"There's Nothing Too Small That We Can't Take to God"

A conversation on complex grief, embracing your identity in Christ, prayers that seem to go unanswered, and what you can learn in the wilderness.

The following are highlights from a conversation with Meg Barry, an older Christian woman who shared her testimony, wisdom and lessons learned on her walk with God. We talked grief, identity, God’s voice vs. the enemy’s, forgiveness, navigating the wilderness and more. If you prefer listening, you can listen to the full conversation on Apple or Spotify or watch on YouTube.

On losing your sense of identity and encountering God in the midst of grief:

So it really was not until I had lost all my family members. I lost my sister to MS, I lost my brother to, at a fairly young age, to melanoma, my father and my mother and my beloved dog all passed away in a relatively short period of time. My walls came crumbling in. I felt like I had lost my identity. I was retiring at that point. I lost my identity as a mother, a daughter, a caretaker. And honestly, Katharine, I felt like an orphan. And I remember using that word.

I did go to a hospice grief counselor who diagnosed it as complex grief. And I can remember sitting on the bed just crying out, crying out, and I heard his voice saying, you are not alone. I am here.

And it was just like this warmth kind of came over me. I was brought to John 14:18 when Jesus said, I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you.

And then it was like I was on the fast track. We took a trip to Israel with our CRC group family. It was life-changing for me and it could not have obviously come at a more perfect time. Walking with Jesus where Jesus walked and being re baptized in the Jordan fully manifested into being born again in the truest sense of the word.

There is a deep and meaningful treasure in a personal relationship found in our Lord. I knew Jesus (in my head), but I didn't know Jesus (in my heart). Knew Jesus, but didn't know Him until then. I truly am made new because of His love and I'm working every day to surrender, to learn how to continue to surrender because my flesh is weak and I'm constantly messing up.

Man, a South Carolina mess in a dress, I call myself. So I suppose I'm a true example of His strength being made perfect in my weakness, right? And that's pretty much it for right now. I'm on my journey. You continue to journey, you're never done.

We're never done and the sanctification is never done and that's a joyful thing. I don't want to have it be done because we want to be the face of Christ. We want to represent him in the best way we can.

What have you learned about God that you wish you’d known when you were younger?

1.        Nothing is too small to bring to God

I think it's just for me I have to re-emphasize: Jesus wants to have a personal relationship with all of us through His Holy Spirit. God desires our attention.

He wants to sit with us and hear what's on our heart. Growing up, I was told, don't bother Him with that. That's too small. Don't pray for the weather for your picnic. He doesn't care about that. I'm here to tell you He does. He has numbered the hairs on our head. He absolutely cares about every detail on our life.

And the truth is, the truth is there's nothing too small that we can't take to Him. He already knows it anyway. Nothing is too small.

2.        God’s lavish love

I wish I had fully known the depth of the immense love that God has for all of us. And I call it a lavish love, lavish, He wants to pour it out on us. And that love, which I used to think was might be temporary or only when I'm a good girl, no, no. That love is here, is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And that same loving power that raised our Lord Jesus from the grave is in us, in the Holy Spirit. And we carry that with us. What a gift. What a gift.

3.        The difference between Satan's voice and the voice of God

God's voice calms and comforts and convicts, which we need at times. Satan's voice obsesses and worries and condemns. God's voice encourages, enlightens and leads and Satan's voice discourages, confuses, and pushes. God's voice reassures and stills us while the enemy frightens us and rushes us. You think about it, when we're all distracted and rushed around and we don't get the ability to just be calm and have peace, that's the enemy trying to work his destructive ways, I guess the best way to say it.

So obviously we know we're not alone and having spent many sleepless nights growing up and trying to solve my own problems, it would have been so much easier if I'd have known and listened to the voice of the One who lavishly loves us and trust Him with the plan for my life.

Well, trusting isn't easy. I would throw it up and say, okay, Lord, I trust you. And then I'd pull it back down and say, yeah, but don't you know, it might be better to do it this way. So little by little, this is definitely not an overnight thing, we just learn to trust Him. Jesus says his yoke is easy and his burden is light. And that love just transcends all over the place.

4.        Our identity in Christ

I wish I'd known more about my identity in Christ a long time ago. I wish I'd known more about what God thinks of me and that that's most important, not what others think of me. I used to define myself as what I did. I mentioned that, a mother, a teacher, a caretaker, and the enemy would tell me things like, you're not that good. see, you failed at that. Nope, you don't measure up. Sorry.

And over the years, I've discovered that women especially fall into the trap of comparing each other, comparing themselves with each other and just thinking that they don't measure up. Well, that is just the biggest lie. I believe that that makes God's heart sad because He’s given us these gifts, right? We all have them. They're not the same necessarily while we may overlap. They're not the same. And He doesn't want them to be the same. He says we're one body with many members to be used for His kingdom.

