katie shaw ficker

I hung the verses on our wall over eleven years ago as a newlywed, hoping they would serve as a visual reminder throughout our marriage that the seasons would not always be pretty, but that God is still God and He still moves in each season, even the dark and hard ones. Almost twelve years later, they still bring a quietness to my soul. 

“There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens:

    a time to be born and a time to die,
  a time to plant and a time to uproot,
    a time to kill and a time to heal,
  a time to tear down and a time to build,
    a time to weep and a time to laugh,
  a time to mourn and a time to dance,
    a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
  a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
    a time to search and a time to give up,
  a time to keep and a time to throw away,
    a time to tear and a time to mend,
  a time to be silent and a time to speak,
    a time to love and a time to hate,
  a time for war and a time for peace.”

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Some years ago now, God started moving in our ministry work here in powerful and miraculous ways, and we all stood in awe as things that man never could have orchestrated came into being. This continued over the next couple of years, and we experienced a God who hears and moves in supernatural ways. During that time, I became pregnant with twins, a pregnancy that quickly became complicated. I left the hospital after two months of complete bed rest, grateful for a testimony of God’s miraculous saving power after a few near-death experiences and a reminder of our privilege to mourn with hope. Yet I also left that hospital with empty arms and a heart full of questions as our twins now rested in the arms of their heavenly Father. The next few years brought further challenges as we opened another school and shut down a couple others, friends came and went, relationships changed, and our own hearts walked through the pain of grief on a level we had never experienced before. 

I wrestled with accepting a story that I never wanted to be mine, and among many questions pushing their way to the surface, I questioned hard whether this same powerful God who had moved in such supernatural ways could actually meet me in each of these new seasons where my inner questions seemed momentously bigger than even the circumstantial experiences that had faced us in years past. I battled anxiety and fear, and as the losses piled up faster than I could process them, the slow, molasses-like trudge of grief left me weak, exhausted, and insecure. Simply showing up for the day became an accomplishment, and I wasn’t sure that this God of mine was very inclined to come near to my disheveled state of being (to put it nicely) during those dismal seasons when I had very little to offer, and  even a simple smile felt like putting on a show. 

I knew that I had children and a husband that needed me to get out of bed in the morning, and somewhere in my head I knew that God was not done with me, but for seemingly the first time in my life, that strong-willed, hard-working, self-confident, pick-myself-up-by-my-bootstraps place inside of me was desperately running out of fuel. I got up, made sure my people ate, made an attempt at homeschooling my children, showed up to meetings, administrated paperwork and personnel, worshipped, prayed, and did life. But as I would crawl into bed at night, my broken inner soul seemed to finally awaken, pouring out the pain and questions.

And there in those dark seasons marked by tears, confusion, brokenness, and anger, I found my God in a new way. Little by little over these past few years, He has shown me that yes, not only can He meet us in each season, but He achingly longs to meet us in each and every season over and over again.

I had to step back from my desire to quickly wrap up my grieving process and definition of God and faith into a nice, neat, clean little object lesson, and I had to be okay with it being messy… sometimes very messy.

I had to acknowledge that I was often not sure how to move forward, and I had to ask for help… help from the Holy Spirit and help from the body of Christ around me. 

I had to repent, surrender, and ask for forgiveness from God and others when my own mess spilled over in rebellion, hurtful words, and a belief that I could do this without Him and them; and I had to accept the grace and forgiveness that was given to me every single time, over and over again. 

I had to be okay with letting go of my pride that desperately wanted to have it all figured out, and I had to realize that I had and would continue to get things wrong at times; I had to move into a humility that acknowledged that I am a human being with limits of what is in my ability to control and do…

And little by little, I had to let go of my desire for self-preservation and a Bible verse or promise from God that I would never experience pain and loss again, and I had to learn to trust Him in those places of pain.

And little by little, one seemingly slow step at a time, the trust and healing came. 

There in those places where the darkness seemed to overcome everything, I found a Savior, a Comforter, and a Father whose Light shone brighter than any darkness I faced. I found a Hope that this season was not the end. And I found a Love that confidently whispered, “there is no place you can go that I cannot find you… no place that my love cannot reach.”