“Who’s Chair Are We Sitting In?” by Kaitlin Chappell
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 was absolutely stress-free.
Then, the second half hit.
Things got real when we entered 2017, which is the year we are getting married. Our church begins each year with 21 days of prayer and fasting, and one of my main topics of personal prayer has been wedding planning and our relationship.
The first week of this prayer and fasting season was very uplifting and insightful when it came to purchasing our home. The second week was full of enemy attacks, and the third week has been a “full circle” kind of week. Things are coming together and God is bringing me back, 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 worldly, materialistic things. I wanted the perfect house, in the perfect location and the perfect wedding with the perfect flowers and food and decorations and songs…
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. I was comparing every part of my life to every part of everyone else’s life, all 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. I was allowing the enemy to use what should be such a beautiful, joyful, exciting time in our lives to steal, kill, and destroy the joy God was abundantly offering.
We would talk about our wedding – I would talk about all my “cosmetic” wedding worries. We would talk about our house, our house that we prayed long and hard over, our house God clearly led us to and I would question the location, talk about where other people were living and whether or not we should have gotten it. We would talk about getting married and how exciting it would be and I would bring up our finances, how we would have to adapt to living with each other forever, or how I wanted to decorate, stressing 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. In return, I was worry Caleb to death over 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 things about a wedding day are:
the vows two people are making to God and to one another,
that the ceremony glorifies God
and
that people leave touched by The Holy Spirit radiating from a couple newly bound together by LOVE AND TRUTH, BY JESUS!
I know I will have that. I know God sent me a man who loves Him and loves me, a man who will continue in The Kingdom work God has set before him. We will run this Kingdom race together for the rest of forever. 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
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