Chosen for the Fire: Finding Purpose in Your Hardest Season
with Angie Clayton and Ruth Cowles
Today we’re talking about being chosen and what that means.
This will be a paradigm shift.
Angie: Here’s the working cover. There’s 20 stories in there.
But every single one’s a chosen story that matters.
What prevents us from telling our stories? Sometimes it’s fear, sometimes it’s guilt or shame. Those are hard things to get past. But we have to.
We have to recognize that there’s people that need to hear from us.
I have had quite a chronic health journey and a couple of years into it, and my husband gets a credit here.
You didn’t choose me, I chose you.
Jan: When you look at things that way, just kind of like, okay,
and I think it’s surrendering, right?
It is surrendering to whatever it is he’s got you in for. This moment or this time.
Angie: It’s hard to hold hands with a clenched fist. Have you ever heard that? But if I don’t let go of it, if I don’t, I have to have my hands open,
to receive from him what he’s giving me or, you telling me, or any of that. And if I’m so focused on what my hard, bad thing is, I never hear any of that.
Jan: All of those things cause you to look up at Him.
Angie: And it really helped me not to be doubting and wondering so much, what is the point of all this?
You know what the point is? The refiner’s fire. And that’s what purifies us.
That’s makes us holier and holier and so I say, let it burn.
Jan: Ruth, you have a story in her book as well. You want to share that?
Ruth: Well, I do— the one story is about submission. And, you know, that seems to be like a hated word.
People don’t like that. I didn’t like that. Nobody likes that. It’s called Chosen to Submit.
What if you’re called to submit to someone?
In this case, it was to my husband.
But what if you’re both right?
It was a really tough situation. I mean,
we were at loggerheads over a decision to make.
I fell in love with a little girl that needed a home and I wanted to adopt her.
And he wasn’t ready.
Our children were almost all grown,
so we had to sort this out between us. I could use Scripture to support my idea.
I could scripturally support caring for the orphans,
but he could also scripturally support his viewpoint.
And so we didn’t really battle over it, but it was just such a painful experience to walk through because I felt like we were both right.
Yes, he’s right. But, yes, I’m right, too. So what do you do in those kind of situations when you want to have control of a situation? Isn’t that a problem with us? Sometimes we want to control the situation,
and yet the reality is we’re never really in control, so it was a hard, hard lesson for me.
I believe God allowed this situation in our lives so that . . .
This is going to sound terrible, but I love my husband, but this really fully made me trust his decision,
trust that his decision was okay.
It’s not something that I would have chosen. I would not have chosen this situation to be like this.
But
rather than making us pull apart, it actually pulled us together. It drove us together in a really wonderful, wonderful way. I mean, we’ve been married over 50 years.
It’s astonishing really, what that did in our marriage.
There’s this wonderful verse in Ephesians 5, verses 20 and 21, that go and give thanks for everything to God the Father. And, you know,
some things we don’t want to give thanks for because they’re painful.
We don’t like them too much, but.
And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and further,
submit to one another.
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
And so in submitting to one another,
Sometimes, you do,
it does go your way because you’re submitting to one another,
and sometimes it goes the other person’s way.
But when you work together, you’re working together in submission to one another
it just makes a huge difference really, in your life going on.
And we’re submitting to Christ, right? We need to submit to Christ.
And you can both pray about a situation. And I don’t think God gives us different answers if it’s the same God. If we’re praying to the same God about a situation,
he’s not going to tell my husband one thing and me something else,
is he?
Ruth: Probably the hardest lesson in our marriage that, that was so impactful and I.
Angie: I’m so glad I’m going to jump in here, Jan, But I’m so glad to include the story because you’re right, submission is a dirty word and there’s so much beauty in it.
And you bring that out so well out of the heart. I mean, it was the hardest thing that brought out the beauty of that submission.
Jan: And Ruth, did you ever find out what happened to the little girl?
Jan: And, it’s like sometimes we think we’re going to be the only one that’s going to save the day when God had somebody else in mind.
Which is why he told your husband no.
Ruth: Yes, exactly.
Angie: Well, and sometimes don’t we feel like we must have heard him wrong? How can it be that we’re not agreeing on this? I must have heard him wrong or he got my husband hurt him wrong or something.
And no, that’s really not true. And he uses this stuff in our marriages, in our personal lives, in our ministry.
And it’s something that you’re just marching through it and keeping your head above water as best.
