Sitting In Satan’s Chair

It’s no new discovery that Satan uses things meant for beauty to totally wreck us, and there’s no doubt he tries to use relationships and marriage as weapons.

I’ve always heard that engagements and wedding planning can be one of the hardest seasons to walk through, especially as a young couple. I honestly didn’t believe them because the first half of my engagement to my fiance was absolutely free from stress or drama. Then, the second half hit.

Things got real when we entered the year 2017, which is the year we are getting married. Our church begins the year with 21 days of prayer and fasting, and one of my main topics of personal prayer has been wedding planning and our relationship.

During 21 Days, which I will be writing about in my next post, the first week was very uplifting and very insightful when it came to purchasing our house, the second week was full of attacks from the enemy, and the third week has been a “full circle” kind of week where things are coming together and God is bringing me back and steering my focus (my one word for the year).

Buying a house, preparing for a wedding, maintaining our relationship… those are all very stressful ordeals if you let them be – and I let them be. I started focusing on very worldly, materialistic things. I wanted the perfect house in the perfect location and the perfect wedding with the most perfect flowers and food and decorations and songs and guests… and God said, “Hi Kaitlin. Yeah. Remember me? I AM perfect. You are not. And nothing else is either.”

When we compare our lives, any part, to anyone else, they will always fall short in some way. And I was comparing every single part of my life to every part of everyone else’s life while my fiance watched, feeling totally defeated and believing the lie that I was helping the enemy tell – that he wasn’t enough and that he wasn’t giving me what I needed or wanted. I didn’t even know I was helping the enemy until I saw it in Caleb’s eyes while I was complaining. I was allowing the enemy to use what should be such a beautiful, joyful, exciting time in our lives to steal, kill, and destroy and sliver of joy we could have possibly had.

We would talk about our wedding – I would talk about all my worries about the cosmetic aspects. We would talk about our house, our house that we prayed over for so long, our house God clearly led us to – I would question the location and talk about where other people were living and question whether or not we should have gotten it. We would talk about getting married and how exciting it would be – I would bring up our finances or talk about how we would have to adapt to living with each other forever or talk about exactly how I wanted to decorate and how I was stressed out about decorating the perfect home. WHAT!!!

I took a step back, saw what I was doing, and then I just wept. God has sent me this wonderful, beautiful man who loves me exactly how I begged God for a man to love me, and all I could do to him was worry him that I was unhappy because of MATERIAL things that will fade away. Thank GOODNESS God gives me grace and mercy because I was being absolutely ridiculous.

Someone told me the other day, “The most important thing is the food and the alcohol and the DJ. You want people to enjoy their food and have fun. People will always remember the food and the party.”

I absolutely disagree. The most important thing about a wedding day is the vows two people are making to God and to each other. The most important thing is that the ceremony glorifies God. The most important thing is that people leave feeling filled up by The Spirit and that they are inspired by the love and commitment of two people sold out for Jesus and sold out for each other.

I know I will have that. I know God sent me a man who loves Him and loves me and will continue to work for The Kingdom for the rest of forever with me right beside him, running along encouraging him and being encouraged. That is love and that is beautiful and that is a DREAM wedding.

My dress and my venue and my food and flowers and coffee bar and DJ will all be adorable and beautiful and fun, but even if they aren’t, He is still good, and we will still be married. We will still begin our lives together that day and promise to always uphold our end of the deal. People we love will still be there loving us and praying us on.

As for our home – it doesn’t matter if it’s in the middle of downtown or the middle of nowhere, I want our home to be a place of rest for us and for anyone who enters. One of my favorite people’s houses is my favorite because I can feel Jesus when I walk in. I don’t care what it looks like or where it is, I care about the peace I walk in and out with. My parents’ house is my favorite because of the memories that have been made and because the kitchen smells like my mom and I have a reading chair and my dad’s spot looks and smells like him. It doesn’t matter that it’s outside the city limits. It matters that it’s a resting place for them, for me, for everyone.

My life has never been perfect and never will be, but it has been and always will be beautiful because of the goodness God pulls out of the mess. What Satan means for harm in our lives, God means for good and for glory.

Satan can try all day to sneak in where I’m weak and turn my head to look at what others have and what I “could” have and what I think life should look like and caring about materialistic things and make me believe that what everyone else thinks is what matters, but God swoops in and turns my head up to Him so I can see what matters and why I matter.

Satan uses what we are most focused on during certain seasons and what we are trying to accomplish to totally blur our focus. It’s like when you were little and you would ask someone to spin you in an office chair and then you would get up to walk and not know where you were, and then you would fall down. Well, we aren’t asking him to spin us, but he’s spinning us so hard and so fast and we are trying to stand up and walk while we are dizzy and confused. So, get in a different chair. God’s chair doesn’t spin. His chair is like my favorite reading chair in my mom’s kitchen. It’s still and cozy and warm and brings you back home, where you are meant to be.

Planning a wedding, buying a house, having a baby, finding a husband, starting a job, quitting a job… all of these things can be so exciting and/or so stressful and can most definitely consume us and give Satan and huge entryway to come in and spin us around. He just loves to find crafty ways to detour us from God’s creative plan.

