Dejected, I mumbled through tears that ran down my face leaving a briny taste in my mouth, “I’m sorry I’m such a mess.” My red eyes slowly looked up to meet his tender intensity. With a gentle smile he replied, “But you are MY mess!”
His words rushed over my distressed soul and I began to feel a quietening overpowering me. No matter how messy I felt or how messy I behaved, this man loved me….ALL of me. His love meant more to me than any other person’s because he knew the dark depths of my soul. He knew the filthy places of muck and mire that the Lord had snatched me from. He knew and experienced how messy even this rescued girl could get, and he CHOSE to love me. I had never experienced such uninhibited and pure human love in my entire life. I was his no matter what I looked like.
The issue I was wrestling with that day was the unrealistic expectations that I consistently place on myself. Culture, others, and even the church influenced my perception of what I was supposed to be. All these environmental influences painted a definitive picture of the woman that I was to look like (and they continue to this day to lend their effect). As I would routinely survey my heart, mind, and the life that flowed from these; my reality and the presumption the world fed to me were not matching up. The discord between the two agitated me, as I seemed to fail time and again.
In this brief moment of relief from their pressures, as my husband spoke comfort to me, his unconditional love for me erased their domination. The Lord was using this godly man as a conduit for HIS Truth to settle deeply within my unsteady soul. God was using this man to teach me a deeper Truth of my Heavenly Father’s Love (1John 4:17b, “…just as Jesus is, so also are we in this world.”). My mind was plagued with misperceptions of expectations that I was not able to keep up with, and HE was addressing this in a palpable manner. The profound sense of belonging to God, no matter my failures, through HIS willful choice of me, was being fed into my mind by my husband’s choice to love me as Christ loved me.
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August 2014 placed me on a road which I can call nothing short of hellacious. The evening of Tuesday, August 12th I learned that my husband was killed in a tragic work accident. My four young children and I were left without this gracious and loving godly man. I entered a new season in life in which I questioned EVERYTHING that I had known of God. I was utterly confused, vehemently angry, and my heart felt as though it had been ripped from my chest and buried in the ground with that man. I truly wondered if God still loved me.
This August 12th marked four years since I have seen that man’s handsome face, been embraced by his strong and rugged arms, or heard his soothing voice. The most accurate description of my relationship with God over the past four years would be: wrestling.
As I wept on the phone with my younger sister this August 12th she began to speak God’s Light of Truth into my ostensibly expanding pit of sorrow.
“Do you remember the verse that you sent me the morning of August 12, 2014?”
“Yes.” I replied through the sobs.
“Kris, this morning when I woke up I was thinking about that verse and about that day four years ago. Several hours later, David began our family devotions by reading Zephaniah 3:17. I was taken aback because that was the verse you sent me the day Conner died, not knowing what would happen later on that evening.
Kris, I feel like God is bringing it full circle, four years later and reminding you of HIS Truth for you!”
“The Lord your God is in your midst;
he is a warrior who can deliver.
He takes great delight in you;
he renews you by his love;
he shouts for joy over you.” (Zephaniah 3:17 NET)
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What I have seen the Lord do from that horrid August day four years ago to this one, is bestow HIS People (especially HIS Daughters) to speak Truth and Life into my darkened heart. Even in grief, the weight of expectation of “doing it right” or failure from “not having it all together” is a tactic that the enemy has used to obliterate me.
These Chosen People touch the decaying parts of my heart (the places where satan is pouring his poison of lies and doubts) with the eternal Life of the Truths of God. Congruent to my husband’s Truths for his broken wife, HIS People continue the quest by choosing to direct me to the Truth that I am indeed God’s mess….no matter how messy that girl might be….and HE takes great delight in HIS mess.
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In the midst of such odious evil that this world serves up to the Daughters and Sons of the King, may we be the People who CHOSE to remind one another of the Truth that in HIM we are found (Luke 15:3-7), we are extravagantly loved (1 John 3:1), and we are forever allocated Heavenly resources to survive the atrocities of this fallen world (2 Peter 1:3-8).
As believers in Christ we have this unique ability to empathize and sympathize with the road that our fellow sojourner is traveling. God has gifted us with spiritual gifts and godly characteristics that radiate HIS Truth to a broken and dying world. We can CHOSE to walk in freedom from the world’s expectations, and live out an existence of spreading Light and Life into the World that is so full of hate, death, and competition.
I would encourage you today to press into your God-given gifts, embracing them as uniquely yours. Cease to waste one more minute and go spread HIS Light to those in your sphere of influence. The power that Jesus sent us in the Holy Spirit is beyond what any of us can fathom, or ever exhaust. Refuse to live by the expectations of our culture, or any outside influence that disagrees with the Word of the Lord in who you are as a Child of the King. Speak HIS Truth, in agreement with your Father, into the underlit recesses of the heart of your eternal siblings, and those who are not yet found. Grasp the sobering reality that this practice of rejecting false expectations and embracing God’s declaration that “just as Jesus is, so also are we in this world,” is no small or insignificant calling. Hear HIM singing over you today and be blessed.