And until it’s in the rearview mirror, you can’t see it for what it was. And Ruth, that was a perfect example of, you thought that maybe was going to be a forever thing and you were just a pit stop.
That’s all God ever meant it to be.
Ruth: Yes, but it was apparently so.
Jan: And then it has to have changed you, it changed your marriage, for one, but has it changed your perspective on other situations that have come up?
Ruth: Well, I think that we do much better about making decisions together now.
Life teaches you some things as you go along, but I feel like we’re more a team. We make decisions together. We’re more considerate of the other person, what they feel, what they think. How they feel about situations. You know, we’re not going to think the same.
We’re different people. It was healthy for us,
and it’s just been great going forward.
Jan: Well, it’s an interesting story because that actually happened to us as well. My husband is a CASA court appointed special advocate, and he had a little boy that he just fell in love with, you know, and worked with him for four years to where he was at a point to be adopted out.
And he came home one day and he says,
so what would you think?
And I just said, absolutely not.
It’s just like at this point in my life, I’ve raised 10 kids and I know what happens when he’s got this idea of roses and everything else. And this was a hard kid.
This is a kid that’s throwing chairs across the room and breaking things and, lots of emotional damage that had happened.
I think I put my time in. And his aunt and uncle ended up adopting him. And it’s the most wonderful thing. They didn’t have any other kids and could totally devote their time to him.
And, you know, he’s 16 now, and life is good for him. It’s just so great.
Jan: Thank you, Jesus.
Angie: How would you guys say you both have similar experiences? How did you get through that and avoid resentment?
He’s been able to see him and he’s still able to keep contact with him,
he’s been able to see that God had a plan for him and it was the right plan.
Ruth: But we can’t allow that resentment. If that resentment crops in oh,
that can be devastating.
Jan: Well, it can even be resentment not only against your husband, but it can also be against God.
Angie: Oh, absolutely.
Jan: Why? Why are you letting this happen to me? This is like, absolutely why. One day after another. Why? Why?
Angie: Why? Yeah, great, right? Well, in your title, Ruth chosen to submit. You had to submit to your husband, but really, you mostly had to submit to God.
Ruth: Yeah, but I thought I was.
That’s the thing. I thought I was. That’s why I say, what do you do when you’re both right? You know, at least you think you’re both right.
Jan: Well, my story was a little different that I included.
When I started college, I was 18 and taking a French class, which I absolutely loved. I liked the language. I liked languages anyway, so in high school, I took both Spanish and French.
It just worked for me. So when I got to do that in college, I had applied for a ceramics school in France and was looking forward to going to that, using my language and being able to have those adventures.
But one day after class, my professor had asked me if I would want to help with his son’s Boy Scout troop that was meeting at his house.
And I was sure, why not? I like kids. So I went and did that it was fine. His wife was there. Everything was wild and crazy.
So I went back again another week to help, but his wife was not there. I was cleaning up dishes after the kids had gone. And I think his son must have gone to a friend’s house or something.
I can’t remember that part exactly. But he wasn’t there. It was just the two of us.
And he comes up behind me while I’m doing the dishes and puts his hands on my shoulders and tells me that he thinks about me all the time. It’s like,
okay, what does that exactly mean? This is not weird, right?
And then, he starts playing with my hair and stroking my arms. And the next thing I know,
he’s got me in the bedroom and having his way.
And this was at a time before social media and there’s nobody saying anything about rape.
It’s like, well it must be my fault.
I don’t know, you know?
But I didn’t want to talk about it. I was so filled with shame. I should have just said something to my mom or said something to someone.
But we were also taught to respect our elders and our teachers and all of that. And so it was kind of like,
okay, this is not right. Like, okay, where’s that balance of things?
And so then another time, we ended up in the desert with a picnic.
The same thing. And after I left that I was just bawling the whole time like, okay, I need to get out of this.
I was feeling guilty, his wife doesn’t know. Why am I playing into this but it wasn’t because I wanted to.
So fast forward all of these years, years after years, after talking to God about it, begging for forgiveness,
doing all of those things. But I always would feel unworthy.
like whenever I tried to pray, it was just always something blocking .And I was never sure exactly what that was about
Years later you kind of stuff it and you’re not thinking about it anymore.
Then my daughter begged me to go on a mission trip to PERU with 300 teenagers and crazy stuff — Amazng worship. It was really, really good worship time.
And, one of the nights during worship, and it wasn’t any particular song or anything that was moving, but right in the middle of that worship,
I had this vision of Jesus just standing massively tall and me standing off to the side.
