Off Script

Sitting in the low-lit room, I put my head against the back of the rocking chair. Its steady rhythm fit my need for consistency. After an all too quick physical decline, my mother-in-law was in her final days of hospice. My mind had been able to comprehend the gravity of the unexpected shift, but the change had left me with no predictability, no script to follow. 

I was exhausted. Daily routines had been obliterated in almost every way imaginable. My calendar, usually filled with to-do lists and dinner menus, remained empty. We were living moment to moment, day to day. 

Even coherent thought took effort. Unable to work remotely, I was traveling between our home, church, work, and my mother-in-law’s home, covering four different counties in the process. I focused my energy on the essentials: going to work, co-pastoring our church congregation, and communicating any updates to family. I had nothing extra to give.

A regular rotation of caregivers made their way through the days and nights. And in the process, my husband had found numerous opportunities to share his love for Jesus with anyone in range of a conversation. A natural extrovert, he took interest in the wide variety of people coming through the door. 

Not me. I recharge in solitude. In a setting with family coming and going, caregivers keeping watch, and medical team members checking in, peace and quiet eluded us. I was a mess inside. Not only had we lost my father-in-law the previous year, now we were facing death again. Adding heartache, the past several months had been difficult in other ways: remembering the loss of my dad many years prior and navigating complicated family dynamics. It was hardly my finest hour.

So, I was a little taken aback when the caregiver sitting next to me changed the conversation. We had been talking intermittently in a rare moment of stillness. “I’ve been watching you,” she said. My mind went blank. I hardly knew what she would say next.

I could think only of the places where my emotions and thoughts had been less than Jesus.

God had been present in every moment. But my claim to peace in that season required a resolve to choose the love of Christ over every other emotion reeling through my mind and heart. In the (hopefully) unseen parts of my heart, I had wanted everyone to leave. Scott had surely been the much better witness.

Somehow, though, in all the mess that was me, she had seen Jesus.  She wasn’t unfamiliar with Him, but somewhere between the craziness of life and the religious habits she had grown up with, she had doubted that He could make her new. She told me that she had watched me respond to difficult circumstances and had seen God enable me to display His beauty, even in the broken places—and she realized that Jesus is so much more than half-hearted religious behaviors or spiritual platitudes. His change is real.

Over the years, I had worked through varied stages of apprehension about sharing my faith. The more I fell in love with Jesus, the more I learned to set aside any scripts and simply tell my story. But to share Him in a season of my emotional undoing didn’t seem possible, much less probable. 

This unexpected conversation with a caregiver, however, reminded me that Jesus is writing a greater story than our darkest moments. 

In Luke 24:13–35, we read about Jesus’ encounter with two men on the road to Emmaus. The two men, life having given them a narrative they hadn’t planned, rehashed the events, the circumstantial evidence of their dismay (v. 17). They had heard the prophecies. They had believed Jesus would free them from Roman oppression. Now He was dead and His body missing (vv. 20–21, 24). What had happened to the story’s script? This wasn’t at all the way the story was supposed to go.

When Jesus stepped on the road beside them that day, they were shocked that He didn’t share their confusion. One of the men asked Him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” (v. 18). Then, as they traveled down the road, He “explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (v. 27).

What really mattered suddenly became visible (vv. 30–31).

Sharing the story of what Jesus has done in our lives isn’t a script we follow, much less a set of true or false statements we can make about God. It’s what we live out in the everyday, ordinary places—even when the everyday becomes a season of crisis. When I don’t understand the circumstances in front of me, I must focus on the truth that God is greater: “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:8–9). He is the One speaking His glory through my life. I can trust God’s love for me and His love for those around me, even when the journey is less than beautiful. 

I don’t have to worry about finding the right words or capturing the right moment to tell someone about Jesus. Isaiah 55 continues, “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (vv. 10–11). The same God who promised He would bring to pass the words He spoke through His prophets is the same God whose Word changes people’s lives. The power is not in our speech. The power is in who Jesus is and what He has done through the cross. We are simply called to be a faithful witness: to live as one who loves Him.

When we do, our lives become the visible evidence of His love, the story spoken from within.

–Written by Regina Franklin. Used by permission from the author.