown me, help me not run from that process.”

Help me stay faithful while You shape me through what I’ve endured. Help me learn without becoming bitter. Help me grow without becoming hard. Help me trust that the difficult chapter is not the entire story.

The vision of who I can become is exciting, but becoming that person rarely is. Becoming requires patience, humility, failure, forgiveness, courage, discipline, and almost always a few new scars.

I’ve discovered that God does not simply transport me to the end of the vision. Instead, He transforms me along the way. I may not always appreciate the process, but I can learn to recognize what God is producing through it.

And I think that is something we can all understand. The journey is a large part of the reward.

Maybe that is the point of it all.

Practice to Cultivate

Find 10 or 15 quiet minutes this week and ask yourself:

What has God shown me about who I need to become that I keep resisting?

What am I protecting that may actually be keeping me from growing?

What pain am I allowing to define me instead of allowing it to refine me?

What would obedience look like if I stopped waiting to feel ready?

Ask God for the courage not only to see the person He is calling you to become, but to stay rooted through the process required to become that person.

Well Rooted is written by Jeremy Elliott. Elliott owns a lawncare business and lives in the Great Bend area.