RUTH PASQUES: HINDSIGHT IS A BEAUTIFUL THING

WHEN WE’RE STILL ON THE JOURNEY IT’S HARD to understand ‘why’, ‘what’, or ‘how’, but once we’ve reached the other side, turned around to see how far we’ve come and who we have become, we start to understand the why, what, and how. And then hindsight becomes a beautiful thing.

As I write this, I am standing on the other side of a ten-year journey in Jeffrey’s Bay at Victory Church, and I am blown away and awestruck at the goodness of my God.

But first, let’s go back to the beginning… to be completely honest, it’s been hard to write this and summarise all the valley and mountaintop moments I’ve had over the years.

I stumbled into Victory Gap Year at the age of 18, somewhat accidentally I had thought at the time, but then again, nothing with God is ‘by accident’. At the time, I didn’t feel too sure about myself or God; I had come out of tough family circumstances and was heading down a road of destruction and taking my friends along with me. Looking back now, I can see the hand of God over my life as I had often found myself in dangerous situations and always managed (by His grace, I realise now) to get myself out of it unscathed.

I carried a lot of heavy baggage of shame, guilt, rejection and unworthiness, but over the years, God gently worked on my heart, made me brave, and surrounded me with the right people who loved and corrected me. The word says that His kindness leads us to repentance, and I found that to be true as God became personal to me and I understood His love for me.

The journey is often extremely uncomfortable, and there were so many times that I wanted to give up and run away. At times I did run away, but the desperate need for freedom, the desire to find purpose, and the determination to not allow the enemy to rob me any longer always led me back towards God’s heart and Jbay.

During my time in Jeffreys Bay, I sadly lost both my parents, my mom very suddenly in a shooting accident and five years later, my dad to a long and painful eight year battle with cancer. The mere thought of being 27 with neither parent present for all the significant life events that still lay before me, like marriage and children, would have crushed me before I met Jesus. But Jesus is so kind, and in His love softens the sting of death and gives peace that one can’t fully comprehend. During these valley moments, I fully grasped with my head and most importantly, my heart the incredible GOODNESS of God, that even in death and heartbreak, He remains and always will be so good.

There were, of course, so many mountaintop moments over the years as I discovered my love for the local expression of the church and grew in my creativity and passion for all things creative and media and had the privilege of leading the Media Department at Victory Church and the Media Stream at Victory Gap Year. I met a community of people who have become my family and greatest cheerleaders.

In 2022, this chapter came to a sudden end as God encouraged me to ‘DREAM AGAIN’, something I had stopped doing because somewhere along the journey, I formed a deep fear of disappointment and always (without me realising) braced myself for the worst.

“God gives us the desires of our hearts” was something I thought worked for other people but not for me, and when my move to London became a reality, I realised that hindsight is, in fact, a beautiful thing because I then understood the ‘why’, ‘what’, and ‘how’. God’s timing is perfect. My ten years in Jeffrey’s Bay created an unshakable foundation for this next chapter of my life. God is more concerned with the condition of our hearts that He is with the destination we so long for.

Over time I have learnt that God waits there for us in our future. He’s a loving Father who knows the beginning from the end and always has been and always will be good.

“Make your plans fellow dreamer but don’t set them in stone for the steps He has determined and written into your story often lead far away from the course you imagined.”