Learning to love interruptions: Olivia Feller

Olivia and I became friends on a ski lift in Michigan. She’s one of those people you could text at any given point in time and ask if she wants to get smoothies or clean gutters or climb Mount Kilimanjaro, and she’s probably going to say yes. (In fact, it’s probably already on her bucket list.) She’s lighthearted, excited about life, and down to try anything.

She’s also a dreamer, and a lot of her plans have been put on hold over the past couple of years due to unforeseen health issues. But in her dragged-out-waiting for answers, dead ends, physical pain, cancelled trips, and disappointments, Olivia’s faith has been one of those iron-sharpening kinds.

It’s odd: sometimes you don’t have to be pouring into another person to fill them up; sometimes you just have to walk steadfastly in your own two shoes, pursuing and loving God through the uneasy, discordant segments of life.

That is what Olivia has done for me.

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You know who always seems to make the biggest impact in my life?

People who are available.

Interruptible is a quality I see in many I personally know, but more importantly, all throughout scripture.

Remember Jesus with the little kids? The disciples were swatting kiddos away like flies and Jesus quickly put them in their place, revealing that the very people they thought were interruptions were actually an example to learn from (not to throw shade on the disciples, because they are actually my favorite example of interruptibility in the Bible):

“While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.”

Matthew 4:18-22

It’s so easy for me to breeze through that passage thinking I would do the same thing, but this is their livelihoods we are talking about. When Jesus called them, they left everything to follow Him without delay​.

Straight-up just dropped what they were doing.

Am I like that?

What He called them to was better by far, and they would have missed it if they were worried about being interrupted.

I love that interruptions don’t have my own manipulative hand trying to force something into being God’s will for my life; rather, they are a divine invitation to humbly trust God has a better idea.

Practical Interruptibility

Since 2020 was interrupted and mostly cancelled, I think we’re all growing in interruptibility. :)

To me, an interruptible person holds their plans loosely and follows God’s guidance for both the big things in life and the little details of daily schedules. They are willing to pause what they are doing to pour into the life of another person. God has been growing me in this area so much over the year, I almost have to laugh. Yet there is still so much room for growth, especially in the day-to-day interruptions that feel ordinary, at best.

The verse that I had in mind when I picked interruptible was Proverbs 16:9.

“A man's heart deviseth his way: but the ​L​ORD directeth his steps.​”

It reminds me that I don’t actually have as much control as I’d like to think, so I can either fight God the whole way and miss the lesson and the blessing, or I can get on His wavelength and see what He would like to accomplish through my brokenness.

The latter is more appealing to me.

So practically, that may look like welcoming an interruption to whatever I am currently doing to play a game with my family (fun) or go take the trash out (less fun). Initially, I think I expected I would see this mostly play out in small things like that, but as the year has gone on, it’s been almost like an inside joke between me and God to see how many interruptions have happened, even with big things! I’m kind of on the edge of my seat trying to catch a glimpse of what His purposes are behind it all.

I’m a pretty spontaneous person. If you ask me to do something that feels like an upgrade or more fun option than what I’m doing, I’m there in a flash, but when it counts is when I’m asked to be selfless and serve someone else. Like, when I’m enjoying a good hammock nap and I’m asked to do the dishes, I admit I don’t always (ever) jump up excited to be interrupted. Some interruptions are easy to love, others not so much, but His hand is all over when we look for it.

How God Has Been Interrupting My Life Lately

The first interruption was when I had to back out of a spring break trip, but that was quickly overshadowed by the whole trip being cancelled and the big one...COVID-19: being sent home from college, and quarantine.

Everyone’s lives were uprooted in a big way!

But in my own life, it actually came as a blessing, though I say that sensitively knowing the pandemic has hurt many people.

Over the past few years, my world has been wracked by chronic pain, and we are in the process of getting to the bottom of it. My major at school has never been offered online; when I am at the worst points in health, I’ve often wished I could just be home for a while. If you peeked in my journal one week before the announcement that classes were moving online, you would actually find a prayer that I could go home!

I prayed that prayer knowing there was no way it could be answered; I was just so weary I didn’t know what else to pray for! But God blew me away.

When I tell you it felt like this entire pandemic happened for me, I am not joking.

At this same time, my doctor wanted to see me every 10 days or so, which would not have been possible from school. All that to say, God really does work all things together for good (Rom. 8:28), even things that aren’t good things.

I’ve also experienced some interruptions with my summer internship. . . .

First, it was delayed.

Not too long later, COVID-19 came to the Feller household and we were quarantined for a few weeks. I’m actually writing from quarantine now! My internship was once again interrupted, cancelled because of slow business and the fact that I would only have a few weeks left to work once I was un-quarantined.

Then, right when I got my head wrapped around that, my employer asked me to come back, ha! Go figure!

Something not too many people know yet is that, behind the scenes, I’ve also been figuring out how to move to online schooling next semester, as I will be undergoing treatments very soon that would be disruptive with a typical college schedule.

After trying plans A through E, I finally landed on an open door and am switching majors to marketing in order to go online for the fall. The repercussions of that are still in the air, but undoubtedly God has a purpose in it. I may still do the same thing I was planning on in a different way, but there may be more to it than that.

I love that it opens more doors of opportunity. I have some dreams a few sizes too big, but I’m pressing into God to see if He has laid them on my heart, because with Him “all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). I know it’s my life, but God has the pen, and I’m curious what He’ll write in the next chapter.

I guess it would defeat the purpose of being interrupted if I knew ahead of time what was going to interrupt me, but I have no doubt this is not the last time God will wreck my plans and replace them with His better ones.

This year, I want to be more patient with the small interruptions that manifest themselves every day rather than giving in to impatience and selfishness. Even when I cannot see the purpose in everything He has allowed in my life, I am choosing to believe it will be worth it.

A Long Interruption

There are no interruptions that I wish had not happened. But there are a couple I wish would be over!

As I mentioned, chronic pain has been a large factor of my life for the last few years, and certainly not something in my plans! Back in my junior year of high school I started noticing I was having stomach aches pretty often but thankfully I had no idea that it would be something that would escalate so intensely to affect every single day of my life for years, which is still going on.

God, in His grace, knows sometimes it’s better for us not to know what the future holds.

I would be lying to say it has been easy, because in reality it has been the hardest fight of my life and so incredibly life-altering. But through it, I am finding God to be true to His Word:

faithful to renew us, there to provide even in the very last moment when I think there’s no way, guiding us by His Holy Spirit, worthy of all my trust even when my back is against the wall and all I seem to see are flames, and, best of all, ready and willing to hear and answer prayer.

So, while I am begging God for the end of this trial, I am praising Him for humbling and teaching me in ways that will alter the trajectory of my life for His glory and my good. I would never have written my own story this way, but because I trust that God is a better author than me, I would not change what has happened.

How does being an “interruptible” person influence your opportunities and ministries?

I love this question because God has really been challenging my mindset on ministry lately.

He’s showing me that ministry has more to do with people than programs, and life is ministry.

Not that programs are bad, just that if I’m too busy with all sorts of scheduled routines I will miss the many spontaneous opportunities that come when I make myself available to other people.

I want to be the type of person who will stop on a dime to meet a need, and I have plenty of people to learn from, cause they’ve done it for me.

We all take turns on the receiving end of grace.

You can read more by Olivia and explore her love for interior design here or on Instagram @apartment_330

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What interruptions has God allowed into your life this year, and what good have you seen come out of them? (Romans 8:28)