After a four year unintentional hiatus, apparently I am back. I know all five of you that read my two posts back in 2014 missed me dearly. Now lets jump in!
This year my sister got me the best birthday gift ever!!!-- a subscription to the complete library of Adventures in Odyssey, a Christian children's radio series. The series centers on the fictional town of Odyssey, and in particular, an ice-cream emporium named Whit's end, and its owner, the ever wise John Avery Whittaker (but you can call him Whit!).
In one of the earlier episodes, Donna Barclay, a regular at Whit's End, deals with her best friend Karen's cancer diagnosis and eventual death. It is a heart-wrenching episode where a middle-schooler not only faces the fact that she is going to die, but helps her family and friends deal with it, all the while holding onto her faith in God's plan for her life.
After this experience Donna seems to move on with her life and no further reference to Karen is really made. That is until nearly a year later (in radio time) when a school event, which Karen participated in before dying, triggers Donna. She explodes in bursts of anger toward her friends, family, and even Whit. Eventually, Whit gets Donna to admit that she is angry at Karen for dying, at God for letting Karen die, and at herself for having those feelings in the first place. He helps her deal with that anger and finally come to terms with Karen's death
While listening, tears streamed down my face as I realized that I was Donna. A little over a year ago I found out that my marriage, after just three months of living together was over, the person I married turned out to be a complete fraud. Everything he said about himself was a lie, from his education to his moral values, even his previous marital status was questionable. Essentially, he was living a life not compatible with my Christian values or being married generally, and had never intended to stay married past the date when he got his permanent green card.
Now those who know me, know that I am not a person unaccompanied by pain and loss. I have watched my mom battle cancer for the last nine years, and have went through numerous other ministry trials and personal losses. But this situation rocked me in a way I never expected. It turned my worldview upside down. I had waited on God for a long time to get married. All of my prayers for a spouse had been that God would bring me a ministry partner. I had an arranged marriage in India (without my older sister or best friend present) fully trusting that God would honor my commitment to Him, my parents, and the culture that He set me in.
In one moment, I saw the death of everything I had ever truly cared about--- my ministry, my place in my community, the reputation I had carefully guarded and maintained for thirty plus years. Gone was the dream of having a family like my parents had built--with children and a marriage spanning over four decades. It was all just gone, like the work of some evil magician. Poof!
So what did I do? I pushed down all that pain and despair, put on my lawyer hat and got to the business of extricating myself from this situation by getting an annulment. I got an amazing lawyer, and concentrated on things like pleadings, discovery requests, legal research, and motions. I did my best to pretend that life was still normal-- that I could have a heartfelt discussions with my pastors and continue with my normal church activities and no one would look at me like I was any different.
But the emotions and thoughts I wasn't dealing with were not gone. They would bubble to the surface when I had to face Malayalees at PCNAK and friend's weddings- where I felt like a social pariah. They burst forth in a sense of worthlessness when people in my church told me that they didn't think I should be serving in the roles I had been serving in because of my situation. What good is a Christian who can't serve God in His house?
Eventually, I realized that I needed to deal with what was causing those bursts of emotions. Early on, my pastor had warned me not to let a root of bitterness take hold of my heart. But I had let that bitterness take root, not towards the human that had caused me this pain, but the God that had allowed it. I was angry at Him. I was angry at Him for letting this happen to me even though I had done nothing wrong. I was angry at Him for placing me in a ethnic and cultural community where my place in it would be lost because this happened to me. I was angry at Him for giving me all of this talent and desire to use it for His glory and taking away my ability to do so. I was angry at Him for letting my life bring shame on my parents, when I had spent a lifetime ensuring that I never behaved in a way that would do so. I was angry at Him, because I wanted a marriage like my parents had, and now all I had to offer someone was the leftovers of what someone else had fraudulently stolen from me.
A lot of my anger was based on the fact that I had exalted the idea and ideal of marriage. God hates divorce so there could never be a situation where it was the only possible result. A person using marriage as a means to an end was unthinkable. To me marriage was the means and the end. My marriage falling apart when I had done nothing wrong was as anathema as an 11 year old child dying of cancer. It just shouldn't happen. It was outside of the parade of evils that my mind could've ever come up. Unlike Job, it was not a fate that I had feared. I did not know to fear it. I knew that marriages, especially early on, were delicate and that I needed to be careful not to behave in a way that could ruin mine. But to have it fail because the person you married lied about not only every aspect of themselves, but their very intention for getting married was just unfathomable. It was strange and bizarre.
And yet, as my dad loving told me (repeatedly because I needed to hear it more than once) the Apostle Peter tells us in 1 Peter 4:12 that we should not surprised by the strange things that happen to us, they are a part of the testing of our faith. And any test that God allows is ultimately for our good. To be honest, while I knew this to be true in my head, to my heart it was an infuriating concept. The fact that the painful, strange, bizarre things that happen to us are purposeful tests seems cruel. So how do move past the anger and hurt that we feel because the God who says He loves us has allowed such a situation in our life?
Firstly, we need to face that anger head on and not avoid the fact that we are feeling angry. Burying our head in the sand when it comes to our anger towards God, because we feel guilty for being angry at Him, does not help us resolve said anger. And as crazy as it sounds, God understands and sympathizes with our anger at Him and confusion at the situations that He allows. "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin." (Heb 4:15). Our God empathizes with our pain, our sorrow, and even our anger.
Secondly, to work through the anger brought on by extreme loss, we need to submit to God's sovereign will for our lives in a deliberate manner on a daily basis. The pain of this level of loss will not go away in a single day, so we need to choose to accept God's will for us every time that anger bubbles up within us. Romans 8:28 says "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose." Moving past our anger requires us to trust that God wants good for us, and that He will work in every situation to make it for our good.
It takes real work to deal with our loss, without losing ourselves or our faith. All of that pain and anger we feel can only be healed by God. And God can only do so when we submit to His sovereign will, and trust that if He allows it, He will use it for our good. It's been nearly a year an a half since the most painful day of my life, my annulment has been granted by the courts, but I am not at the "other side" of this situation yet. I don't know what the good is yet, but I feel His presence with me. I see Him using me in ways that He hasn't before. The fear of how people will see me now is still there. The fear of not knowing what my future holds, or that it won't be what I always thought it was supposed to be is still there. But at the same there is a peace, and a trust that whatever it is, if He's allowing it, then it will be for my good. Maybe that itself is the good.
