Has someone you passionately
love ever treated you like an enemy? Ever sat across a courtroom facing someone
you longed to give your life for, who was set on destroying yours for the sake
of his or her own perceived happiness? My heart has cried out, “God, do you
have any idea how much this hurts? Do you have any idea how I feel?” And then I
remember in a certainty that stills my cries that yes, he does, because in
answer to my first questions, he both was, still is, and did.
If there’s anything I’ve
learned in the past three years, it’s how broken God’s heart is precisely
because he ferociously loves us, we who are bent on doing things our way for
our own ends and would be quite happy if he’d look the other way, or better
yet, go away, and let us. As much as I love Jesus, more often that I’d like to
admit I ask him (without realizing I’m doing it) to vacate his throne as Lord
of Life and let me call the shots.
That’s why Jesus had to come,
why there is this event called Christmas, and why it is inextricably tied to
the crucifixion and the resurrection and Jesus as our King and high priest of a
new covenant. In short, yes he knows exactly how I feel because he felt it.
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through
the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For
we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but
we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are- yet was without
sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may
receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Hebrews 4: 14-16.
I need to remember that
truth. One year after Christmas I asked my husband to split a piece of the
trunk of the aromatic fir tree we’d admired for weeks and turn that log into a
cross-shaped candle holder for us to use on our table at both Christmas and
Easter, looking forward and looking backward to see both as one astonishingly
loving whole, offered by a heart of wholeness who wants that wholeness for each
of us.
Can a heart be both broken
and whole? When it’s God’s, yes, and here is my disclaimer: in no way do I
measure or explain God by my experience. Rather, I understand or at least try
to make sense of my experience through who he is.
Thirty-nine years of loving
someone who would turn against and reject me makes no sense. Yes, interject the
concepts of co dependence and misunderstanding motives and differing love
languages, and the destruction can be explained, but it still makes no sense.
There is no victory, no glorifying God, no ”happily ever after” that ends any
truly satisfying story – and we all want out stories to end well. I will not
dishonor anyone by verbally patting you on the head and tritely mouthing,
“Well, if you learned something, it was worth it.”
“Better luck next time” still
sounds like second place or a limp consolation prize, and all of us want
desperately to be winners. The only thing that makes this make any sense for me
is if I’ve somehow come to know and experience more deeply the immeasurable
love of the Heart who was rejected so I truly and eternally never would be. A
friend recently told me – and yes, I did know this, though I wish I didn’t
first-hand - that a rose gives off its greatest aroma when it’s crushed. From
my vantage point stuck here in this time, honestly, that stinks.
This only makes sense and I
only bear it if what comes from my crushing is the pure fragrance of Jesus’
love that can somehow linger as the scent of truth and validation in other
people’s lives. For that I’ll taste
the tears; for that I’ll be “hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed;
perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but
not destroyed and hang on to the promise that “God, who said,’ Let light shine
out of darkness,’ WILL MAKE his light shine in (my) heart to give (me) the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” 2 Corinthians 4:7-9, 6
Did God do this? Did he
destroy our marriage? No, all that junk that people write so many self-help
books about did. Selfishness did. Thinking of a lover like an enemy did. Can
God make anything good come from it? I still fervently hope for much better
than I can ask or imagine, but for starters I gladly take this essence and oil
and fragrance of how relentlessly God loves me and desires relationship with
me. He did, still does, and always will. Now that’s validation and deep reward,
a “happily ever after” that does come true for me and for you if you let Jesus
take his throne and welcome you to sit in arms that felt what you feel for the sake
of forever with you. That's the ending I
With a smile I hear him say,"You want a piece of me?" and I shout ,"Yes!"
Your "...BUT ..." to move: Jesus, this _______________________ really stinks. You know it; you felt it yourself, BUT you felt it so that I can know _____________________________________________. Truly, make my life a Designer fragrance, and you can call it ________________________________________________________!
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