“I don’t want to leave my home. My husband says we have to move. So I am going to leave him.”
My new friend trembled as she spoke, the register of her voice was barely above a whisper. Her silver hair waved around her ears–soft and elegantly simple. I looked from her face to the scalloped white collar that buttoned at her throat. She appeared neat, clean and honorably pious.
She said, “I don’t believe in God anymore. I don’t think he’s real.”
She looked around nervously. “I’ve attended this church for 10 years. I don’t talk to anyone and they don’t talk to me. I don’t believe all this stuff they are talking about. But my husband insists we come here.”
She was as still as a mouse. With tense shoulders, she was hiding in plain sight–as if a cat would pounce at any moment.
“I’ve been married for 39 years. I don’t want to leave my city, even though most of my friends have died or moved away. I love my home. I thought I would die there. How can I live if I leave?”
I said, “I don’t have all the answers, but I know how it feels to leave the home I love–and I only lived in mine for 17 years.”
She grabbed my hand. “Oh!” She said. “Then you know how I feel!”
I said, “I do. But my house was just a building. God is my real home. And he is with me wherever I go.”
Our real world suffering can seem mighty big compared to the invisible God who does not intervene when and where we want him to. One could even say our pain is like a thick, gray storm cloud that is filled with dust. It chokes us so that we can see no way out. With dirt particles filling our nose and mouth, we grasp for a lifeline–and when one doesn’t arrive on our timeline–we fall to the ground in defeat. All our faith feels intangible and hollow. Our doubts rise up like a stallion and trample our hope. Our eyes sting with tears. Our hearts sag with dread.
My friend is not the only person I know who has stopped believing in God. I know others who stopped trusting. They left loveless marriages and stubborn, rebellious husbands. They have struggled with loneliness, heartache, and questions that found no answers.
“O Lord God of hosts, who is mighty as you are, O Lord, with your faithfulness all around you?” Psalm 89: 8
Is God really faithful?
I have struggled in my marriage too. I have gone to bed angry. I have lashed out with barbed words intending to do serious damage. We have screamed and cried and separated. I have sobbed myself to sleep. I have climbed from bed exhausted and with a cold spirit. I have wondered where God is and why he allows me to suffer.
I am not the only woman in the world who has thought, “If God really loves me, why won’t He change the man I married? Why won’t God make him kinder, more attentive, less…..lazy?” (I am certain there are plenty of men who feel the same about their wives.)
Another good friend of mine is married to a man who has never earned an honest living. They are in their 70’s. She told me candidly, “If it weren’t for the inheritance my parents gave me–and my wise investing of it–he’d be living in his car.” Her husband is one of the most fluent “God-talking” people I ever met, and he has failed his wife miserably.
“Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David?” Psalm 89:49
I have hidden my broken heart in fantasy novels, chick flicks, and endless bowls of M&M’s. I have dreamed and schemed a way to fix what seems unfixable. But it wasn’t until I submitted and surrendered to God’s authority over over my life that I ever found peace.
I run the risk of sounding like a clanging symbol here. I write like God waved a magic wand over my marriage and made all our arguments into flocks of white doves. Like I’m sitting over here plucking the petals off a daisy and smelling the roses while chaos swirls around me.
As if!
No–it’s better than that. I trust God today because he has walked with me through the fires of divorce and reconciliation, and the deep waters of residual anger and bitterness–and has delivered me by his righteous right hand. I no longer believe in “happily ever after’s” but have found strength in the steadfast love of the Lord. When I opened my heart to him, he showed me the ways I was sinning in my marriage and offered to heal me so that I could live without guilt and shame. Because when I sin against my husband–I sin first and foremost–against God. And that sin is costly. It denies me peace with God. There is a lie the enemy likes to tell us–that we are victims who have a right to take justice into our own hands. But God clearly says, “Justice is mine. I will repay. Do not take vengeance into your own hands.”
This is not a popular teaching. We want revenge and we often execute it. But as Alexander Dumas brilliantly displayed in his masterpiece, “The Count of Monte Cristo”, revenge is devastating no matter what color you paint it (and his hero painted it blood red). We will all be held accountable for the sin we commit against God and the only person I am responsible for is me. But I have learned (very uncomfortably, I might add) that revenge does not bring peace. A sword begets a sword. And this is why I cling to Jesus–He wields the sword so I can rest in him and his perfect justice. I love my husband–yes, even when he is imperfect–because God loves me. Because through the lens of faith I recognize I am imperfect too.
My new friend can’t fix her husband. He wants to move and she won’t change his mind. She had lost all hope that there was a way out of her situation. I encouraged her to trust in the steadfast love of the Lord. His mercies really are new every morning. His faithfulness is great. (Psalm 89 is a perfect depiction of the real-life tension we all feel in this area and I encourage the dear reader to read the whole thing.)
At the end of our conversation she told me she believes in Jesus and has a relationship with him. She then said, “I know God sent you to talk to me today.” Then she grabbed my hands. “You saved me today. I mean, you physically saved me. You don’t know what I was going to do.”
I thought about all the moments and memories that brought me to that place and time–the pain, the suffering, and the hardship. Then I said to her with absolute peace: “God loves you. He is with you. Trust Him.”
This was an interesting read. My husband and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary in May.
My sister and her husband were evacuated from their home for almost a week due to forest fires. Luckily, they still had a house to come home to. But it sure got them thinking, about what is important, the material possessions were have in our homes, not to mention the house itself. I was ruminating on the dangers of being emotionally attached to my stuff and where I live. Your post adds another layer, what if your spouse wanted you to leave the only thing you hold on to, the center of where you dwell, your house and the community you live in. But is that house really your center, or have you created the wrong center? Very interesting.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! 30 years is quite a feat!
I used to dream my house was on fire when I was a child. I have always had this fear of my house burning down. As an adult when I have this dream, I am always trying to save my stuff or save a pet. Maybe the dream reveals what I value most.
The older I get, the more I realize how little I actually control and how many things I cling to that I cannot keep forever. Even if I were lucky enough to buy a house and live in it until I die–I couldn’t take it with me. Jesus said, “Whoever would keep his life will lose it. But whoever will lose his life for my sake will keep it.” This may be the greatest mystery. How can we possibly understand what it means to die and yet live?