Recently a new friend asked the common question, “What do you do for a living?”
I hesitated for a moment. Thoughts flashed through my head of the past couple of weeks. Of conversations I’ve had with clients and friends. I know what my job description is, but is it what I actually do?
I became a life coach because I got to help people, particularly women, identify where they are and where they want to go! One of my favorite things to do is to partner with someone to create an action plan for their dream.
However, recently I’ve been more of a Psalm 77 coach than a life coach. Have you never heard of a Psalm 77 coach? Yeah, me neither. I just made it up!
Here’s why I use the title Psalm 77.
When I start working with a client, I often ask just two questions.
1) What do you want to talk about today?
2) What do you want to have to feel successful in this session?
If a client can answers those questions at the beginning of the session, we can make incredible progress.
However, what I find most often is before a woman can accomplish what she wants to be true of her, she has to grieve what isn’t!
It sounds something like this!
I yell out to my God, I yell with all my might,
I yell at the top of my lungs. He listens.
I found myself in trouble and went looking for my Lord;
my life was an open wound that wouldn’t heal.
When friends said, “Everything will turn out all right,”
I didn’t believe a word they said.
I remember God—and shake my head.
I bow my head—then wring my hands.
I’m awake all night—not a wink of sleep;
I can’t even say what’s bothering me.
I go over the days one by one,
I ponder the years gone by.
I strum my lute all through the night,
wondering how to get my life together.
Will the Lord walk off and leave us for good?
Will he never smile again?
Is his love worn threadbare?
Has his salvation promise burned out?
Has God forgotten his manners?
Has he angrily stalked off and left us?
“Just my luck,” I said. “The High God goes out of business
just the moment I need him.”
Sound familiar! It is actually THE MESSAGE version of Psalm 77:1-10. But it is also expresses some of the emotions we often have when life has fallen apart on us. We try to get through it and move on. But the farther we try to get from pain, the more it grabs hold of us and ties us down.
It’s this kind of stuff that keeps us from moving forward. No matter how hard we try.
So often, rather than asking the two questions I mentioned above, I’m giving a client permission to speak honestly about they feel about the past pain. Often those emotions are directly expressed in the form of anger – to God. Not in a quiet prayer, but in fists raised, voices screaming, sobs pouring out.
But if you read the rest of Psalm 77 you know that’s not the end! It can be an incredible beginning.
I’ve written about the significance of this Psalm in the past so I won’t go into a sermon here. But my perspective of this passage has long been that you must do the EXPRESSING of verses 1-10 to get to the point that you could be intimate with the Lord. Then you could do the thing that is spiritual.
But what I’ve come to recognize is that the wrestling- the yelling and screaming- the pounding on our Heavenly Father’s chest is every bit as meaningful as the worship that comes after. It’s of equal importance to creating a strategic action plan to help us take huge steps forward.
Verse 11 says:
Once again I’ll go over what God has done,
lay out on the table the ancient wonders;
I’ll ponder all the things you’ve accomplished,
and give a long, loving look at your acts.
When we speak truth to God (truth that God already knows by the way) we see that God sees us. So often in our anger we believe God has completely forgotten us.
But when we see
that God sees us
We begin to see Him more intimately than we’ve ever known!
We know our selves more deeply than we ever thought possible!
We see our future with more potential than we ever imagined!
So how about you?
Are you stuck?
Feeling like you can’t break through a brick wall to move forward?
Do you need to have a conversation with God?
It’s a great place to start!
PS. If you need help, I do that sort of thing! I’m a Psalm 77 Coach!