journeying into year three.

Two years.  May 15th will forever be a marked moment in our lives.  I heard someone once describe such a moment as a dividing line in your life that changed everything.  There is now a before and an after.  And that’s how I often describe it, because on that day our whole world changed forever.

I have also described the past two years as a journey.  It’s been a journey of hope, of healing, and of God’s faithfulness.  Where in those first days and months, life felt like it was moving in slow motion and there was victory to be found in just getting up, I can now look back and see all that God has done.  I am thankful that even in my darkest, lowest moment while curled up in a ball on a driveway, God spoke a clear and direct word to me, “Stand up.  I will work this for good.”  

And He has.

It hasn’t looked how I thought and it has by no means been easy.  It’s been the most challenging days I could have imagined.  It’s not a road I would have chosen, were there ever a choice.  And yet, I have seen and experienced Him through it all.  He has been beautifully, wonderfully present and near to my broken heart.  He has faithfully given me strength to walk through each day, oftentimes moment by moment.  He has guided our steps and brought us into new.  

I have learned that it isn’t my job to understand, but to obey.  I have learned what it means to step out in faith on His word, listening to His voice over the opinion of others.  I have learned that I have to lay down my expectations and simply trust.  Romans 12:12 simplifies it, “rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.”  I can think of no better explanation than that.  That is the posture I desire for my heart.  

My desire has been for healing.  I recently read a statement that resonated so deeply, “undealt with pain and a mind at peace cannot coexist.”  Healing doesn’t mean just moving on or pretending.  Healing means acknowledging what’s happened and bringing all of the pain to light.  It means digging deep and feeling every ounce of pain, surrendering it, and allowing God to use it as He wills.  It’s believing there is a purpose and pressing in even deeper under pressure.  It’s acknowledging my hardest questions and being real with God throughout the whole process.  

A book that has been transformational for me has been Forgiving What You Can’t Forget.  In the author’s before and after life experience of her husband’s infidelities, she speaks on the most difficult period of her life.  She reflects, “God was moving.  God was working.  God was doing His best work in the unseen.  Depending on Art’s choice, God would either rescue me out or reconcile us in the relationship.  Either way, each day was God’s answered prayer.  And though I very rarely got the loaves of bread I kept looking for, I was living a slow-working miracle I just couldn’t see.”

I have to be honest.  When I said none of this looked how I thought, it’s because I prayed for restoration for sixteen years.  God did restore, just not in the way I imagined.  The line, “God would either rescue me out or reconcile” was freeing for me.  I have said to those closest to me that God rescued me, and yet saying that aloud in some ways felt wrong.  I was putting my own limitations on how God works.  I was letting my pride get in the way.  I was overly concerned with what other’s would think of a situation they knew absolutely nothing about.  But God knew.  He knew every tear, every dark moment, every devastation.  He saw, and He rescued.  Someone hugged me on that forever marked day of May 15th and said, “It’s over.  It’s all over.”  That was the day I became free.

Free to live in the light.  Free to live as the person God created me to be.  Free to share my story - His story - of faithfulness and redemption.  Free to live in victory.

My husband and I pray for and claim victory over our family.  He recently heard someone say that God’s love language is victory.  I believe that.  Though there are everyday battles still, though there is so much beneath the surface that no one sees, we press on.  We continue the work of healing in us and in our children.  This process is not for the faint of heart.  Trust me, it’s a doozy.  There are lifetime repercussions and wounds that are being mended.  Some wounds are still bleeding.  And yet, God is good and in it all.  We fight the enemy’s attacks, we bow in prayer, and we proclaim the Word of God over our situation.  We are seeing a victory, and will continue to see it, even on the days that feel impossibly hard.  I desire to “let perseverance finish its work so that {we} may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

My prayer is that we continue to embrace His healing, walking into His purposes and in His freedom.  All praise to Him, who perfects and completes His work in us.