Home | Charis Buckland

A little spring break happening here! Sometimes ya just need some random items outside to make the best memories.

When school begins again after spring break and with McDonald’s so close to home, it’s fun to get a treat there as a morning break! It’s nice to go just the two of us.

Sometimes people fall asleep in my bed watching Little House on the Prairie!

“I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust ate, the young locust, the destroying locusts, the devouring locust…” Joel 2:25

In this passage of Joel, the people of Judah had rebelled against Him. God called them to repent and turn back to Him. In the drought and locusts, they could do nothing but ask God for help (Joel 1). Let’s picture it – their grain was gone, the fields were wasted, the harvest was gone, the trees had withered, and they had no joy (Joel1:8-12). Yikes! That’s a miserable situation! They were powerless on their own to fix their situation. It affected everything in Judah and wildfires spread all over the land. Joel, the prophet, spoke for God and told them to get right with God. In fact, Joel told them to fast, because getting right with God was even more important than eating (Joel 1)! 

I am talking to a lot of people I know who are at a point in life where they question what to do next, and reflect on their lives and where they are currently. I am also reflecting and wondering what I have done with my life so far. Some of my friends wonder why they aren’t married yet. Some people wonder why their careers haven’t taken off. Some people wonder why their prayers feel unheard. Some people wonder why they struggle the way they do.

Hurt and pain are unwanted and feel undeserved. Some of my friends in their 20s wonder why they haven’t moved up in their careers, or question why they feel they have no career. People didn’t set out to get divorced or lose a child. People hurt when they lose their jobs. Broken relationships are real.

We as people, are not immune to struggles and pain. This world can be so exciting and wonderful, yet has times of immense pain and confusion. Like, “Why do I pray for something it seems like everyone else has and I have yet to receive it? Why do I feel left out?” Sometimes it looks like, “Why can’t I have something, since I deserve it more than those people who have what I am asking for.” Life can feel extremely frustrating. 

In this book of Joel, he spoke about the day of the Lord coming. In other words, God’s judgment was coming. When we are right with God, we don’t dread that! We want to see Him because we know we are on His side, and we are safe with Him. 

God called His people to turn to Him with all their heart. Interestingly, it doesn’t make their repentance less “real” because they had to be scared and warned about terrible judgment coming. It was important that they simply turn TO God and AWAY from sin. It was important that they have a heart change. Joel prayed on behalf the people for God to have mercy on them.

Beginning in Joel 2:21, Joel looked forward to restoration that God promised and he told Judah to look forward too, and to praise God for restoration before they even saw it! A little history here, ancient Israel had no irrigation, so if there was no rain, nothing grew since there was no way to get water to the fields. God promised rain to restore the lost crops and promised the fields to thrive again. 

The cool realization here is that God promised to restore all that was taken away. After the locusts tore up everything, including years of hard work in the fields, God fixed it. Charles Spurgeon says we cannot have back our time, but “there is a strange and wonderful way in which God can give back to you the wasted blessings, the unripened fruits of years over which you mourned. The fruits of wasted years may yet be yours.” This is super hopeful to us all. 

No matter what struggles have challenged you or what pain you have experienced (or are currently experiencing), God can restore all of it. We just have to turn our hearts to Him. 

This can be incredibly difficult when we know that God can do anything because nothing is too hard for Him (Jeremiah 32:27) but we feel like we have missed out on blessings. Why isn’t He working this out? Why is He not fixing this? 

After being married for five years, completing seminary, and growing into a “big girl,” we went to serve a church in west Tennessee. At this time, I was working on completing my supervised counseling hours while Brett was a student pastor at church. It felt like a solid time to have children, since we were in a secure place with a full-time student pastor job, and myself working on a counseling license. In May 2012, we presented my family with the news they would be grandparents, aunts, and uncles in a few months. I was absolutely ecstatic with excitement! 

I was excited for a baby, and my sister had come to stay with us during college summer break, to work as a summer intern. It was going to be a fabulous summer, so I thought. At the first ultrasound appointment, the nurses looked confused, and asked if I was sure I was expecting. I assured them I was. They told me they couldn’t find anything and sent me home after some bloodwork and scheduled a later visit. 

Unfortunately, this back and forth dragged out much of the summer, with taking blood and watching the hormone levels to see if they rose to represent pregnancy or fell to solidify there was no baby. I remember being on the phone with the doctor’s office even when we took the students to Centrifuge. After camp, I went back to the doctor’s office. I had to sit on the “non-pregnant” side of the waiting room and go through that door instead of the “pregnant” side door. It was a terrible feeling. I received a phone call in July to let me know with zero emotion that there was no baby. I am so glad my sister was there to keep my mind busy in the middle of the absolute heartache. I remember sobbing many times on the floor of my closet when I was at home alone, expressing my real feelings to God about Him – they weren’t pleasant, but He heard them anyway. 

For months, everyone I saw was expecting a baby. You know how it is when you are praying for something and it seems that everyone else has it? Even my Zumba instructor had a baby during this time.

The worst feeling was walking into Sunday School the Sunday after I learned there would be no baby for sure. I taught a small group of wonderful 10th grade girls and that Sunday, one of them pulled out a strip of sonogram photos of her unexpected baby on the way. I stood there stunned. As if it weren’t terrible enough that I didn’t get photos like that, a fifteen-year old who wasn’t even ready to have a baby was getting a baby! I taught class that day, and from then on, had to practice loving hard when she had what I prayed for. I asked God why He wouldn’t he give me a baby too, after I had done the True Love Waits thing, and I went to seminary, and I was married, and ready for that? I had no understanding at all.

One day at this same time that summer, I was asked if I had heard that the children’s minister at church was expecting! Seriously God?

It was only four months, but those four months were pure heartache and struggle. I questioned why not me, as I saw everyone else in all their baby bliss. It was only four months when I reflect on it now, but it seemed to go on forever. It was definitely one of the most painful times in my life. It’s like that moment of fear and trust when I used to jump from the side of the pool to my Dad in the water, and that moment of no feet on the side of the pool, hanging in the air, having not quiet landed safely in his arms yet. That moment when I was holding onto nothing, trusting I would be caught safely.

The good news is that God restored that pain and those months of anger, fear, and confusion. I didn’t get those months back and I will always remember how difficult it was. God restored my hopes and dreams and blessed me with a baby the next June. My Linley. I will always remember the due date that of that first time, but I know that I would never have met my Linley any other way. That fact is what gives me the most peace. 

No matter what you are praying for or where in your life you feel the locusts have completely destroyed, trust that God is capable of restoring the time. In counseling, I always remind people that often we have to trust what we know to be true in our heads even if our feelings aren’t there yet. Trust God and know in your mind the truth that God loves you and is present even before the happy “feelings” we look for. Sometimes in that moment of jumping off the side of the pool, all we may feel is fear, but know in our minds that God is there to receive us and He won’t let us go. He can and will restore the time. 

Love,
Charis 

Pic(k) of the week:

Seriously. Who keeps putting diapers in the laundry basket…These little crystals are a terrible mess to clean out of the washing machine…