After my father remarried, I felt I had lost the only significant male person in my life… I escaped into a serious relationship, though I was too vulnerable to have one. I was swept off my feet by someone who came into my life like a leading man in a movie. One day, he asked me to lunch; when I returned to my office, there were roses at my desk, with a note that read, “Can’t wait to see you again. How about dinner?”
You couldn’t wipe the smile off my face all day…
Then, out of nowhere, the fairytale crashed to the ground…he took me home from a date and announced, as I was unbuckling my seatbelt, “I don’t want to see you anymore.”
This sentence sent my world into a tailspin. He looked at me coldly and said, “Well, I woke up this morning and decided I don’t love you anymore.” The intensity of the love story dissipated as quickly as it had begun. I stood on the curb as he drove away, and when the taillights were gone, I was left in darkness.
I realized that I had completely given my heart away. So, how was I supposed to get it back? As much as I wanted to turn the page on this chapter in my life, my new wound was compounded by the unresolved pain of an old wound, a pain that came flooding back as my feelings of abandonment resurfaced. I had never really healed from the death of my mother…
I remembered the doctor had given me tranquilizers for my anxiety at work. I decided to take one. I waited five minutes, decided I wasn’t feeling any better and took another. What’s wrong with these tranquilizers? I decided to take five, then ten, then I emptied the entire bottle. All I wanted was for the pain to stop. The next I knew; the room was spinning. My last thought was: What did I do? Am I going to wake up? Who will even find me?
The next day, I opened my eyes and couldn’t believe that I was alive. I immediately sensed that God had intervened. I got up, got dressed, and went to work. The entire day I was filled with awe knowing that God had saved me. But why? Why was I spared?...
It’s funny, but that night finally helped me see both my mother and my father as fellow sojourners. They were never meant to be perfect. They were meant to carry all the hopes and imperfections that come with being human. All the flawed Christians, me included, were the same way, I realized. And although I had on occasion judged my mother for her choices, I now knew better than to ever judge anyone. The greatest tragedies result from a broken heart—and how do you respond to someone with a broken heart? Not with judgment. Instead you pray that God shows mercy, and that they get through it. And you give them all the help you can.
…People often ask me how they can figure out what their particular calling is—and I tell them that you can identify your calling in the burdens that God places on you. Sometimes you have to go through the wilderness first. You just have to wait, be patient, and allow yourself to be led. We serve best when we let His plan and His mercy pour out through us. The real issue is to get through these wilderness years without removing yourself from the script that God has allowed. God has designed your story to end well, but you can’t circumvent the plot line to escape the hard parts. The complication and chaos is there for our refinement, not our destruction.
Most importantly, you cannot jettison the idea that you are the hero or heroine in your own story. With God at your back, you were meant to have a place of significance.
Of course there are moments, or weeks, or even years, when circumstances make this idea hard to grasp. When I stepped onto the soil of America, I felt entirely insignificant. I felt completely displaced. Everything in me wanted to run home. Later, when I felt abandoned and taken advantage of, I wanted to give up and die. My self-worth was so battered that I couldn’t imagine that one-day God would redeem all of this heartbreak for something greater. In those days, if you had told me that I would eventually receive a community leader medal from the Daughters of the American Revolution for being an immigrant who changed my new nation—there is no question that I would have laughed sadly.
Little did I know that, when my plane was touching down in New York City and I felt hopelessness crashing in my heart, the conversation in heaven was going entirely differently. God already knew that decades later, He would open the door for me to establish a ministry to protect the dreams of thousands of women. God knew that all the tragedies I had seen and all the disappointments I would experience were the perfect preparation for the work I would do for Him. While I stared at my situation and assessed it as completely hopeless, heaven celebrated. All the seeds were being planted, and later, all of these seeds would grow.
In this crooked and gloriously fruitful family tree, I can now see that the first seeds were planted long before I was born. My story, and the story of Inspire Women, began on the day my mother, a poor and unwanted village girl, took her first job at the cafe. She was born with the courage and drive to serve others—a trait that, along with all the rest, she passed down to me.
We can’t help thinking of the short term, of our own desires. We’re human; we focus on the here and now. But God focuses on the life that continues long after our time on earth is over. As I look back, it seems like everyone I met in the wilderness years was taking three steps forward and two steps back. We skip a step, miss a step; sometimes we fall down the steps completely.
Yet through it all, God is there to pick us up and to reconnect the story in ways that will astound us. And so it is with the hundreds of stories the ministry of Inspire Women helps to transform every year. Somehow, someone meets us at a citywide conference, or picks up a book of mine, or hears my message on the radio. Somehow, something catches their attention and they stop in their tracks and take note. They feel drawn to investigate. They discover a place of friendship where someone cares about their unique purpose in life. Someone offers to take the time to help them connect the dots, and map out their future, and envision how they can make the most lasting impact in their community. Someone offers to empower them with additional education they might need, or resources they might need to serve at their highest potential.
And there—just like that—the wilderness ends, and a new life begins.
Excerpted from A Daughter’s Destiny: Finding Redemption in the Midst of Broken Dreams by Anita Carman. Used with permission.
