While I was wearing my blanket of angst and being made aware
that life was changing drastically, I was also attending a Beth Moore bible
study, “Breaking Free”. I made myself do
the study, attend the meeting…..and I began to hear a repeated theme in her
teaching. Beth spoke often of God’s unfailing love for us. For some reason,
this description of God’s love rang differently to me than other words to
describe His love. I heard God saying that no matter what happened, His love
for me had not and would not “fail”. His love would be certain and reliable,
not erratic like my life - which felt so
very uncertain.
At one point in the early months, I actually did a search of
this term “unfailing love” in God’s Word. I wrote out every verse I could find,
with the reference, – to burn it into my mind and spirit. Almost daily, I was tempted to believe that
God didn’t love me – I knew he loved me in the largest sense, that He sent
Jesus to die for my sin and to give me eternal life, I had staked my life on
this belief. But because things were so out of control, happening at such a
fast pace and yet so slowly, I would find myself thinking that God wasn’t
seeing me, that He didn’t care about these times.
I know God was so patient with me during this period – which
lasted a long time – and was not shocked by my questions, my faithlessness, my
fear. But I knew this was not how it was supposed to be…….someplace inside me,
I knew this was the devil’s temptation for me to “curse God and die” as was
suggested to Job.
There were many, many times when I would feel so emotionally,
spiritually, and physically weakened that I would say out loud to God – “I refuse
to believe You don’t love me,,,,,You say you love me with an UNFAILING love”…I would
rebuke the enemy in Jesus’ name and continue to repeat the Truth of His
unfailing love – to affirm this both to God and to myself. I already knew that satan often
comes to us and distorts God’s truth, he tries to get us to believe a lie, to
try another way.
I would read those verses I had written out over and over
again – or visit those same verses marked in my Bible to imprint the
precious, life-giving words into my mind and heart.
God never abandoned me. He never left me, He didn’t allow me
to flounder for too long without sending someone or some event to comfort me,
to assure me of His care. I remember one Saturday morning when I was feeling so
alone – I asked God to just show me that He knew I was there, to let me know I was
not forgotten – a few minutes later, Rachella Bohannon called just to check in.
I saw God’s provision, and I told her she was used by God that day to let me
know He heard my heart’s cry to Him.
For anyone who might read this and be tempted to wonder how or
why this situation can cause so much anxiety, worry, fear, sadness – I can only
say that maybe you have to walk in these shoes for a while to feel the rocks
under your feet, to know how closely you walk to the precipice, to feel the
emotional sweat drip down your face, to hope for a turn in the road which will
take you down a different path which you know is not likely to appear.
(to
be cont’d)
