By Bethany Lee
Throughout the past five months in Capital Fellows, I’ve been constantly wrestling with coming to terms with my life’s story. What does it mean to truly be at peace with the trials and suffering that we endure? How can a loving God put us through so much pain?
For the longest time, my life’s motto was Jeremiah 29:11, which says, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future’” (ESV). While these are certainly encouraging words that I have been repeating since I was 8 years old when I heard it in the movie “Soul Surfer,” I’m not sure if I ever truly believed it.
Last week in Life & Leadership (our Wednesday night meeting with Pastor Ryan and Pastor Rob), the topic of head knowledge versus heart knowledge came up. We can gain a lot of knowledge and recall and repeat it in conversations. But how much of it do we truly believe in our hearts? And when we find that the bridge between our head knowledge and heart has a huge gap, how do we fix it? Especially when it’s something we want to believe deeply in our hearts, and for some reason, we just can’t do it. For example, I’d like to be 100% on board and believe in my heart that God redeems our suffering and that it is ultimately for our good. There are certainly enough passages in the bible to support this. Yet there’s still resistance within me that starts to doubt God and whether or not he truly wants me to flourish in my life.
This is the point where if I were reading this blog post, I would expect to read a revelatory quote from somebody who has solved this particular issue - a quote so profound that we could all adopt it and quickly mend the bridge between our head and heart knowledge. Unfortunately, my answer is that I still don’t know, and I still struggle with it daily, which is a fight that comes with many highs and lows.
A song that I found encouraging recently is “Maybe It’s Ok” by We Are Messengers. Its lyrics are powerful, but the one that particularly struck me is the first line, which says, “If I didn’t know what it hurt like to be broken, then how would I know what it feels like to be whole.” This is definitely not along the lines of what I thought would comfort me. I was thinking more that I would hear Jeremiah 29:11 again and finally go “Oh yeah! That finally makes complete sense, and I truly believe these words.”
But for me, the comfort came from increasing my understanding of how the pain of life can grow us and deepen our relationship with God. Sometimes, I hear the same thing repeatedly, yet when one person words it a little bit differently, it finally clicks in my mind, and that’s what happened when I listened to this song. If we never experienced the lows of life, would we be able to fully appreciate and understand the joy of the highs? If we had never been in a position where we had to entirely depend on God for his comfort and love because this broken world fed us all we felt we needed, how much depth would our relationship with God have? While I still struggle to be able to say with absolute certainty that God orchestrated every part of my life in a way that was meant to prosper me and not to harm me, I can find comfort in knowing that the trials and suffering have deepened my relationship with God and I can better appreciate the richness that this life can hold.
Bethany Lee is a member of the Capital Fellows class of 2024-25. She is from Champaign, IL, and is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This year, she is working as an Ecclesial Fellow in the Children's ministry at McLean Presbyterian Church.
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If you know a college senior or recent graduate who should consider joining the Capital Fellows program in 2025-26, please encourage them to get in touch with us. The easiest way to express interest in the program is through our Contact Us Form. You can learn more about the program, including application deadlines, by visiting the Capital Fellows website.
About Capital Fellows. Capital Fellows is an advanced leadership and discipleship program for recent college graduates. Through graduate courses, a paid internship, one-on-one mentoring, and many leadership and community service opportunities, fellows develop and apply their gifts in real-world situations while learning to integrate a Christian worldview into all areas of life. Capital Fellows is a unique opportunity to live and work in the Washington DC area and to be an active member of a supportive community that seeks to serve the city with the love of Christ. It is also a unique opportunity to get hands-on experience in the workplace while deeply exploring God’s design for us as workers and contributors to human flourishing.
Pray for the Capital Fellows
In the coming weeks, the Capital Fellows will be meeting with members of our church to talk about networking for future jobs. For several years, the Deacons have been helping the Fellows make job connections with people in our church and around the DC area. A handful of Fellows already have jobs or graduate school plans, but several are still in the process of searching for their post-Fellows work. Please pray that the meetings with the Deacons and other leaders in the church will produce job opportunities for our Fellows.
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About The Fellows Initiative
Capital Fellows is part of a network of similar programs across the country. This network is called The Fellows Initiative. There are 34 Fellows programs in TFI, roughly 3,200 alumni living around the world, and more Fellows programs on the way.
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