The Blessing that Starts with a Sob

I pulled back the curtains Saturday morning and saw what I had expected; wet pavement. For once, it seems, the weathermen were correct. I paced around the house for a few minutes, killing time until I confirmed the inevitable; I would not be riding my bicycle in the Tour de Cure. I called myself a coward even as I tried to muster up some courage. I looked out of the window again. My shoulders sagged. And then I crawled back into bed and pulled the covers over my head.

I was disappointed. Even angry. I thought of all the people who contributed to my ride. Would they hate me? Would they refuse to support me next year? Should I even go so far as to refund their money? And then I considered the reason I am afraid to ride on wet pavement. I remember approaching the intersection, taking the corner, and the wheels slipping out from under me. My face hit the road with a thunk. A driver called out, “Are you okay?” And I tried to move but I couldn’t. I lay there helpless, gasping for air, even as I tried to make sense out of how one moment I had so much confidence in the bike beneath me and the next moment I was spitting out pieces of teeth as strangers carried me to the side of the road.

For this reason and several others, I am terrified to ride on wet pavement. I was riding last week and got caught in a thunderstorm. I honestly thought I might have a nervous breakdown right there, a mile from my house. Regardless of how fast I pedaled, the dark and ominous clouds had overtaken me. The rain hit me like marbles, but I held onto my trusty bicycle, thanked God for disc brakes(and the sturdy construction of my Jamis hybrid) and prayed like crazy that I would make it home with my teeth intact. I did. And I consider that a tremendous blessing.

June 6th is a day that holds great significance in my life. Every year on this day I stop and reflect on a decision I made that—at the time—had everyone in my life scratching their heads. This year is the ten year anniversary of that decision. And I don’t regret it, even though things didn’t go exactly as planned. It was a defining moment in my life; the day I made the decision to follow my husband to Oklahoma, where against all odds, we would try to rebuild our broken marriage.

This is a tender subject for me and I ask for grace from the reader. For I can never put words to the anguish I endured during that time. Nothing I say will be adequate enough to express the heartache, terror and hope I experienced when I felt the Lord guiding me to a strange land with a stranger(for my husband was certainly a stranger to me at that time). I had prayed for wisdom and guidance and felt the Lord tell me through his word that I should trust Him—and Him alone—to guide and protect me. Let me be clear, I had no faith in my husband, but only in the strong and steady hand of the keeper of the stars.

I had confidence in His strength as I explained my decision to my parents, my siblings, and my church family. They simply could not grasp how a woman could forgive the unforgivable and put her life in the hands of someone who had broken faith with her. In many ways that was when my walk with the Lord changed forever. It was the moment I stopped asking people for advice and leaned only on my faith in God to guide me through the dark and ugly jungle of betrayal. I never felt like I was walking out onto a jagged precipice. In truth, I felt as if I were crossing a rickety bridge held fast and firm by the hand of love. If you want to learn how that ended up, give me a call sometime. I won’t recant the entire story here. But needless to say, we remain married today, and only by the grace of the one who told me on June 6th, 2006, that he would never leave me or forsake me.

I attended a wedding yesterday. I watched two committed Christians enter into a covenant relationship in the most beautiful way possible. I thought to myself that they are so much better than I was at their age. So much wiser. I thought about the first day of their journey and what paths the Lord would lead them on. I wondered how they would respond to the caverns of pain and the oceans of bliss that marriage introduces human beings to. I prayed for them to be true to each other, and faithful to their creator and his purpose for their lives. And then I prayed that God would bless them.

Some might think blessing looks like a good job, a comfy home and a fluffy poodle. So often we pray for the blessing but do not have the capacity to understand what receiving it actually looks like. In my experience, sometimes the blessing looks like a sob. It looks like a broken blade of grass dangling in the breeze. It looks like a cyclist splayed out in the street with the wind knocked out of her. It looks like a woman throwing her wedding band over a bridge on the way home from a failed attempt to save her marriage. I have learned that the blessing is not financial, but rather, spiritual. The blessing comes when God’s favor rests on the heaving shoulders of one crying out in the night for comfort. The blessing comes when the scale reading 5 pounds higher. The blessing is a diagnosis of juvenile diabetes. In short, blessing is the small whisper in the whirlwind that says I have not lost everything because I still have the one and only treasure that really matters.

I drove home from work on Friday afternoon having once again experienced tremendous professional disappointment. And I felt it rise within me—the sob. Tears swelled in my eyes as I considered the tick marks that have been crossed off over the years in my career. Each time I try and fail I consider the best way to respond. My husband suggested ice cream. I told him I’d already been there and done that and it didn’t salve the ache. So I lifted my eyes to the hills and thanked God for my pain. I told him that regardless of my disappointment, I still trusted him. And then I cried the rest of the way home. I didn’t feel it immediately… the pitter-patter on my shoulders. After all, the pain was just too intense. But eventually the blessing began to sink in as I continued to choose to love and trust Christ. Because once you have been saturated by the love of the Prince of Peace, you come to realize that no matter how big the pain, the heartache, the sin, He is bigger still. And the blessing He gives is more beautiful than you could ever imagine. Do you know why? It is because the blessing is Himself.