I'm stumped

moving forward after God has pruned me to nothing

God has pruned me down to a stump.

I don’t say that with an ounce of the self-pity I used to feel, watching my strongest, leafiest branches fall to the ground. Me, crying mournfully at the sight of my severed limbs progressively withering and being trampled underfoot — the parts of my life I was proud of, had nourished carefully, gone.

My old identity is gone. In Christian circles, the idea of having a new identity, becoming a new creation, is highly celebrated. I am not who I was! Jesus has transformed me from sinner to saint! Glory. Praise be. I’m not who I was.

But what if “who I was” was a Bible teacher, a fledgling writer, a champion for women to step into God’s calling, a close friend, a beloved child, a confident mother, a healthy and attractive woman, a joyful hostess, a voice for justice, and a dreamer for how God might use me and dozens of my friends? What if those were the exact lush branches God lopped off? So much goodness, gone?

I’m not who I was.

I’m the stump of who I used to be. The people who knew me with my branches should clutch their chests in pity at my bareness. Those who’ve only ever known the stump of me should twist their faces in confusion that I was ever anything more.

I am stumped.

Meaning, I am a stump, pruned right out of feeling most pride and usefulness and loveliness.

And also meaning, I’m stumped, unsure what to do with this new (or seven years in the making) bare and lacking version of myself. I’ve never been less certain of a million things. Except that God is good. He is certain. I don’t think uncertainty in the rest is bad.

Remember, I don’t pity myself anymore. Pity never got me anywhere anyway. How many almost-friends have I run off by crying to them about the desperation of my increasingly severed existence? How much sleep have I lost asking God if He was mad at me, if I would ever be useful again?

But that’s not where I am anymore.

I am a stump, but I feel beloved. 

I even think some fresh green shoots are beginning to poke through the edges of my rough exterior.

God doesn’t hate me. He doesn’t roll His eyes at my pleas for purpose. 

His axe has been painful. But pruning is an act of careful attention and intention. A gardener cuts back plants because he has a plan for them. Branches are pruned to give a tree new shape, to give me a new shape. I was cut back, pruned by God Himself, but I have reason to hope that God is preparing me for greater flourishing than ever before — even if the shape of my flourishing is nothing I could have picked or imagined. 

I’m not who I was. But I’m also not who I will be.

I’ve set up an account here to fumble through articulating not only how painful the pruning was, but also how hopeful I feel about new growth. I have no idea what to do next. I have no idea what my shape will be. I come without certainty. Because, as I’ve said, I’m stumped.

I wonder what kind of branch this tiny new shoot will be.