All This From a Book

Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers.

I've read it 3 times already. Now I'm on number 4.

Every time I read this book, it's different than the first or the last time There is some new insight or some new thought-provoking point of view. This time is no different. I've been reading all day long today and I've never paused so much to let a thought fully materialize or to take in what the Lord is saying to me in that moment.

Today has been full of that.

And amazingly this time, the focus is not on what Hosea is feeling - although I gotta say, I fully get the range of emotions goin on in his heart; this time the focus is on his wife.

How she feels is so real to me. Her fears, her past, her wants and dreams, her needs. All the reasons why the old way seems to be the easier way. All that is leaping off the page at me today. It's forcing me to think about H's heart in all this. Making me consider the things that I don't see  - but that I do SENSE - and that I find it easy to discount because in my sight there is no outward visible change in the condition of his heart.

It's really irritating. And humbling. Oh, and did I mention that it's convicting too? No?Well. It is. Convicting, that is.

Not because my feelings are wrong. Not because this betrayal of my trust or the pain that it has dumped in my lap isn't real. But beause, due to the personal nature of all this, I am failing to do in this situation what I am able to do in virtually every other one in my life: I am not looking beyond the symptom to get to the root. I'm not seeing clearly because I'm not looking in the right place.

My pain might be at his hands; but I have not given the courtesy or respect of recognizing that what is driving him internally had to originate from someone or something. And THAT is the thing that needs to be addressed. All the rest will come as that is worked out of him.  I know this. This is what I lead other women to dig into when I am walking with them through a behavioral transition. I KNOW this stuff.

So why can I do it everybody but H?

I would say it's fear, and I'm sure on some level it is - right now fear that this will keep on going and that it will drive me to be someone I don't know or like, but more than fear, there's the pain and shame of it. Because no matter what anybody says or doesn't say to me, what I FEEL is total humiliation that if I were to lay this bare in real life, this is the stuff that makes Jerry Springer and Maury episodes. It's embarrassing as all get-out that he's put me in such a postion. And other stuff too.

And the pain of it. Well. No matter what anybody says or how anybody tells me to cope or how I should be coping or how ok it is for me to cope my own way, there is a place in this where the pain just simply will NOT go away as long as God allows things to stay at this present impasse - because the behavior is cyclical, which means the emotional impact is also, the only difference from one time to the next being the depth of the pain as I try to deal w/it so that it doesnt take root and wreak more havoc in my spirit...

It's really an awkward place to be.

I discovered Thursday that having put away grieving for my plans, I have no choice but to face myself and let God peel back the scab. It has not been my pleasure, just lemme tell ya.... But I've been doin it. Talkin' to God all honest and what-not. Really gettin it in.

And listening as He reveals my own heart to me.

I have not been impressed with what's really inside me. If I were God, looking at my heart, I think I might feel a twinge of sadness at my internal response to this. But God, in His usual amazing way, has spent today clarifying to me how even the 'sad' part of my feelings is working to train me to love H well. It all goes back to the direction to love past my pain. If I can love God beyond what I know plainly is only taking place in my life because He's allowed it, I can love H in-kind.

Except for H is not perfect like God. And i know that no matter what my heart feels, any stress on my relationship with God is due to MY OWN carnality - not God's failure to love me well or honor my love for Him.

But God told me long ago to love H as I love Him - not in worship but in absoluteness. And that means loving him enough to do what I dont want to do - for him or for God, in spite of how little natural sense it makes to me - on the strength that I somehow trust God enough to trust H's true heart toward me.

And somehow that realization and conversation brought me to something I told God about H long ago: It took me a minute to give in to my heart for him because I knew in my spirit from the start that he was the only man I had ever met who had the power to destroy me emotionally. He awakes things in me that I didn't even know existed. Things that were kept under lock and key, he easily and very unexpectedly possessed. I've always known that I'd know emotional life or destruction at his hands.

In all the times I've read this book, it never dawned on me that there was reference to the fact that the woman Hosea took as his wife felt the same way. She was scared because Hosea's relentless, active love broke down her barriers and she really never saw it coming. She ran because she knew she wasn't at all in control of what was goin on in her heart. She was changing. She just wasn't sure she could openly show the shift and the desire to fully rest and fully trust....

She didn't want her old life. She was just scared as hell of the new one.

Just like H.

I have terribly discounted him in all this. And however counter-intuitive it is to care how he feels, I need to be willing to invest that way. I need to deal with my pain with God; but I need to do what God told me to do long ago: give H access to me and love beyond my pain. I need to see  him with God's eyes.

And that's only gonna happen if i look and listen with my love and not my feelings.

Good grief. This is a tall order.

I checked out a couple weeks ago but I haven't been ok with that. I've tried to make myself be. But I'm not. Because love doesn't do that. I can speak my heart. I can do the things that create a new dynamic between us. I can honor my truth. But I can do all those things and love him too. I dont need to sacrifice one for the other. That's been a huge part of our problem. We need to learn that for one to thrive the other has to exist and be honored - on both his part and mine.

Letting go doesn't mean giving up. It just means I dont have to figure it out.

God said to me a few weeks ago that working in me is His way of working on him. If I don't submit to this and start viewing this the right way, we're gonna live in this circle forever.

It's time to submit, because I can't afford for this to linger. Neither of us can. We need to see God work in our favor and if any part of that is contingent on me, I need to get my act together.

I take back what I've said numerous times...Gomer doesn't need her butt kicked. She needs to be loved beyond her failure, by someone who understands how profoundly changed they are because God loved them that same way.

Oy vey.

All this from a book.

I'm getting it now God... I think I'm starting to understand... Your love has done a profound work in me. For today, for right now in this moment, I'm choosing to believe that that same love, expressed toward H through me will have the same profound effect. Please help me to be strong enough to see past what people say and the advice that comes, to truly look for understanding of  Your instruction and to apply what You reveal, no matter how un-myself it may be. I love You enough to do what I dont want to do. Please don't be sad at my lack of desire; please find pleasure in my willingness to endure.... I do love You. In Jesus' Name. Amen.