Road to Becoming

Jenny Simmons

Description

No matter how great or how terrible life is going, one thing is for sure--it's going to change. Sometimes it happens in an instant--you get married, you have a baby, you lose a loved one, you lose a job. Sometimes, it happens over time--you drift away from a friend, you discover you're not the same person you used to be, you find yourself struggling with doubt. But no matter what, we must deal with both the change we choose and the change foisted upon us.Jenny Simmons is no stranger to both kinds. In this thought-provoking book, she shares her final days as the lead singer of the band Addison Road and the subsequent journey that led her through seasons of change, lostness, and finding new life. The result is a painfully vulnerable, laugh-out-loud, honest, and hopeful reflection on life's uncertain times. This encouraging book invites readers to view their not-how-I-planned-it moments as holy seasons that didn't catch God off guard at all.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 25 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493400591
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

© 2015 by Jenny Simmons
Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakerbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-0059-1
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Scripture quotations marked NASB are from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
Scripture quotations marked NLT are from the Holy Bible , New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked VOICE are from The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society. All rights reserved.
“Jenny is a brave, deep, soulful friend, and her voice comes across these pages with clarity and urgency. You will love this beautiful book.”
Shauna Niequist , author of Bread & Wine and Savor
“Jenny Simmons gives us a rich, vulnerable glimpse inside her life and soul. The writing is beautiful, the story compelling, and her desire for God contagious. This is a must-read book.”
Margaret Feinberg , author of Fight Back with Joy
“I can so relate to seasons of change, unmet expectations, feelings of lostness, and those in-between moments when I didn’t know which road to take. So many will immediately identify with this book, as Jenny speaks from her heart and from God’s Word to anyone who finds themselves asking, ‘What’s next?’ and ‘How do I get there?’ This vulnerable, laugh-out-loud book will help you rediscover the life you desire in God—and what it means to live each day with grace, humor, and courage.”
Natalie Grant , Grammy-nominated vocalist, songwriter, and founder of Hope for Justice International
“Jenny possesses wisdom far beyond her years, but she has walked through deserts you wouldn’t believe in order to obtain it. She knows firsthand that God can take you high as well as take you low, using both to teach and grow you. May her story encourage you in yours.”
Francesca Battistelli , performing artist
“In an always-online world of Pinterest and Instagram-fueled comparison and disappointment, Jenny Simmons writes with a voice that rings true for many. With The Road to Becoming , she invites her readers to discover their own journey waiting in the journey she has written about; to find the hand of love that reaches down, tears up a life of man-made plans, and replaces them with a life centered on the wild-eyed, boundary-shattering Nazarene who revealed Himself to be the glorious, life-changing Son of God.”
Matt Maher , performing artist
To my sweet Annie: If only I could keep you from life’s dead ends and detours; but then you would miss the beauty of being lost and being found. So I will walk every road, detour, and dead end with you for as long as we both shall live.
To my mom, dad, sisters, in-laws, and the many dear friends who have walked these long roads with us: Thank you will never suffice. You were the streams in our desert.
To Ryan: God only knows how many dead ends our marriage has seen, how many detours. But we are still here, still being lost and found together, and I am forever grateful.
Contents
Cover 1
Title Page 2
Copyright Page 3
Endorsements 4
Dedication 5
Prelude: Mangledy-Bangledy 9
The Dreaming and Destruction 15
1. Magnolia Trees 17
2. A Beginner’s Dream 23
3. Big Joe the Pimp 31
4. Epiphanies 35
5. Unravelings 40
6. A Bad Year 45
7. Cornbread Crumbs 49
8. The End of the Road 54
9. Ants and Other Holy Thoughts 59
10. The End 69
The Burying 73
11. Aisle 7 and the Evil Spaghetti 75
12. Dead Goldfish and a Holy Summons 82
13. Poor Rich Man 90
The Lostness 97
14. Aliens and Familiar Roads 99
15. The Guide 105
16. Lost Girl 114
17. The Art of Listening 121
18. Joshua Tree 127
19. Beauty in the Desert 132
The Waiting 143
20. Losing My Humanity 145
21. The River 154
22. Not Real Babies 160
23. The Spiritual Director Doctor 165
24. Fat Feet and Waiting Games 170
25. Growing Something New 179
The Becoming 185
26. Overrated 187
27. Bright, Shiny New Things 195
28. The Chorus of You-Can-Do-Its 202
29. Shovels, Prison, and Other Heavenly Things 209
30. Saying Yes 217
Notes 227
Acknowledgments 231
About the Author 235
Back Ads 236
Back Cover 238
Prelude
Mangledy-Bangledy
Early one morning in the spring of 2011, I woke up in my own bed sweating, afraid, and completely lost. I felt like a piece of driftwood. The mangledy-bangledy kind that gets ripped off a tree during a storm and thrown into a river three counties over, bewildered and broken. I was in a current I could not control. In a river I had never known. Nothing was familiar and nothing was going the way I had planned.
I had made good plans for my life.
Dreamed up when I was nine years old and the universe was compliant with my every whim. Revised when I was nineteen years old and way smarter than my parents. When I had my existence—and everyone else’s—all figured out. Revisited after college when all I wanted was a safe road without surprises or detours, a well-laid plan that would tell me my place in the world. But that morning in 2011—as a thirty-one-year-old wife, mom, and successful recording artist—I realized the plans I dreamed up were long gone and I was completely lost.
The worst twelve months of my life were barely behind me. But in that moment, trembling in my own bed and wracked with fear, I would have gone back to that hellish year because at least back then I knew who I was and where I was going. Even if getting there meant enduring a fire, thefts, bankruptcy, and complete physical exhaustion.
But the mornings spent lying in my own bed afraid of the future, unsure of my own name, living in complete lostness? They were breaking me.
With no tears left to cry that particular morning in 2011, I stared the terrifying unknown in the face and knew I was at a crossroads. As I lay there in a daze, dreading the day at hand, it occurred to me that I had spent years encouraging other people to live by faith but I had no idea how to live by it myself. I was the kind of girl who wanted faith for other people. Me? I wanted answers, happily-ever-afters, and enough control over my life that I did not have to cling to Jesus for my very breath, my very bread. I only wanted religion.

