The Weathering Grace of God

(**Personal note/update at end of this entry)

CHAPTER TWO

THE WEATHERING GRACE OF GOD

Page 70

As mountains attract the weather, so the upheavals in our lives attract the grace of God. Those who have had deadly, crushing, bitter experiences happen to them are the ones to whom the Father is especially drawn.

* The Lord is near to the brokenhearted. (Ps. 34:18)

* A broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt no despise. (Ps 51:17)

* He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds. (Ps 147:3)

....Gire goes on in this chapter and refers to the Dust Bowl that historically changed so many lives of those who had retreated to Oklahoma from the great depression

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The unrelenting winds of the Dust Bowl swept topsoil from their farms.With the loss of soil came the loss of their crops. with the loss of their crops came the loss of their livelihood. with the loss of their livelihood came the loss of their farms.

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The Dawn came, but no day.

....When the night came again it was a black night, for the starts could pierce the dust to get down, and the window lights could not even spread beyond their own yards. ...

An upheaval not only alters the landscape but often deforests the landscape, leading to further devastation. The same thing can happen when tragedy strikes the small, forty-acre farm that is our life

Steinbeck's description of the Dust Bowl is what the weather of the heart is sometimes like for the one who has endured great loss. A steady wind blows you, opposes you, oppresses you. the wind grows stronger, whisking away what little soil that surrounds the few rootlets of spiritual life you have left. With the wind come stinging reminders of how different your life is from everyone else's.....Your bloodshot eyes burn from the wind blown grit. Your tears wash away the grit, but not the burn.

To escape these stinging realities, you huddle yourself in your house. .....No matter how thorough you are in your dusting, there is always something you have overlooked, always some reminder of your loss.

You lie in bed at night, staring at the ceiling. Your thoughts are incoherent pieces of a puzzle you have grown weary of, yet can't get rid of. The headache won't go away. Or the guilt. Or the regret. You're out of tears, out of prayers. You've waited in silence, wept in silence, wondered in silence. You wonder if anyone is up there, beyond that ceiling, if anyone was ever up there, or if it has all been just so much pious talk and positive thinking, reinforced by the peer pressure of your religious friends. .....

.....What little light you have within you doesn't spread very far, either.

Throughout the night the wind continues. The night is long and it seems the dawn will never come. Finally the dawn comes, but no day....And God, who once seemed so radiant, now seems a dim red circle that give little light.

.....What then?

We start by realizing that reclaiming the land doesn't happen overnight.

But it does happen. And it begins to happen when we pray. Each time we pray, we plant a seed. It takes years to sow them. Even more years to grow them. That is how we cooperate with god in reclaiming the landscape. A seed at a time. We plant them in faith, NOT KNOWING HOW MANY WILL SPROUT, OR OF THOSE THAT SPROUT, HOW MANY WILL SURVIVE. And though the odds are against us, we believe that some of those seeds will root, that some of them will survive, and that someday they WILL make a difference in the landscape of our lives.

Yet, there are days when the promise of "someday" is not enough. You try to think of a reason to go on living today. but today you can't. And from your trembling hand, the only seed you have to sow is the prayer that God in His mercy puts an end to your misery, and takes you home. Not someday, but today.

Page 91

C.S. Lewis said...."We should bring to God what is in us, not what ought to be in us". The oughts will keep us from telling the truth. they will also keep us from feeling the truth. Especially the truth about our pain.

We can be too careful with our words, especially when we pray. We can be too quick to come to conclusions about what happened and why. too quick to make sense of it all. Too quick to see God in it all.

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When Jesus received the news of John the Baptist's death....He went away by Himself and mourned. (Matt 14:1-13)

....Jesus reached into the depths of His soul for whatever words He could find that spoke the truth of his pain. We are told that He agonized with "loud crying and tears" (Heb 5:7) We are also told that He fell to the ground, where He prayed fervently and sweated profusely. (Luke 22:44)

...We pray however we can, with whatever words we can. We pray with our sweat, with our tears. and we pray with whatever friends we have who will sit with us IN THE DARKNESS!!

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Gethsemane, Calvary, and any other place in the world where tears are wept but unblotted - where questions are asked but unanswered....

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"Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him, he liked to say. Therein lies true dialogue. Man asks and God replies. But we don't understand His replies. We cannot understand them. Because they dwell in the depths of our soul and remain there until we die. The real answers you will find only within yourself"....."I pray to God within me for the strength to ask Him the real questions." (quotes by Elie Wiesel a Holocaust survivor who lost his entire family in that tragic season)

Who of us knows what those questions are? Or how deeply within ourselves we will have to go to find them? Who knows what we will find in those depths?