So, and it's so important that we shed any lies and traps and lean into what God says we are. We are chosen. We are forgiven. We are treasured. We are empowered. And once we can fully internalize that truth, we're given a joyful freedom and a purpose that honestly is limitless.

And when we struggle to believe that there any of these truths, I'll tell you, there is one place to go where you can find them and that's the Bible. There are over 300, not 100, 300 verses that confirm our worth. I just go and write down who God says I am. And if I have to put it on my mirror or if I have to put it on my refrigerator, I'm doing it.

And I have to tell you that once it's here [in your heart] and it takes work, don't let the enemy derail us. But once it's here, we're sealed, right? It's sealed in there, locked, stock and barrel. And He does not want us to listen to any nonsense that's coming from elsewhere.

But it's evolving. I don't want anyone to think, well, it's easy. No, it's taken years of work. But it's so worth it.

What has your biggest challenge been in your walk with the Lord and how has He brought you through it?

Okay, so I hope that that I can get this out in a way that you all will understand. Sometimes we don't seem to see God's answer. We've talking about prayer and sometimes we don't see His answer when we call Him.

I told you about the multiple deaths in my family that catapulted me into a deep depression and how God has been so faithful in getting me out. What I want to share with you briefly is that the biggest death in my life and the most difficult thing is they're still alive.

I'm speaking of the unwanted estrangement of my son, my daughter-in law, and my precious, precious grandson, which happened about 10 years into their marriage. What used to be a very close relationship with all of us, my daughter too, was shattered. We no longer have been granted permission to see our grandson, and we have very, very limited conversations with my son.

You talk about the drama in the books, right? You know, we talked about, said we have twists and turns and this is the drama in my book. And I tell you not for sympathy, really because He’s been so faithful here too.

I want to tell you that it's been going on for six years and I have not seen any change in the situation and maybe even it's gotten worse for no apparent reason. During this, and I'm sharing this because I'm sure there are people that go through this and maybe even ask the same questions we asked, we questioned God, where are you? Where are you? We can't feel you. We can't see you. We know you care, but where are you? What do want us to do? What are you doing? Pat is, Pat and I have spent hours, days, weeks, months, years in prayer. Why we were beating on his door over and over again. Why wasn't he helping us?

Okay, well this is what I've come to know through these six years. I don't see the big picture. We don't see the big picture. And I'm not sure I ever will see the big picture as long as I'm here. But I know God sees the big picture. And I know He loves me, He loves my husband, my daughter, and He loves my son and his family too. I know this. I know God is working for us every single day. I know this. I know that I had to do a ton of work on forgiveness, not only for them, but for myself as well. You know, you get, I'll talk about chains in a minute. Remember when I said Jesus was patient?

I will over and over again, he has taught me how to surrender and forgive. How many times do we have to forgive Lord? Seven times seven, no 70 times seven. And I'm here to tell you a thousand and seven times seven. Over and over again and eventually in doing so come to some peace which is accompanied with freedom and unbelievably a joy unlike any other time in my life. The chains, my chains have been broken. I now know the truth of who I am, as we talked about before, lines up with what God says about me, not my family. I am redeemed and I'm protected too. And so are all of you.

I know that when we pray, we have the confidence that He hears us. If He’s patient with me, how can I not be patient with Him? And I need to trust Him because I know He has my best interest at heart. Mark 11:25 is one that I hold to, especially in prayer because Jesus says, “And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive them that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.” So while the sting is gone, I no longer, when I think about them, have a sting or a hurt. And the chains have been broken. I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm still working on the healing. But I know the One who gives it to me and I can rest in that.

Having been an educator, children are precious and my passion. And I adore this boy and we haven't seen him in two years now. So yeah, but again, it's about God's goodness and forgiveness and helping us forgive and that's what He wants us to do. got, Jesus forgave, look what Jesus did for us. My goodness. How can we do anything less? It is a process.

On learning how to navigate the wilderness (based on a word study of Isaiah 43:18-19):

Let's take a look again at the verse a little bit more in depth. I'm a nerd when it comes to this stuff. I love to look at the verses and pull them apart and see what's there. So is that okay if I spend a minute doing that? Okay, so just for a little background history.

I love the Old Testament. This verse relates to the prophecy of Israel's exile when they were enslaved in Babylonia. They were there because of repeated unfaithfulness to God and thought that God had given up on them. So God says, forget the former things, don't dwell on the past. I'm doing a new thing.

Well, God had not given up on them. If we go back through the Bible, we'll clearly see that God never gives up on us. If you go back and look at the Old Testament, the Israelites were off plum all over the map, and God did not give up on them. He's so faithful and patient. He is eternally faithful.

I've done things in my past that I'm not proud of. But if I remained stuck in my shame and my failure of the past, I won't be able to move forward with the new things that God has for me. It's imperative that we work on just letting it go.