But this man is on his hands and knees and God is,
telling him to be gone and to
leave and then embracing me and just vindicating me.
I’ve never had an encounter quite like that before.
It’s like, why did that take so long for me to be free? It’s God’s timing and his way, but just that healing presence.
Ruth: So how are you different? How are you different before and after inn terms of how you felt about yourself?
Jan: Oh, absolutely different. I mean, it’s
just that overwhelming love of me and Jesus and wrapping his arms around me and letting me know that, No, it was not me. and God doesn’t love me any less
than he ever did. And there wasn’t any reason. It’s just like it just melted away.
Ruth: That’s one of the best beauty for Ashes story I’ve ever heard.
And so nothing grows out of ashes, but he can take them away and give you something beautiful in return. It seems like that’s what happened.
Jan: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Jan: So, Angie, you probably have 500 chosen stories of your own.
Angie: Well, you know what? I’m going to piggyback off you guys. Let’s just keep this babies and children and submission theme going because I have a story of that too.
And I didn’t really expect that we were going to be talking about this today, but it seems like I need to.
Greg and I were foster parents for a good while and we had some lovely, wonderful children that came through our home during those years. And we really believe that the Lord was calling us together.
We believe that the Lord was calling us to adopt children, some kids from the foster care systems. We pursued it and we really thought we were doing what God wanted us to do.
I mean, we felt that from the very beginning. And so we brought two little kiddos home. They were age 2 and 3 when we got them and they came out of the foster care system.
It was a foster to adopt situation at that point. We got them in September and quickly discovered that there was a lot of information that wasn’t given to us about the trauma situation that they had come from, which was just horrific. I’ve never heard anything like it before or since.
But also about the problems that these kiddos had because of the horrible situation that they came out of.
I mean, these were some traumatized, broken children and we didn’t have skills for that.
We didn’t know what to do with that. We’re not psychologists or any of that kind of stuff. They were siblings and the little girl was delayed, but she was in pretty good shape. But the little boy, the youngest one, he was two years old and he punched. He destroyed my house.
He punched holes in the walls. I had bruises all over me. Kicked, punched, bit.
That was the last straw. I’m telling you guys, we had them to doctors,
psychologist, they diagnosed him bipolar. But you can’t medicate a three year old, you know, obviously. But I would spend hours every day restraining this poor baby because he just couldn’t get a grip on himself.
And so I was just at the end of my rope. And one morning we heard Kiki, the little girl, crying.
And I got up and thank goodness that out bedroom was on the same floor. And I went in there and Taryn was sitting on top of her, choking her.
That was the last thing that happened before Greg said to me, I’m calling children’s services today. We can’t.
We’re gonna have to send them back.
And I knew he was right. I knew he was right, but I was devastated.
Ooh, man, I felt guilty. I felt like I was a liar. Cause I told these kids, this is your forever home. Greg’s and my future was now planned based on raising these babies.
So when they went home, they came and got them in a van and they took them away and I never saw em again.
That was like a death to us.
And I remember a couple of things of finding a random stray sock in the dryer after they left.
That’s the kind of stuff that just destroys you.
Angie: Here was my biggest thing though. Did I hear God wrong?
Did we hear God wrong?
You know, we were so sure.
And how could it have turned out so bad when we were so sure?
And it was years. I didn’t get to know this for years, but it turned out okay. In Kansas, they won’t separate siblings until there’s been two failed adoptions.
And we had tried to keep the little girl, but they wouldn’t let us keep her unless we kept him, too. So, anyway, now we have two failed adoptions.
And they did split them up.
Here’s the beautiful part of the story, is that Kiki, the little girl, went back to her former foster mother who adored her. That it was a mutual admiration society.
But she couldn’t handle both. And then Taryn was actually adopted by his special needs teacher.
I didn’t get to find it out for a very long time.
Because finally we realized we did not hear him wrong.
Angie: We didn’t understand what we did, exactly what he told us to do. It just didn’t end up looking the way that we thought it would.
Ruth: Yeah, well, talk about a pit stop, right?
Angie:. Yeah, it was a pit stop. And you know what?
We were chosen for that. It was horrible. It was like one of the most painful things.
It’s also like you, Ruth. It’s one of the things that bonded my husband and I together in a way that we had not been before.
And so, yeah, we were chosen for that for a lot of reasons. And I wish we didn’t have to go through it, but I probably. Well, I know I wouldn’t trade it.
I would do it again.