Maybe something of secret of who we are. Who we are, who we truly are, is a secret known only to god. One day we will be given the stone that bears our new name (Rev 2:17). But TODAY, that name is a mystery, even to us.

Page 97

I think that we feel if we can somehow connect all the dots in life in some kind of cause-and-effect manner, that life can be managed and made safe for us and for those we love.

But the universe cannot be managed or made safe. Not by us anyway. When we lose a sense of mystery, we lose a sense of our place in the universe. And leaving that place, we leave behind a humility that is attendant to that place.

Mystery, ambiguity, uncertainty. These are places where we reach an end of ourselves, places where we have to stop, stop and take off our shoes. If we don't. the mystery, the ambiguity, the uncertainty will one day prove too much for us. If we must have all our questions answered before we can go forward in our relationship with God, there will come a day when we won't go forward.

Some mysteries remain God's secret. Others Jesus shares with us, the way He shared with Peter something of secret of His own life.

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Our lives are part of an over-arching drama, part sunshine, part rain, that spans the heavens from Paradise to Paradise. What role we play in that drama is a secret Jesus shares with us, if at all, at His own discretion. Many of the most personal secrets of our story are seldom shared with anyone else. the continuation of Jesus's conversation with Peter is a case in point.

.....Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; the one who also had leaned back on His breast at supper, and said, "Lord, who is the one who betrays You?" Jesus said to him, "If you want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!" (John 21:20,22)

The secret of my friends' story is a mystery. It is not mine to know. It many not even be theirs to know, not now anyway. For now we see in a glass darkly, but then face to face, and now we know in part, but then we shall know fully just as we have been fully known. (1 Cor. 13:12)

So until then, what?

We feel our way in the dark.

Until we find each other.

We huddle together in the storm.

Wet and shivering, but together.

And maybe in the end it will be our huddling in the storm that gives us more comfort than our understanding of the storm.

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July 16, 1903 ~ German poet Rainer maria Rilke wrote:

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart...try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer"

God doesn't ask us to figure out our salvation., with confidence and certainty. he asks us to work it out, with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12) Living the questions is part of the way we do that. It is an honest way. It is also a painful way. The Scriptures help, but not with the pain. The Scriptures are not a medicine cabinet, filled with prescriptions to take the edge off life. They are about a God who, during his most painful experience on earth, REFUSED THE WINE MIXED WITH MYRRH THAT WAS OFFERED HIM.

The Scriptures show us what life with such a God is like.

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Friends, I believe that the grace of God and His mercy is with me...it's with you. I can't see it, it's not tangible, but I know it's real. I believe that the same God I approached weeping over "Little M's" medical diagnosis during my pregnancy and the same God I fell before with great joy as she was healed...is the same God that will work His miracles in my life today. I will not stand for anything else.

Today was so difficult. I had to take the kids back to Daren, who is living with his mother. Upon entering into the house, they had removed almost all of my belongings and put them in the entry way for me to take with me after dropping the kids off. My children, in tears a great deal of the time, questioned what was going on....and asked where we were going. I had to tell them that I had to leave ~ but leaving them had nothing to do with loving them. How do you make a 3 year old and two year old twins understand that?? I thought it was in poor taste to make me load these things in the car while the children were present to watch. It broke my heart. They will be with Daren until Monday morning, when I will run quickly to sweep them into my arms and shower them with the kisses I won't be able to give them until then.

This is a terrible, terrible situation. I do not know the Daren that stood before me today. My heart is broken. We've been together for 18 years....we divorced in 1998 after 4 1/2 years of marriage, but our love still stood. Never taken away. God gave us a second chance...a chance that I ran with knowing that I would never let it go. I don't want to let it go. I don't want to watch our family torn apart. As long as Daren is living under that roof though, he will be fed with nothing positive...nothing full of God's light...everything he listens to spoken by others is NOT words of faith, reconciliation and hope...

I have so many tears...so much pain in the depths of my heart. I will stand on God's word and the promises of His character and I will trust in Him. I will pray without ceasing. I will hope with no end and I will have faith that in the end...this is His victory and our story will go on.

Thank you for your prayers and love. It is a lonely time. I will do my best to keep updates on the progress and just ask that for now, pray, intercede for us, for Daren, that those who are pulling us apart, lose strength.... I love you all so very much!!

In His Grip!