If we possibly can and asking God to help us drop the burden. I almost visualized carrying a backpack with all the failures and junk that I had carried and just dropped it. Just dropped it at the foot of the cross, just left it and walked away, and that was the first step in my process. And I'm also a testimony that God uses imperfect people for his work, okay? I'm new.

Through my Bible studies, I've also learned a technique called word study whereby you take a Bible passage and you read it several times and then you look for a word, maybe a phrase that just kind of lifts off the page to you. You're being shown something. So in this case of Isaiah 43:19, when we were studying it, “wilderness” jumped off, jumped to my attention and you could tell from what we've talked about, the wilderness is something I'm pretty familiar with in my life story. I think maybe we all get there at some point, but it's not a bad thing. This is where we, and when you were in the wilderness, we seem to have no direction, right? We may even feel like we're under some kind of attack.

When I'm in the wilderness often I feel what I would call untethered. You know when you tether a balloon you've got it anchored, but untethered means I'm just not anchored anywhere, and I don't have a direction. I don't know what's happening, and I can feel dis-ease.

So let me share a couple of nuggets that I've uncovered as I did the research. When you do a word study, you research it. And the first thing you do is you do a definition in Webster's and the wilderness is an arid land with sparse vegetation. That's we know. What I discovered is that wilderness is used 272 times in the Old Testament depending, and it can have different meanings. So I love Hebrew names. The Hebrew name for wilderness is Midbar, which is a desolate place. It's a place where everything is stripped away.

And I say that again, it's a place where everything is stripped away. The midbar’s root in Hebrew is DBR, there are no vowels. And that means to speak or lead. So you've got midbar, meaning a desolate place where everything's stripped away ,and then the root DBR with no vowels means to speak or lead.

So when we think about the wilderness in the Bible, right? It's a place where God spoke to Jesus. Remember, He went into the wilderness and God spoke to Him. Moses was coming out of Egypt in the desolate place, desolate place. And God spoke to Him. Isaiah, Abraham, I mean, over and over again in the wilderness is when they would hear from God. So then after you do this piece, you kind of delve a little deeper based on what you learn in the word study you summarize.

So here's my summary. Just as with the Israelites, God leads us into the wilderness where He can speak to us. It's a place of revelation. It's a place of testing. It's a replace of refining, of stripping away. It's a place of humbling. But however, remember in the last piece of this verse. See, I'm doing everything. Now it springs up. I am making a way in the wilderness with streams in the desert. So there's a stream in this desert where you are learning, testing, being refined. And this stream is a stream of mercy.

It's a stream of redemption and it's a stream of replenishing. If you can just visualize that when you're in the desert, no, enemy, get out. I'm being replenished. He’s giving me mercy and redemption. It's running through it. God never leaves us, but makes a path, a path back to Him.

So what can we learn from this when we're in the wilderness? Pray to hear God's voice. We talked a little bit about it. That's a whole other subject. Everybody here, just pray. It could be a soft whisper. It could be a verse that comes off. It could be a meditation. He will speak in many different ways. Ask for His presence. Ask for His wisdom. That's in the Bible. If you want wisdom, wisdom, ask for it. Grace, provision, ask for provision. In the desert, remember, He provided manna from heaven, which was just enough food that they could sustain themselves while they were in the wilderness, while the Israelites were in the wilderness, just enough to be used for He glory.

The other thing I've learned is try not to ask, why am I in the desert? But what are you trying to teach me? What do I learn here? What do you want me to strip away? What is hindering my walk with you? Pruning is not comfortable. If you think about it, when you're on the surgeon's table and you're being operated on, it's not comfortable.

But I am a living testament that when you come out, you are stronger. I promise you this, you are stronger. You are more ready for the next step He has for you. I promise.

And we're supposed to celebrate in these situations. And for a long time, I'm like, seriously? I'm miserable. You want me to celebrate? But, but, He, it's like you said, He loves us. He's trying, this is for, it's like, okay, think about it. It's like a dad and the child. And sometimes dads and moms, parents have to do things that they might not want to, but it's for the good of their child. And so it's kind of similar to that, I guess.

What steps can you take moving forward to believe and accept who God says you are to Him?

1.        Pray!

Okay, so prayer, I've told you before how important it is. I cannot emphasize this enough. He has just laid it on me over and over. Prayer is the linchpin to our faith, the linchpin to our faith.

We could spend a whole other day talking about the elements and benefits of prayer. We could spend a year talking about it. But God has told me twice, I need more prayer warriors, so I'm gonna put that out there right now. If you have, if you're listening to this and you have a heart for prayer, He needs you. Okay, He needs you. if you, you know, some people say, well, I don't know how to pray. Neither do I, but God knows your heart and you don't have to be eloquent. All He wants to do is spend time with you.

