The Word of the Day

Perseverance.

The Spousal Unit and I are still struggling with his drinking.  There have been two times where I just wanted to leave.  As P!nk says, "I think I've had enough of this/Want back my ignorance and bliss".  However, both times God has shown me that this is not an option for me - at least not the way I want to use it.  Both times I have been so emotionally overwhelmed and sick of it all - sick of feeling like the only one trying - that leaving would be simply to get away from the immediate problem and that is not the solution.

C.S. Lewis has that famous quote about how prayer changes him, not God; that he prays because he is helpless; that he prays because he can't NOT pray.  I think I may be starting to understand what he means.  Looking back through the six months of my current journal, I can see a change in the entries. Early entries are complaining about the SU, asking why, why do I have to do deal with this, why can't he just get his freaking act together and change...why, why, why?  The thing I have learned about God is he doesn't always answer your "why" or, if He does, he may do it in a way you don't expect.  My later entries have more...compassion, I guess you could call it.  While I am still frustrated and angry in some of them, God has tempered them and interspersed them with study and Scripture and prayers I've written down.

Beth Moore says that "Christ's ultimate goal in any work He assigns us is to reveal Himself, either through or to us".  I don't know how much/if He's been revealing himself through me but I do know He has been revealing Himself to me.  There has been hardly a day that has gone by where I haven't had something in my study time stand out to me whether it is simply something to comfort or something I need to learn and incorporate.

Earlier this month, God gave me a pretty detailed word.  One of the strongest parts of it was the reminder that He is the one in charge and it is His timing, His timeline that we are working in.  I need to submit to that and understand that submission is strength.  It lets me be empty enough to be filled with Him.  It is hard to let him take over because I want to be in control just as much as the next person.  But I'm not.  I can't be.  I cannot make the Spousal Unit stop drinking.  I cannot make him confront the issues he needs to in order to heal and leave the past behind.  I can only call daily on my Abba and trust in Him.  He is the one who will change my unbelief, my fear.  If I confess those to Him, I will be amazed at the things he does.  Even if I cannot perceive what He is doing, Jesus is about his Father's work.  I can't wait to "see" him act.  I have to act in faith that He is working even though I can't point to anything tangible as the signpost of "Look!  Here's the turning point!"

A week or two ago, He gave me Isaiah 43:19:  "See!  I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland".  Last Sunday, the SU and I were in church and he went and asked for prayer for the first time in a long time, admitting to the people praying for him that he has a major drinking problem.  In my linear, dim view, part of me grabbed on to that as "See?  There's the sign" forgetting that the sign is not nearly as important as the One who gives the sign.

That is what makes today suck.  Hard.  He has essentially been drinking since 4 o'clock this morning and is now at home passed out/asleep while I'm sitting in a coffee shop and writing this because it is difficult to be around him when he is like this.  I was sitting on our little apartment patio at about 6:30 to try and have some quiet time and talking to God about how I was trying to remember that I am to follow His will and be content in Him - not that I can't talk to Him about my sorrow and anger but I need to trust in His sovereignty in this situation (and apparently for my spelling of that word!).

I opened up the study book I am reading and this paragraph leaped out at me:  "Beloved, have you forgotten something He told you?  Christ, our Lord, is faithful to his promises.  If you're not presently 'seeing' Him at work in your situation, do not live as if He's lifeless and you're hopeless. Believe Him and expect Him to reveal his resurrection power to you!"

I am truly blessed and thankful my Abba took the time to sit down with me this morning and specifically speak to me exactly where I am.

Nouwen writes that "prayer requires we stand in God's presence with open hands, naked and vulnerable, proclaiming to ourselves and to others that without God we can do nothing".  Naked and vulnerable are freakin' scary states to be in!  But God gives us an amazing promise that if we do this, we will find all our strength, hope, courage and confidence in Him.  God has not given me a timeline nor will he, probably.  What He has told me to do is to keep being obedient to Him, to take the things he's taught me and put them into practice day after day after day and stop looking for the quick solution.  I need to trust Him and that He has the whole picture in mind.  What He does will be beyond my imagining.

Came home.  Made nachos for the Spousal Unit.  I am not hopeless.