The Error of My Idols: Finding Peace In The Emotional Storm After Jamaica

My trip to Jamaica opened a can of emotional worms that I was not ready to digest. 

For the last month that I’ve been back in Toronto, I’ve battled a near daily emotional struggle. Being in Jamaica gave me a taste of the life I used to live: traveling frequently, living in exotic places, meeting interesting people from around the world and all the energy that comes constantly moving to new and exciting places. 

Combine this with the filming that I did for the retreat center, and it felt like I was stepping right back into the life I was living right before I stopped traveling in the summer of 2017.

When I was in Jamaica, I felt a deep peace and gratitude. I felt confident that God was leading me through all of these experiences and my job was to follow.Despite how good I felt there, it’s been a LOT harder to readjust back to life in the city than I expected.

I cannot remember feeling so restless, so useless, or so disappointed since I came back to Toronto in 2017. And this trip out of the dense modern city even made me wish I never came back.  I am acutely aware that I could have kept working at retreat centers in exotic locations around the world for the last two years, instead of struggling my way through city life and jobs. 

I’ve had so many feelings of confusion and heartache, of anger and longing.  

For several days, I didn’t even want to adjust back. I wanted to adjust back to my traveling life, pack up my life and head out, not re-adjust to my city life, with it’s traffic, jobs and intense workload.

Now that I’ve finally finished editing all of my Jamaica videos I’m so relieved - and I finally have time to process all the emotions and integrate the experience into my being.

Recognizing An Idol: A Confession 

I am aware that I once held the “traveler lifestyle” as an idol and there are days it still pokes its head into my world. Now that I’ve had time to process, I can see that this whole Jamaica episode was me idolizing the traveler lifestyle and all that it entails. 

An “idol” is a concept from the Christian tradition that represents something we value more than God. We all have idols, things that we worship, that give us our sense of security, identity and value. Our society gives us a set of idols to rely on, like money, love, power and glory and for most of us, a combination of these things take the place of an idol in our hearts.The Unraveling of my Psyche

When I’m processing things like this with God, it usually involves me and my journal and some books. This time, it started to unravel as I went through the material for an online singing course for worship leaders (people who lead the singing at churches). 

As I read this, the words pierced and landed in my heart.  

For a few months, (ok maybe my whole life?) I have wrestled with jealousy. Underneath the jealousy, I have really just wanted to belong, wanted to be loved and recognized as someone special. 

Stumbling into these worlds, I felt like God was saying to me. “I want you to sound like you. I want you to find home, even more than you. I don’t want you to keep trying to copy other people’s lives or what you perceive as their success. I am not against you. I want you to be authentically and fully all that I created you to be! Yes, it involves a bit of travel, but that is not the end goal! Where you are right now, with the life you’ve been given, is exactly where you’re supposed to be!” 

It’s dawning on me that all these years, I’ve lived with an underlying belief that God is against me. God doesn’t want me to live the life that I dream of, so if I want happiness, God can’t be involved in my life. 

I felt God saying to my heart, “Actually, I’m the one who those dreams of travel and retreat centers and filming around the world in you! Yes, it’s all a part of what I created you for, and I am for you! I am not against you!”

Counterfeit Gods

The following morning, I felt the impulse to pick up a book I read last year, Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller. I flipped through the pages and found exactly what my soul needed to read.

“Am I so down on myself because I have lost or failed at something that I think is a necessity when it is not? If you are overworking, driving yourself into the ground with frantic activity, ask yourself, ‘Do I feel that I must have this thing to be fulfilled and significant?’” 

- Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods, 170

Confession: Um, yes, that is definitely me. For all the progress I made last year, revving up my creative output, waking up at 5:00am, writing dozens of blogs and making videos, the truth is that I did most of that relying on my own willpower and energy. I definitely overworked and drove myself into the ground a few times, because I attached my creative output to my identity and my sense of worth. 

Timothy’s prescription for how to replace idols is this: 

“It entails joyful worship, a sense of God’s reality in prayer. Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart than you ideal. That is what will replace your counterfeit gods. If you uproot the ideal and fail to plant the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back.”

Later on, he writes, “it is worship that is the final way to replace the idols of your heart.” 

From personal experience, I know that when my soul is in that place of totally unfiltered, unabashed worship to God and with God, I am most full. There are a lot of things that fill me, love, friendship, creativity, beauty, but those are all signs of something deeper, which I will call God’s presence.

FINDING Clarity 

I can see myself more clearly now. I can see how… I have fallen into some of my old ways, but I also see how I have grown. I see how God is still leading me through all of this, even in my emotional messiness. I am certain that it was God who opened this door for me to go to Jamaica.  I am so grateful for that trip and I’m also grateful that God has used this trip to show me my blind spots, to remind me what is most important and what is NOT important. 

God’s ability to work miracles in my life and career is limitless. I can get caught up thinking in linear cause-and-effect relationships: if I do this project, then I can get this next one and the next one. Through this trip, God reminded me that anything is possible. Rather than wasting my energy trying to finagle my life to work out the way I want (so that I end up with a “traveler” life again), I can rest in his Love and trust that God is taking care of the details. 

More time resting in his love. Less time trying to hustle. Yes, I may still be “doing” a lot in my life, but deep down, I choose to live with the eternal knowing that God’s love is the energy carrying me forward. It is God’s breath breathing me. It is God’s dreams dreaming me. 

God is not some figure in the sky looking out for moments to throw thunderbolts at us. God is love. And ultimately, only this Love will satisfy.  All of that emotional frustration I experienced in the last 3 weeks happened because I was busy looking out for myself. I wanted my insta-perfect life now. Now that I’ve had time to think and process, I choose to remember the Truth about my existence:

This entire life is not mine. God is the life breathing in me. I am being breathed. My life is a gift from God. Even the mind I have, which I use to write and think, is not mine. It is an instrument.  God, help me discover how to use my instruments, these instruments you’ve given me.

Here is a little poem/prayer that came to me in my journal:

I choose to trust that you know what you’re doing with my life. 

I choose to trust that you are leading me on a path to something that is better

Better than my eyes can see

Better than my heart can imagine 

Better than my soul longs for.