I think the word I’m looking for is Behemoth. Canada’s Wonderland’s website boasts that it is “Canada’s biggest, fastest & tallest coaster EVER!” I feel like I’m living on it. My life right now is Behemoth.
I struggle with keeping God #1. I struggle with saying and believing the nice fluffy Sunday school lines like “Give it over to God – He will comfort you!” and “He wants to carry your load – do your best, God will do the rest!” Awww… There’s my cosmic teddy bear again, wanting to make all the trivial little dramas in my life go away.
I know I’m not even giving God the chance. I get a really upsetting phone call. My heart is broken, my soul is wrenching, and I can’t quite find an emotion to stick with – I’m all over the map. I’m a mess. What makes me feel better – email a close friend to “vent.” Venting. What a ridiculous notion. I need to vent to someone to feel better? I need to freak out and spew out all of my pent-up resentment and frustrations and anger to someone I trust? Bull***. I want someone to feel sorry for me, and I want someone to hop onto my pity-party train and take a ride with me. It makes me feel good. For like 10 minutes. Then I want to vent to somebody else.
WHY don’t I vent to God? WHY don’t I go into my closet and shut the door and weep and cry and freak out on God? He knows EVERY EMOTION I’m hitting on this Behemoth today. He is with me, in my head, in my heart, in my subconcious – he knows why I feel the way I feel when I’m trying to figure out what exactly it is that I’m feeling! He’s with me on so many levels, that I can’t even understand how much more He knows about me, let alone my problem. But I feel better writing an email? What’s wrong with me??
A close friend I’ve cherished since high school wrote me today. She knows a sliver of what has been happening between Owen & I, and instead of asking for all the gossip, and trying whatever she can to squeeze some juicy information out of me, she writes to encourage me. I don’t know what you’re going through, I don’t know what’s wrong, but “I love you and I pray things are getting better for you day by day…”
She goes on to write “If I could give you a little advice from my own marriage trials, is not to expect a change overnight, and to learn to work on one thing at a time and not try to fix everything at once. It took (her husband) and I three years to finally feel “in love” and feel like newlyweds. We’ve just now learned to love each other with our love languages and to put the other first. Although it’s not pefect some days, we are trying to make an effort.”
This is the sound of me breathing a deep, refreshed sigh. Thank you. I’m not the only one going through this, I’m not the only one struggling in my marriage, and here’s some sound advice that I learned the hard way and I hope means something to you too. That’s a friend right there.
So although I didn’t go lock myself in a closet like I probably should have, God decided to speak through one of my fellow sisters in His family and give me something I needed to hear.
Marriage is hard. She also wrote “I’m a firm believer that marriage is the hardest thing a person will do in their life. It’s really the only thing you have to commit to. If your job sucks, you just get another one. If you don’t like your look, you change it. There are so many things in life that if we are unhappy, we can walk away fromy. Marriage is one of the only things that requires true committment and really shows what a person is made of when they choose to stick it out, and in the end, it makes them into stronger and better people…”
Marriage is like a roller coaster. It really is. There are high times, there are low times, there are times when you’re getting really high, and you hear that clicking, and you know it’s going to be crazy soon, so you just hang on and hope for the best. Sometimes it’s insane – you want OFF NOW. The trick is learning that, just like on a roller coaster, getting off isn’t an option. They don’t stop the Behemoth every time it gets to the highest point, so the people who’ve changed their minds can climb out and go down the ladder. You got on it – you gotta suck it up and stay on it til it’s done and those chest bars lift up! The quicker you realize this is up to you. You can decide to give it all you’ve got – heck, you’re going to raise your hands above your head and let it exhillerate you on the way down! Or you’re going to clutch the seat and scream and hate every second. Regardless, you’re on the ride. What are you going to make of it? It was DESIGNED FOR YOU, to bring out the best in you, to comfort and encourage you, to delight in and rejoice in. It was God’s ultimate day-to-day gift to us in our crazy life – someone to serve the Saviour beside, and in total union with. And we are so selfish that we turn it into something miserable.