2.        Know God’s attributes

Get to know God's attributes. He's made it pretty clear to me that the more we know who He is, the closer we will get to Him. Get a book on God's attributes. Go to YouTube, U version, for the Bible, U version. And there's some great, great short things about God's attributes, but do that. If you can, and I know when, believe me, when I was young with family, it was hard to find time, but He convicted me. I told you the Holy Spirit convicts and this is what He said to me one time: “Well, wait a minute, If I can make time for you, why can't you make time for me?” Whoa.

So, you know, even if it's just five minutes, just to sit and be with God, sometimes we feel like we have to do all the talking. No, we don't. Just sit and listen. Remember, this is important to me, remember that the enemy's gonna try to derail you. We've talked about this before. Every chance he can get, He’s gonna try to derail you. And one of those derailments will be you don't have time to sit down with God. Sorry, have this laundry to do. Do it in the car. It's okay. It doesn't say where it has to be. He loves to share his heart with you and He wants to know your heart.

3.        Use a prayer bowl

But get a prayer bowl. If you're trying to figure out your identity, I look at the prayer bowl as a contract with God, right? I'm saying, okay, God, this is a contract between you and me and I know you're faithful and I'm gonna write down my prayer for you and I'm gonna put it in the bowl.

But my part of the contract is that I trust you to take care of it in Your way and Your will. I like to say, and this may be a little trite, but it's simple for me to remember God sometimes answers in three ways. Yes, not yet. And I have something better in mind for you.

4.        Listen to worship music

So the next thing would be to set prayer music. I mentioned that if you feel like the enemy's trying to tell you something that isn't in line with the truth, get out your prayer music. However, if it's contemporary, great. If it's more traditional, that's fine. It doesn't matter. But I play it at night sometimes when I wake up and feel that there's some darkness surrounding me. It helps you to center your heart on God.

5.        Study God’s word

Of course, it shouldn't be down on the list, but study the Word. My goodness, this is so helpful. It's what we talked about before. That's where the truth lies. It's what Jesus used to use scripture to tell Satan to take a hike. It is our sword and our shield. I love writing love letters to God. It could just be journaling. You know, could journal anything that hits you. I know you do that, Katharine. And then go back. And when you go back and you look, you see growth, you see His love, you see so much.

But we are His precious vessels. Every single one of us is a precious vessel to Him. So ask God to use you in the way that He did for His will. It will come as a cost. I will have to give you that spoiler alert. It will come at a cost, but it is so worth it.

An invitation to draw closer to God…

So I woke up in the middle of the night, there was light streaming into my bedroom. Now it's a full moon, right? But it was streaming so much that I just, I know now it was Holy Spirit waking me up, but that's okay. So as I'm lying there, I've said to him, okay, God, I was thinking about what we were going to do today and how important it was for me to share Him with you all. And I said, okay, is there anything else you want to add? Because I've run out of things. I don't know what to say. And I was prompted to check out the time. So I said, okay, so I went and looked at the time thinking that it was going to be 6:30 maybe 7 okay well you can imagine my surprise when the clock read 3:27.

Now, I will tell you that the Holy Spirit sometimes speaks to me in numbers. Numbers are important in the Bible, so sometimes I hear from Him with numbers so I don't ever take that lightly. And I flew to my iPad to see what the biblical significance of 327 is, okay?

So bear with me on this, because I looked this piece up. I mean, you know it, but this really kind of, I'm reading what I read because it's applicable to what He was trying to say, which I'll tell you in a minute. Okay, so we know that in biblical numerology, the number three often represents divine completeness or perfection. We know that. It's associated with the Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. The number two often symbolizes a powerful union, two, right, or partnership. It represents unity, love, and support.

It also represents the dual nature of Jesus as both fully human and fully divine, bridging the gap between humanity and God. Number seven is used, it holds a great significance as we know in the Bible and it's being associated again with perfection and spiritual fulfillment. It's the number that represents God's divine intervention. And completeness of his work.

Okay, so here is a 327 truth from the Bible. So then I went on and said, all right, lead me to a truth 327. I was led to Psalm 32:7: “You are my hiding place. You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.” All right, so I am, you're just gonna have to believe me on this, I am absolutely fully convinced that God has given me this message to be shared for you today. If I've said nothing else today, please remember this because this is from Him. He wants you to know that when we unite with Him and walk in harmony with His will, we will experience a deep sense of spiritual completeness. This is where faith comes in.

He has divine intervention and guidance is available to all of us through the Holy Spirit when we align ourselves with God's purpose for our lives. As we strive to live in unity with God, we open ourselves up to his guidance, his wisdom, and his blessings. So here it is in a nutshell: by embracing 327, God is saying to you, come draw closer into a deeper connection with me to experience the profound transformation that comes when you surrender your life to me. And I know this to be true. This is deep knowing.