Well, nothing’s ever wasted, right? Things that God allows, things that happen in our lives. It’s never wasted if we are just open to him,
if we submit to what he’s allowing in our life, whether sometimes it’s our own decisions. That bring these things into our life. But he always can bring us through it in victory.
And he can always teach us something in it,
through it if we’ll listen, if we’ll pay attention.
Ruth: And this idea of being chosen and submitting to God are all is hand in hand. It’s part and parcel. Because to really submit to him, you have to believe that he chose you for this stuff.
And that can be a hard thing to swallow, really. God, you chose me to be the sick, or you chose me to lose a child, or you chose me to be raped.
I mean, really.
So you gotta fight your way through that stuff. Do I believe that God is God? Do I believe everything my Bible says about God? And I do.
And so I had to make choices about whether I would allow myself to look at this stuff as being chosen rather than being hated. Because when bad things pile up on top of each other, you start to wonder after a while.
I don’t wonder anymore. I’m just like, here’s my life motto now. Oh, so we’re doing this now.
Do I get it right all the time? Heck, no, I don’t. Am I better than I used to be? I think so.
And this whole idea is of being chosen is something that obviously, it just really rocked me.
Jan: The thing that happens as well is that maybe it wasn’t about you.
Maybe it was about Kiki. Maybe it was what they gained from being in your life to have them ready or the timing ready for something else to happen, you know?
Angie: You know, and if nothing else, we love them. We love them so hard while we had them that little bit of time.
Here are some things that people could be chosen for. You know, maybe you have estranged kids,
maybe you have a death. Maybe you’re blamed for something that you shouldn’t have been?
Ruth: Yeah. Broken relationships, that can be so hard.
Ruth: Chosen to be wounded, really. That’s a hard one, isn’t it? Or rejected.
Angie:. Actually it’s an adoption story. And God has adopted us. We are adopted. And don’t you have to be chosen before you’re adopted?
I am adopted. And I know my parents went to Omaha, Nebraska, and chose me.
They said, yes, we’ll take her.
She’s available. We’ll go ahead and take her.
They picked me. That’s what God has done as well.
Angie: And unlike God, my parents didn’t get everything right.
He’s the perfect parent to us. I think that’s what it boils down to. We gotta make sure that we’re filtering these things through the lens of our faith and through the reality of Jesus and who he is and what he’s done.
Because you know what?
Most of the stuff that we’re talking about that I’m saying we’re chosen for makes no sense unless you know Jesus.
You don’t get through stuff like this and not only survive, but thrive without Jesus.
Angie: When we were talking about being chosen, I was thinking about Moses, you know, when God called Moses at the burning bush,
you know, when God told Moses, you know, I’ve seen, I’ve heard the distress, you know, and I’m concerned and I’ve come down and I’m going to send you.
And so he chose Moses for that. The neat thing about that is, of course, Moses had all the arguments right, about why he couldn’t do it. But the big thing that really hit me is that when God chooses, he enables.
And In Exodus chapter 3, in verse 12, God said,
Certainly I will be with you, despite your fear, despite your feeling inadequate,
I will be with you. And for us, is that not enough to know that he will be with us for whatever?
Jan: What was the ultimate chosen story? Wasn’t it Jesus to the cross?
Angie: Absolutely.
Jan: Was that any fun?
Ruth: No. How many times it says, do not fear, do not be afraid.
How many times we’re told that. So many times.
So that’s two things that tells me that our human nature defaults to fear.
Yes, but there’s not a reason to fear.
We as believers in Jesus have no reason to fear.
Do we like all the things? No.
But do we have to live in fear? No.
Jan: But don’t you think the big picture is that God knows us intimately,
that he knows,
and our heart’s desire is to be close to him. And so what happens?
He chooses us for specific situations in our life that are going to bring us closer to him.
It’s not going to look the same for all of us. And there’s a story in there about a gal who bakes bread and delivers it to her fire station almost every day.
They have no idea why she’s doing it. She has a reason for it,
but she’s just serving them. Her story is called Her Daily Bread.
She feels like she was chosen to do that.
So, anyway, there’s a teaser. It was a good story to read.
I’m so grateful to all the different people who have contributed. You know, there’s six authors from six countries that have contributed to this book.
Ruth: Bring on the fire. I mean, you hate to say that, but really—bring it on!
Tell us what you’ve been chosen for!
This week I’ve been chosen for knee surgery!
Till next time keep talkin’ about Jesus!