"A Deep Surrender Into Love" with Lorie Martin

Rough Transcript

Rod - Hi, everyone. Welcome to Fuel Radio on the line with me today is Lori Martin. Lori. Welcome to Fuel Radio.

Lorie - Thanks Rod. It's fun to be together. The story around The Shack started after a daughter's death. And as I mentioned the first two years, I really had a close sense of God's presence carrying me and meeting me.

And I'm so grateful for that. I called it grace upon grace, where I would just be given a grace for that moment. For that day, I was often on my the floor of my closet. In tears, but that grace would always come somehow and it would be through a bird or a friend, or just a thought or a sense or a good sleep in after I said, after a couple of years, Feeling the sense of presence.

I've went into a dark night of the soul where everything I'd known of God seemed to fade away. And I just told God, you just go on that back burner over there. I'm really mad at you. I now call it. We're having a domestic dispute. You go over there. I don't like you anymore. And I don't like what you allow in our lives and I don't get it.

I don't get how this could have happened. We were very shocked by it. It wasn't something that was predicted. At apple at that point, then I was, I got stuck in my grief. I was very, I was stuck and the shack was being filmed down the beach from our cottage, a couple of blocks away, and our friends, Brad eating jurors, Zack, or friends with our friends with polygon and co-writers together.

And we walked by a sign that said, Like a film arrow, and we're like, oh, they're filming a shot right here, just on our beach. And sure enough at Cultus lake is where they did a lot of the filming. So Brad connected with Paul and long story short, Paul ends up being on our movie, sets on our beach and invites us over.

And I didn't want to go, but my therapist said, well, what's the book about. And I hadn't even connected that it was about Mackenzie having this great loss of his own daughter and the need for some attention to his great sadness and anger at God. So we walk, we walk over there and we meet Paul on the beach and he, he just embraced me.

He had filled them in on my story. I decided I would just go and show up and see what happened in my bad attitudes. The way he hugged me. He did not let go. So I felt like, oh no, there's something bigger going on here. And I started to cry and I said, okay, you can let go. Now I'm starting to cry.

I got ya. And he pulled my head in closer rather than letting me go. And I, I felt like the spirit needed something very tangible to get my intention that I was being met by God that day. And Paul walked with me through that whole day sat beside me and the producers tent when the scene that they were showing at that moment was with Mackenzie and mama Papa on the deck.

And. And Papa saying our momma saying, Mackenzie problem is you don't trust me. And he looks at her and says, trust. I'll never trust you. My daughter's dead. And he flings a cup and like who saw the movie, but I had to watch that that 15 times. And it was like a psychodrama of watching my anger and my story and my frustration there.

And God's saying to me the trouble is you don't believe I'm really good Mackenzie. You don't believe I'm working in all things for you. And I was in the same spot and I, we were all teary eyes, Dwight. My husband was there eating real long and, and Paul and we were just all in tears as we've watched this scene over and over and over again, till I could start to hear that God was for me, not against me.

And yes, God doesn't stop bad things from happening. But he doesn't make them happen. And yeah, it was just a great, a great scene to watch. There's a few other incredible scenes that we got to watch too, but it was a healing day for me, healing day when I went home, I thought, is this going to last? Or if I just been star struck, you know, is this really going to stick?

But I felt van even then was washing the dishes that the next morning I felt God say it doesn't matter. What happened to you or how it happened to you? What matters is that it happened to you that this was given to you, these graces and this a way of God coming close to me. So really great.

Yeah. And the other one was, you know Papa saying, you're looking through this through the knot hole of pain Mackenzie. And I was like, yeah, I'm looking at my life through the knothole of pain. And then the, one of the, where the Bluebird comes, we saw that one too. And McKenzie sitting on the step and Papa says you were made to fly McKenzie, but paying.

I've clipping our wings and just acknowledging exactly where I was and all the things you're going through at the time.

Rod - Hey, oh, that's beautiful. You mentioned one thing. I, cause I think so many people struggle with this and maybe you can help us with this. Having gone through what you've gone through is people getting mad at God and blaming God actually for their circumstance

And the things that happen, like how were you able to separate that and trusting

that God is only good?

Lorie -  and that God's grace meets us in everything.

Rod - Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people are gonna say BS to that, you know? So

Lorie - I wrestled, I wrestled for quite a while. A good friend of mine Dr. who, you know, helped me unpack.

In a way that made sense for me, as much as anything mysterious and way beyond our, our ability to understand Ken. And it comes from some long days teaching us that God can either love us, or God can control us. And I believe that God only loves us and God's chosen not to control us or our circumstances because you can't control someone that you love and you and love isn't control.

So for me to accept that God could have controlled all of this, and I get a lot of people sharing their wonderful stories of how God met them. So that they, they didn't end their life or, you know, you hear all of these. I'm like, well, what the heck? Like but for me to understand that God gives us choice and that that's really the most loving thing God can do, and that God will meet us in the worst of the worst of the worst and never leaves us.

And that God did not cause it, but God does allow it. The way God proves God's love to RNs rather than not, you know,

Rod - so often my, my own personal spiritual direction sessions ended up with. Are you going to trust God with this? I was like, oh, dang that question again. You know?

Lorie - Yeah. I think that's served me best.

Probably with that question is, am I willing to do a deep surrender into love, the deep surrender into having the answers and definitely not the pat answers and just a deep surrender into love that. I don't know all things and I never will. In our situation, it was a thousand piece puzzle that came together very complicated.

And so to think that I could actually surrender into love and empty myself of needing to know of having to figure it out of trusting the one who loves me most and who loves our daughter most. Is leading and guiding us all into greater resurrection life, into greater redemption of all things. I'm grateful I've been given, given the grace to hold that space most of the time.

Footnotes

To connect with Lorie see https://loriemartin.com/

Photo credit see https://www.vancouver.anglican.ca/news/meet-the-reverend-lorie-martin