The sweetest year that I ever spent with God was the one
after I ended a four-year dating relationship that I felt He was ultimately calling
me to end. The person with whom I had spent most of my time was then gone from
my life, and I was left to rebuild. I had nothing but God, and in turn I had everything.
I remember nights where I would lie in bed unable to sleep,
God keeping me awake, until I would speak to Him. Both prayers soft and shallow
to those deep and buried ensued. Just communion. Reconnecting with my Creator.
In my solace and sorrow, I began meditating on scripture like never before.
Words from David’s Psalm 103 in which he recounts his own restoration, “…redeems
your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,” still ring
sweet echoes in my mind. I realigned my thinking with His thinking and made my
desires His desires. I put myself out there. Where I had been uncommitted with
our church college group, I invested and became mission minded. I shed my
somewhat shy persona for one of boldness in meeting new people and bringing
them into Christ-filled community.
God and I have walked through a host of other difficulties
together—years of bitterness in marriage, miscarriage of a child followed by
waiting to conceive, depression, the strain of a rigorous and busy graduate
school and work life combination. And He’s been there in the highs as well—the
provision of a Godly husband, the gift of our two children, the slow and steady
sanctification of myself and my marriage, the laughter and joy experienced with
friends.
And while He’s always been there, I’ve always looked back to
that sweet year with a reminiscent longing for that time when I felt a sudden
desperation to be with Him—a supernatural craving for his presence and an
attuning to His voice. There was something about the pain and solitude that
woke me up—got my attention. C.S. Lewis writes, “Pain insists upon being
attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences,
but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to a deaf world.” So did I wish
for heartache? By no means. But I wanted to relish Him again. I wanted to
experience God in a way that only pain can prod and provoke.
And I am there now—in
the midst of the sting and the sweetness all wrapped in one. In the middle of
pain. But in the palm of His hand. I can hear Him clearly. I can see His workings.
Whether because of sin, mere circumstance, divine provision,
or some combination of the three, all the pieces of my life have been shaken
like dice and thrown across the game board, some falling over the edge. There
has been a continual stripping away, leaving me questioning, “What is left? When
will things go back to normal? When will there be healing?”
Pain is a deafening silence that causes you to finally
listen. A smelling salt to revive the faint. It makes you wake up and look
around, the room still spinning but the objects becoming clearer. You see those
things you’ve missed—maybe those people you’ve missed.
I have felt that I have nothing. But wait, I have everything. I have the very thing I
crave, the very being that I’ve had but that I’ve missed in the noise.
True, I’ve seen Him in comfortable friendships. And
sometimes I just want Jesus with some familiar skin on Him. But he’s revealing
Himself in new skin. Lunch with a new friend. A beach trip with a group of
girls that I may have overlooked. An unexpected connection. A friend who may
need me. A neighbor I need to meet. A group of Christ-seekers in my home. A
group of people who need each other. A church that is stirring. Reignited
passion. Reignited mission. Reignited relationship.
And while some days are tough, the sweetness is pervading. Cleaning
up after hosting our community group in our home, I ponder these thoughts. Ella
plays a song called “Morning” on the piano as I sweep up the kitchen. It feels
like morning—no longer like mourning.
