I don’t know how far I will get with this nor if my emotions will be expressed as strongly as I feel them but I want to at least try. I’d ask you to close your eyes … but then you couldn’t read, lol so ……… I sit here with my heart pounding, to the point of knocking and the rythm is calling out encouragement to so many people. And it is echoing backwards into my soul, into my past. I know that it echos there because I made it here. Before I get too far lost in where I was and why that is so important to where I am I have to give credit where it is due.
Josh Wilson has a new song out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZDQzR8LK-c&feature=related
Feel free to stop and watch/listen now before you read but if you don’t have time now, listen sometime soon. It is so so worth it. I haven’t delved into the entire story yet but there is a documentary video also on youtube with the story behind the song. Incredible in and of itself.
The best way for me to do this for me may be difficult for those of you reading, and I apologize but time prohibits me from coming up with a better manuscript right now. I am going to just type out some of the lyrics here and put in my own story as I see it.
Do you wonder why you have to
Feel the things that hurt you
If there’s a God who loves you where is He now
I’m sure there are some of you out there that didn’t have to see me living this question. And for those of you who were there by my side, YOU told me day in and day out that He was still there. In 2007, in the midst of a failing marriage and reluctantly joining the work force for the first time since becoming a mother, I began a downward spiral and what I call a Faith crisis. My former pastor used the analogy of faith as Forsaking All I Trust Him … with that as my definition, there was certainly a crisis. I didn’t trust God anymore. I had known about Him all of my life, KNOWN Him as my own, and me as His own for 10 years. I had served Him, prayed to Him, worshipped Him with my whole heart and I was getting slammed by life. I wondered why I had to feel the hurt and IF God loved me, where was He??
Maybe there are things you can’t see
And all those things are happening
To bring a better ending
Someday somehow you’ll see you’ll see
And with this phrase my heart pounds again …. because now I CAN see. I still don’t know the why, I don’t know all of the lessons I learned and I don’t know how my God was glorified but I do know that if today were the end, it is better … way, way, way better
Would you dare would you dare to believe
That you still have a reason to sing
Oh friends … can you DARE to believe? For those of you struggling with life, with something really really big, with sickness, with hurt, with loss; with something you think trivial … that counts too. Can you dare to believe that you still have a reason to sing? My soul trembles with the magnitude of this next line –
Cause the pain that you’ve been feeling
It can’t compare to the joy that’s coming
Pain is a personal thing. The depth of your own pain is not something that someone else will ever truly understand because they will never feel your pain as you feel it. My pain was a lonely pain. Not in the sense of thinking no one else had ever had a failed marriage or had to leave their sweet babies to pay bills but more in a sense of I felt alone, all the time. Crazy right? Here I am, a mother to 6 with parents and siblings, a church family and friends galore and I am telling you that I felt completely alone. My soul was in solitary confinement. Somehow I had trapped myself there. I cried out and heard my own voice echo back. Regardless of the words I cried the reply of the echo was all the same … hopeless, worthless, unloveable, ALONE. That kind of pain is just a black hole – no ending. And tears pour down my face now as I tell you, declare to you that that depth of pain, that loneliness, it is nothing, NOTHING in comparison to the JOY. It can’t compare. There is no way to describe to you. I am thinking of a scale, a true balance of life will bring us pain and it will bring us joy. When I was on the pain side of the scale, it was heaviness, weighted all the way down with the chain pulled to its length but now I am on the joy side and it is sitting on the table with the weight of goodness that I feel.
So hold on you gotta wait for the light
Press on and just fight the good fight
Cause the pain that you’ve been feeling
It’s just the dark before the morning
People told me this. They told me to wait on God, press onward, keeping fighting. I didn’t want to fight for light anymore though. So many days that I wanted only to …. well, to die. I even question that as I write it. Was I really there? Really to the point of wanting to end my life? And sadly, despite the blessing of my children and a fairly good life, yes, I was there. It was the darkest of darkness before the morning.
My friend you know how this all ends
You know where you’re going
You just don’t know how you’ll get there
So say a prayer
And hold on cause there’s good for those who love God
But life is not a snapshot
It might take a little time but you’ll see the bigger picture
I think in my confinement, my loneliness, I knew that at least there was an end. There were times that I wanted to die because even in my confusion, I knew my salvation, that heaven awaited me. I knew where I was going at death, I just couldn’t figure out how I would get through life. There’s a bigger picture? Aren’t we overwhealmed with the snapshots of life? Your struggle today is NOT bigger than the big picture of life, I promise.
Once you feel the weight of glory all your pain will fade to memory. Would you dare, would you dare to belive that you still got a reason to sing? Cause the pain that you’ve been feeling, it’s JUST THE HURT BEFORE THE HEALING!
It truly amazes me how weight can be heavy in a good way and heavy in a bad way. I think we all understand the bad heaviness. Hurting, stinging tears, bullets from the mouths of those we thought friends, daggers thrust deeply into our self-worth, a sword slicing any shred of hope for a future. But today, I feel the good heaviness. The weight of unashamed joy that is a cup full to overflowing and has to pour out onto others, that MUST because it is too heavy to stay all in one place. Just for a drop to fall on any single one of you that is hurting, that is my prayer.
HOLD on, please wait for the light, press on. I am writing this because even in my abundance of joy my heart is heavy for many. For a man in leadership that is struggling with direction of his ministry, for a friend whose marriage has only a thin thread of committment left, for the one who is drowning in depression, for the other who is leaping into selfishness day after day, for the sweet child whose body has been attacked by cancer and abused by the only treatments we have to help her, for the beautiful girl who makes herself sick daily just to produce a body to please others, for the other who hides in quietness and solitude too often because she doesn’t feel she will amount anything. I could fill page after page with the hurts of just the few hundred people in my circle of friends. I can only pray that the words in this song will reach past where you are now. I said above that they echo into my past. I held on through the deepest pain that you are feeling. And in the end, the pain does not compare to the joy I am living.
I know that God is using this song, this man and his ministry. I pray that the truth, the wisdom that is there find soil and take root in lives that would otherwise not be changed.
Respect after Divorce 