JUDY SCHELLINGERHOUT

hope, joy and discipline

In October 2020, God waved three words at me -almost like a dentist’s hand, right up in my face.

HOPE, JOY AND DISCIPLINE.

Three essentials for all seasons in life, but I knewthey were being waved at me specifically becauseall three had come under attack in recent times.Most people would get excited about hope and joy,and be less enthusiastic about discipline. However,for me, it was the exact opposite. I can give youa pretty paragraph on how I feel the Lord starteddirecting my steps in discipline, but hope and joy isa bit more puzzle-ish.

I know how to work on discipline. In fact, God gave me a specific idea:Twelve sets of 21’s for 2021. I immediately started making my list of twelve 21’s. It included things like reading 21 books, trying out 21 new recipes, decluttering 21 spaces in my home, 21 sugar-free days, 21 days of rephrasing my responses etc. It required some planning but it was all “box tickable”. I remember thinking to myself that it might be a bit too easy to really stretch my discipline, but God knew exactly what he had in store for me. I committed to this process exactly a week before finding out that by July 2021 a new-born baby would enter our lives.

Before we continue, I just have to take a quick sidestep with this story. We were told to close the chapter on having a third baby. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, stage 4 endometriosis, and at the time I was almost 40 with only one fallopian tube left. I had suffered from a CEP/abdominal pregnancy on my colon and a previous miscarriage. I had made total peace with these facts, but God’s timing and His way had a different idea and we were blessed with a laatlammetjie. It weighs heavy on my heart that so many others are struggling to conceive, but God encouraged me to encourage you to entrust your timeline and your season to Him and His bigger picture.

Okay, back to the story.

Just days before finding out we were expecting a celebration baby, I told my husband, DC, who was concerned that my twelve 21’s would be too much, that there’s no time more perfect for my 21’s than 2021. We don’t have new-borns, toddlers or teenagers. We’re in the honeymoon phase of parenting! Well, then I found out I was expecting and I starting doubting if it would be too much too. I prayed about it and realised that it was still the perfect time, even though God turned it up a notch by adding a baby to the mix! These 21’s are not about seeing how quickly I can hamsterroll through them. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. They’re constructive ways to peacefully keep my focus in healthy places and to practice discipline. Being committed to the process is rooting new levels of discipline in me. I’m experiencing how the fruit of discipline is rest and that this rest is a nurturing embrace for cultivating better habits and stewardship.

When it comes to hope and joy however, you need to pull and war a lot more to hold onto the word.

A bouncy ball bounces back, but it needs the right surface to be able to do so. God, with His fatherheart-kindness used the bottom of the rock-hard pit I was in (details in issue 15) to be this surface I can bounce back from. But on my way bouncing back, I wasn’t expecting resistance. I thought this was my well-deserved turn for an easier season after the series of losses and trauma my family and I had been through. Hope started rising in me that it was safe to start experiencing joy again. I didn’t feel like I needed to be on constant guard anymore, waiting for the next crisis to knock on my door. It took a lot of work to actually get to that place in my heart and I had to invest a lot of time and energy into healing. So, I was quite surprised when resistance did show up.

The drought and all the circumstances around it, hit us hard - in more than one way. God warned us about it in quite a few dreams, but with the unexpected around every corner, feelings of doubt and worry still rise. I was at a loss for answers. I felt misunderstood and my character came into question. One day a friend reminded me that Jesus too, was misunderstood. He knew loss and rejection. Trials are inevitable and thankfully there was a foundation of hope and joy already laid in me. I like to describe this as my maintenance season.

My boys are forever planting new little seeds with a lot of success. I don’t have patience, so I always buy baby plants that just need repotting. Almost 100% of the time though, their seeds make it into strong, fruitful plants that withstand the heat and windy weather of the Eastern Cape - while my baby plants are normally dead within 3 weeks of repotting. In this maintenance season of mine, I realised that I was busy trying to do the exact same thing: I was trying to shortcut the process of building on my foundation of deeply rooted hope and joy. My whole being felt bulldozed over but I quickly identified that I was allowing the enemy to deplete me, when in fact he is the one with limited resources, not my God!

It’s a harsh reality when there’s nothing left that you can do to fix something, especially when it’s in your nature to be a fixer. But we know that we fight against principalities, the powers of darkness and that we have been empowered to rise up and destroy strongholds. I knew I couldn’t stand for brokenness being my final destination! That’s when God began blocking my earthly perspective with the dentist’s hand in my face, and hope and joy began rising in my heart from underneath the ground where this seed could achieve its greatest expression! He started uncovering truths to me that the enemy had made me forget. The truth that joy expands my capacity and that is why it came under attack in the first place. The truth that God is a restorer and that therefore I have the heart of a restorer in me. The truth that He is El Roi - the God who sees me! And in this fractured place I felt the security of His love and healing. His love breaks lies so that we get to hold onto His hope and His joy, knowing that His plan for reconciliation and restoration is already in place. His truth gets to dictate my prayers, not my doubts and not the hope I have placed in people or in outcomes. Nothing earthly can hold my hope! He gives me the courage I need (Josh 1:9) and our hope in Him will not put us to shame (Rom 5).

I was trying to shortcut the process of building on my foundation of deeply rooted hope and joy.

There are moments that still overwhelm me but then I remember that there is a song that speaks of being able to feel my feelings without leaning on them, so then I put on my armour and remember the choice before me: I can choose to suffer alone, to see only the pain, and pick up the lies, accusations and offenses the enemy lays before me, or I can look for the beauty, the miracles, the promises and be fed with His daily bread. This time was no different than the first time I had to make this choice, but that’s part of the essence of Psalm 84.

“How enriched are they who find their strength in the Lord, even when their paths wind through the dark valley of tears, they dig deep to find a pleasant pool where others find only pain. He gives to them a brook of blessing filled from the rain of an outpouring!”

I recently saw this trend on social media where people are calling others out for putting ribbons on everything hard in life to make it look pretty, or to give everything bad a silver lining. Unfortunately, I cannot get onto that bandwagon!

I’m the girl who needs to find the purpose in my suffering as promised in James 1. That doesn’t always mean finding the purpose straight away, but I cannot live without that hope and joy. There’s a powerful quote that says, “I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me against the Rock of ages.” My #makeitbeautiful and #beautifultrauma is rooted in the hope that His word speaks of. My bad seasons are not authored by the enemy, (nor God) we just live in a broken world, but as people of God we get to taste and see that all seasons are purposeful!

We have to believe that our stories have value, we have to be willing to break through barriers, strongholds and principalities, with our hope and joy set in Him. If not for us, then for the next generation! With that in mind, I endeavour to continue building on this foundation no matter what my circumstances look like, because I know we are called to keep our eyes fixed on heaven!

His love breaks lies so that we get to hold onto His hope and His joy, knowing that His plan for reconciliation and restoration is already in place.

— Judy and her family live and farm in Patensie, South Africa. She is part of me2 Mentoring at Victory Church