But the good news is that God already won and always wins, and that means we do, too. That means our marriages do, too. That means our weddings do, too. That means our careers do, too. That means every detail of our lives do, too.

So, get out of that spinning chair Satan is trying to put you in and crawl up in God’s cozy, floral reading chair, relax, and find joy, not anxiety, out of the things of beauty in your life.

From my cozy chair to yours,

Kaitlin

Wait, There’s More…

I feel like Jesus’s favorite thing to say to us is, “Wait, there’s more.” But we don’t always wait, so we get the “less.”

I’ve honestly been dying to write this all day, but He kept saying, “Wait, there’s more.” And boy was there.

It may not seem like much to you and it was really just a normal day with a few unusual events, but a bigger and bigger picture continued to be painted for me from sun up to sun down and I knew it all meant something for someone, even if only me.

My fiancé and I are in the midst of house hunting, and we have come very close to buying two different houses.

We put an offer on a house we both loved a few weeks ago. And so did someone else…one day before we did.

I was devastated and I cried and THEN I went to God’s word (which should’ve been first). My devotional talked all about how we expect and ask and want so much from God and how we can be takers instead of givers and I took the slap to the face and realized that house wasn’t meant for me and something better was waiting. My, “Wait, there’s more” moment.

Fast forward to another round of house hunting where Caleb and I looked at two houses then found “our house” accidentally a few doors down, hours after it had been placed on the market. We were sure it was our house… kind of. We agreed to put in an offer, but I didn’t feel as excited as I should have, unbeknownst to anyone but me and God.

The sellers countered and rejected our offer several times before Caleb asked if I really was excited about the house. He could sense my discomfort with it all. I said, “No I’m not… but I don’t know why.” He asked if I had prayed about it and when I nodded, he said, “Well that’s why. Let’s not get the house.”

I so badly just wanted to want the house and offer more money and have it right when I wanted it, but God was telling me to wait. There was nothing wrong with the house at all other than the fact that God did not want us there.

As I was in prayer the next morning, I specifically praised God for discernment in trivial things like house hunting to prepare us for bigger trials we would face when we would desperately need discernment.

So, I thought the house we were going to look at that afternoon would be the one. And it wasn’t. It was in bad shape, Caleb and I got into a fight about the whole process, and I was just feeling so defeated about the entire process. And that’s when I knew the enemy and grabbed onto what was important to us at the time, finding our first house, and used it to tear us apart.

I fought back. I prayed more. And I kept hearing God say, “Wait, there’s more.”

But, like the stubborn, indecisive child of His that I am, I wavered on the decision to walk away from the previous offer completely.

Maybe we should just offer more money. Maybe that’s the one. Maybe I don’t really have the discernment I thought I did…

That afternoon after tears and fighting and questioning and pleading for answers from God, I randomly walked into a nail salon that I’ve never been to – this is a huge factor of the story because I NEVER cheat on my usual nail spot, Spring Nails (plug for them).

I was emotionally drained and just needed a little pick-me-up. An older woman sat down beside me to get her nails done, and in true Kaitlin-fashion, I told her everything – all my worries and cares.

When I told her about the house, she said, “Walk away.”

She told me not to buy it and that there was something better.

We became fast friends, exchanged numbers, and she told me she always prays before coming into town from her house on her farm that she will meet someone of substance and have a meaningful conversation.

I teared up as she said, “You were the answer to my prayers today.” And I quickly replied, “Well, you were the answer to mine.”

It’s like I had been waiting for an answer all day and expected God to bless me just because I had been in constant prayer. My mentor said when she does that, God always says, “Well, I thought you were praying to simply seek me, not for something in return.”

WOW. Yep. I really was praying to seek Him, but I was expecting Him to answer all my questions and meet all my needs on MY time instead of His.

And His answer was consistently, “Wait, there’s more.”

He even wove the phrase in with my desire to write this post. I kept opening my computer to write it throughout the day, and He kept saying, “Just please wait. There’s more to the story.”

If I would have written it before, I never would have told the part about how the house I thought would solve our previous problems turned out horribly or how the lady at the nail salon was a vessel for God’s message.

When we try to rush and do it our way, in our timing, we miss the best part!!!! He wants us to wait for more because He KNOWS the more is better than the now.

Your more is better than your now. Please know that.

Caleb told me a story about a very interesting man he met on a fishing trip that said if he ever had his own fishing show, his catch phrase would be, “Wait, there’s more” to keep the viewer interested.

That’s totally God’s catch phrase. He wants to keep us interested. He wants to keep us chasing after Him so that we will remember we always need Him and He always has our best interest in mind.

If you get nothing else out of this, take the word “wait” with you and hide it away. Patience and waiting is never a bad thing because when God is telling you there’s more, there is abundantly more.

As for us, even if we end up in a smaller house with “less” by the world’s standards, I know that home will be blessed and we will always have more than we deserve.

Yours in the journey,

Kaitlin

XOXO