I would do it all over again
I haven’t written for our blog post in a good while, we were busy getting ready for the XO conference and then the week we got home I started getting sick and went downhill from there. Over the last month I have come to realize, and God has visibly shown me, that during this life there might be a time when God allows us to experience trials that we never could have imagined.
About 7 years ago maybe, I stumbled across 2 Corinthians 4:7-11 and for the next few weeks I read it every day. This was during a season of our lives and marriage that I thought would be the most difficult thing we would ever experience. It had been less than a year that I had been clean and off all drugs/medications. Every day this group of verses would run through my head and my heart and it led me to get a tattoo of verses 8-10: We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus , so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. I started thinking the hardest part of our marriage was finally behind us.
While i was still in CCU one of my nurses was talking with my wife and I, and we were talking about faith and the Bible. She started talking about 2 Corinthians 4, and it hit me like a brick wall.
As long as we’re on this earth we are going to face trials, we’re going to experience pain and trauma, nowhere does the Bible tell us that we will be free from it. The good news is that we will never be alone in any seasons we go through. It’s easy to carry Christ around in our back pocket when everything is going good and then during difficult times pull him out to be rescued. Sometimes we keep God in a box like a genie in a bottle and when we’re in chaos then we reach out to him to be rescued. Satan loves distance because he has every opportunity to distract us and when we become distracted we find ourselves sinking. Like Peter walking on water, the second he took his eyes off Jesus he began to sink. Our focus on Jesus needs to be constantly the same.
Our prayer life should be no different during good times as it is when things seem to be falling apart. We should pray for and with our spouses every day with the same intensity and desire that we do during our seasons of trauma, uncertainty, and pain. The desire that you have to be close to your spouse in your relationship is the same desire that Christ has to be in relationship with us. Close relationships require obedience and intentionality to be in constant communication with each other otherwise distance begins to creep in.
The first few days I was awake in the hospital I didn’t want Tasha to leave the room at all. I felt like in some strange way I had abandoned her for 8 days and I wasn’t there for her during a very difficult time for her. I didn’t want her to feel alone any more than she already had. But the reality is she was never alone with me in that room. God used a difficult situation to show me that I can’t be the source of protection, peace, and strength in Tasha’s life. I am called to love and serve her as Christ loved the church and gave up his life for it. She is a child of God and her source of strength and peace in chaos will only be found in our savior, not in anyone or anything else.
You will never find true indescribable peace in anything that is not our savior. Just like Jesus calmed the seas during the raging storm in Mark 4, Jesus calmed the storm in our marriage and showed us both who is really in control of our lives. When you find yourself in the middle of a horrific storm cling to Him. When everything feels like its breaking and the weight is crushing you Jeremiah 18:4 says: “And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled and broken in the potters hands, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.” In order for us to be used we have to be broken so that God can mold us into the vessel He wants us to be. It’s easy on a Sunday morning in the comfort of your church worshipping to claim that you are a vessel for God. It’s when we have been broken in a horrific storm that we need to find our hope and peace in the arms of our savior.
As long as God desires to do more through you, He will continue to cause change around you and ask for change from you. God wants to use your marriage to bring people to Him.
When nothing makes sense, the only thing that is certain is God is in control.
In no way am I claiming that we know the “why” for all that we went through the past month, but what we do know is the same God that raised Lazarus from the dead is the same God working in us. No matter what your “storm” may be cling to the hope of our savior that gives us a peace that surpasses all understanding. Temporary chaos and pain is nothing compared to an eternity with our savior. With all of the prayers we have received it’s my prayer that God uses this experience to reach someone that has never experienced the hope and peace our God gives to us. If one person comes to know Jesus as their savior as a result of this then I would do it all over again. If one marriage finds hope, healing, and restoration from Jesus through our story then I would do it all over again.