Everything comes easy these days. You don’t have to sit down for breakfast as a family anymore – get a microwavable bagel that takes 30 seconds and you can eat it on the run! Grab some instant oatmeal bars and throw them at the kids in the back seat on the way to the bus! It’s that easy! Feeling empty? Don’t pay for 12 months! Fill up your house with more crap you don’t need so you can feel better right now! Sale! Everything must go! We’ve gotta make room for the next batch of useless garbage! You HAVE to have the newer upgraded cell phone, the old one just WILL NOT satisfy you! Keep up! We’re moving faster than you are, and you’ve gotta have all this crap too, or you’re just missing out on living life to the fullest! You’re filling a void that can’t be filled with any of this stuff, so keep cramming, at least some days you’ll feel some temporary relief!
WHERE HAVE WE PUT GOD?? We are living so far away from Him, that nothing satisfies us anymore. We want more, more, more. Yes, it’s human nature. Exactly. We can put aside our human nature and live HOLY lives if we buckle down and decide to. I always wondered HOW people did that? How do you live so satisfied in Christ, how do you actually live IN His Spirit? How are you so filled with the Holy Spirit that His presence in it spills over and produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and (the fruit I believe our culture is lacking above all else) self control. How do you do that? I believe the answer is so simple, when you truly grasp it, you’ll feel like you got a boot shoved up your butt for not seeing it sooner.
Every. Single. Decision. In. Life. From how to respond when a telemarketer calls at supper time, to whether or not to get pissed off when someone cuts you off in traffic, to that extra little bitg you squeeze out of someone because you know you can. It’s all there – the choices are black, and white. We make them grey because we don’t want to do the white stuff when it all boils down to it. There is no room for grey with God. It’s black and white. Make the right decision to glorify Him, or don’t. Every single time you make the right choice; say the right words; do the right thing… You are giving God the glory and inviting a little bit more of Himself to fill you up and make YOU, HIS temple. WOAH. Seriously, if you truly grasp what that means, how can it not knock you to your knees? Literally. Are you still with me? Can I get an AMEN?? (I never understood that sentence but I get it now!)
When God asks us to do things in secret, it’s because He KNOWS we are truly doing it to glorify Him! Who else gets the glory if He’s the only one who it was meant to be seen by? When He tells us that good things done for the attention or praise or thanks of others here on earth is all the reward we will receive – He means it! He’s a righteously jealous God who wants all the glory to Himself – He’s the only one who deserves it. He will have it, at the end of all things, be it from the bowed knees and the confessing tongues of the people who slandered Him through their entire life on this earth, or through the satisfaction of saying “Well done, good and faithful servant” to those who grasped this concept and actually applied it to their life. He WILL have His glory. It’s only His, it will only ever be His. I want to give it to Him every day. I want to store up my treasures in Heaven, where moth and rust do not decay, and theives will not break in and steal. I can’t even conceive of the life He has promised me – how could I deny Him the trivial tasks of delighting in Him every day of this short life?
FILL ME! God, I choose You right now. I choose YOU when I stub my toe and I want to curse. I choooooose you when my dog takes a crap in my living room and I am so angry I can’t see straight. When I don’t feel like starting another load of laundry. When my son has an accident in his pants and I want to scream instead of hugging him and cheerfully cleaning up his poop. Those are the moments when I normally want to do things myself. I want to get angry, and cranky, and I don’t allow your joy into my heart. It’s that simple. Every, single, minute, there is a chance to accept God into your life – into the little moments that ARE your life! Not just on the big steps when we really do need a divine intervention. We only want Him around when we feel like we’re in over our heads. He wants to be a part of ALL of it! Every second! Everything – the laughing, the crying, the toe stubbing, the delicious bite of apple crisp. He wants to be WITH us. And it’s easier to shut Him out until the big stuff comes – and we wonder where He is, when He’s sitting across the room smirking at us and our selfish stupidity.
Help me, Lord, to choose You in EVERYTHING I do. What a broad sweep of so many tiny little details. “Everything.” Yes. EVERYTHING.
John Piper states that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”
Can I get an AMEN!?
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