Security has become the drug of choice for religious people who don’t really want to live by faith. We naively (arrogantly?) assume there are monuments that we can erect in honor of the steadfast certainties our lives are centered around. Mother! Artist! A 401(k) plan! Philanthropist! Gainfully employed! A path, a plan, a purpose! All monuments. All man-made.
My monuments were well erected. Wife. Mom. Musician. World traveler. Woman of purpose. Woman of faith. My band, Addison Road, was on the radio, had traveled around the country on a sold-out tour, and had sold nearly 200,000 albums. I was certain we would be making music together well into our nursing-home days.
But when those monuments began to crumble, I found myself in the midst of broken dreams with no security and no clue how to move forward. Or where to move forward. Each new day I woke up with soul paralysis, feeling like a piece of storm-ravaged driftwood.
Being all mangledy-bangledy from a storm is supposed to be a good thing. At least that’s what preachers and stoics say. Storms grow you up. Get rid of all the bad stuff in you. Refine you with their holy fire! Apparently some people come out of storms as stronger, shinier, more beautifully refined versions of themselves. And I’m happy for those people. Kind of . But that wasn’t me. I made it to the other side of the worst year of my life and was, well—worse.
Seasons of hardship can leave us worse for the wear, at least in my experience. Instead of making it to the other side as a better version of ourselves, we can end up bitter, broken, and barely recognizable. Just because one makes it through a hard season and is still standing doesn’t mean they have traveled down the life-giving road to becoming something new. It just means their feet still work.
My feet still worked. But nothing else did. I was a mangledy-bangledy mess. That morning the Lord whispered something deep inside of my soul. A confirmation of what I long suspected but fiercely avoided: transformation would only happen if I buried the past and blindly, bravely stepped out into the terrifying, unknown future. The Redeemer of stories invited me into a new kind of journey. It was a long-standing invitation to join the Storyteller on the road to becoming. And I finally accepted.

Four years have passed since that morning in 2011, and I have learned that the road to becoming requires much more than just “still standing” after the storm batters and bruises our monuments. It is the journey after the storm, on wobbly knees and tired feet, that matters the most. In my own story, after the chapters of The Dream