“If you love marriage so much, why aren’t you fixing this?”
If I prayed this once, I prayed it a million times in the final years of my marriage. With this a constant bookend most days, for the first time in my life I was appalled and confused by God. I was confident at the time, and still am, that God loves marriage. I was, and am, convinced that it is a gift from God and a relationship to be treasured and not taken lightly.
So, when I spent years seeking guidance, contorting myself into whatever shape I thought would finally work, and flat out begging God to fix the situation, his lack of restoration felt like a silent slap in the face.
This month marks seven years since the horrible realization that my marriage had to end. And in that time, God has faithfully shown me he’s been here all along and that his idea of redemption and mine won’t always match. There are still days when my frustration with this turn our life has taken leaves me wondering if God remembers that we’re here. But, when I tune out the lies from the enemy, I remember the truth of a God who loves me too much to leave me.
God has a viewpoint that I don’t
In the days of living life and getting all the things done, it is easy to see only what is directly in front of us. Our vision is limited to the people who need us, the situations demanding our attention, or the troubles that seem to bleed into every part of life.
What is harder to see in those days is the bigger picture God is creating in each of our stories. And in these days, if we’re not careful, we can easily let whatever isn’t going well at the moment morph into troubles that define our life instead of just being one part of our overall story.
But, God promises us better than that. In Romans 8, Paul reminds us that God is on our side, he has called us for a purpose. And he is at work.
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
Romans 8:28 ESV
You know what my favorite word is in that verse? Nope. It isn’t “good.” My favorite word in that passage is “all.”
All things work together for good. Not just the wonderful things that make my heart sing. Not only the days when everything is going well and all the people are cooperating. But ALL the things – including the crappy, messy, horrible, complicated, hurtful, and ugly.
God promises us that He will use all of those things to create good. And my limited human brain can’t possibly see how my messiest moments, my worst decisions, my biggest failures can weave together to make anything that is even remotely close to good.
But, thank goodness he can.
So when things are coming unglued and it seems the cries of our hearts are being ignored, let’s remember that silence doesn’t equal absence. Silence doesn’t equal bad. And silence doesn’t mean he’s left us.
He’s working. And he’s looking at a big, beautiful, good picture.
