This has been a topic for me for many years and has become even more magnified over the past four years, particularly for me and the world, as we see the implications and consequences of obscene intrusion into our lives by entities that proclaim the “greater good.”
I strayed for many years, believing that upholding my marriage was more important than anything since I felt my faith was strong and I was attending church with great fellowship. My husband and kids were engaged in that church, yet my life was unraveling. It was me, right? I needed to focus on my marriage more and meet my husband where he was. Except, he was not walking in faith; he believed but did not follow. As my marriage continued to unravel, so did I; the only times we had fun were with friends: drinking, cavorting, and just walking a faithless journey. But those were just blips in my week, really. They were fun, awesome, and great times, but meaningless in many ways and simply empty and devoid of purpose. The only purpose seemed to be the good times and how we felt in those moments. But that is not the life purpose of a Christian who follows Jesus and who is seeking out the truth of the Gospel. I thought that I could justify it all because, certainly, the Bible doesn’t depict the daily lives of those in the stories of the Gospel, so for sure, there was nothing wrong with having fun and enjoying life! Yet here’s the thing: I wasn’t even really following Jesus anymore because if I had been, I would have seen that this complacency was a lethargy in my own walk and a lethargy toward those who don’t know Jesus and don’t understand what it means to enter Heaven. I would have understood the urgency of the message of the Great Commission to those who believe and follow this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I would have felt the depth of despair at wanting my friends to be able to enter Heaven, knowing that death comes like a thief in the night.
So when I prayed to the Lord to rescue me, to remove me from this comfortable and yet unraveling life, it meant having to decide to divorce due to the many issues of abuse from my husband and moving far enough away from the town I was in to have to start fresh, to remove myself from all that was so alluring. I am not trying to make light of the decision by any means; it was years leading up to it, and there was a lot at stake even outside the Biblical grounds of breaking this covenant. I decided to focus solely on Jesus and take up that walk even though it might be a lot more lonely, a lot more difficult, a lot more isolating. And it didn’t happen overnight. Even though I moved 60 miles away from my marital home, even though I knew my focus was Jesus, I was still resorting to the same tactics I had learned over my life, which were exacerbated in my marriage. I was drinking heavily to cover over the emotions I would have to deal with, and I didn’t have anyone in my life who could gracefully come by my side to lead me and aid me and even ask me if the way forward was the one I was currently taking. I couldn’t break my social life habits of going out, drinking, and being [what I thought] fun! I was still on a train headed for a brick wall. It took losing all my marital friends outside the church and finding myself steeped in work and homeschooling and an acrimonious divorce in which lies were spewed about me. I paused. I got deep into God’s word; I found myself learning about discernment, boundaries, and quiet. Oh, the quiet! ME. QUIET. Not an easy task for this girl, a loud New Yorker who took pride in the cultural norm of “telling it like it is” and being opinionated. But in that quiet, I realized how much I needed to change. How much I needed to LISTEN. I even stopped blogging (or actually, I stopped publishing because I was writing but couldn’t publish, as I became concerned that what I would post wouldn’t be filled with grace and mercy.) I needed grace and mercy, but I needed to really dig deep into GIVING it first.
So I’ve come out on this side of that story with a deeper understanding of my walk with Jesus and knowing that even if it’s just me and Him, I am OK. But I have found a host of friends on this journey with me, people I have known for many years but had fallen away from during my marital life, having kept them at arm’s length in many areas of my life. I would chat with these amazing people at church functions and enjoy their company, but the other side of my life with my non believing friends was so much bigger and so much more consuming. CONSUMING. Consuming ME. I wanted that life; I wanted what I thought it would bring–comfort.
I know, I was looking for comfort and find myself uncomfortable and couldn’t see past myself to understand how to unearth myself from it. So I found myself listening to sermons on my [LONG] drives to work and to bring my son to his father’s house. Sermons that covered books of the Bible sequentially and having so many “aha” moments, and being engrossed in understanding the lives of people like Saul, Samuel, David, Ruth, Paul, John the Baptist, and me.
But I couldn’t go back, yet I longed to go back to the me I was before my marriage, the woman who back then was seeking Jesus with my friends in my bible study each week and going to multiple churches and different services, fully engaged and entrenched in God’s word and people. Many of my friends from back then didn’t exist anymore, as many of them had decided to be lethargic in their own walk and we didn’t see eye to eye. The events of 2020 showed who truly walked with Jesus and who fit Jesus into their lives. I wasn’t in that spot, I was done trying to just fit Him in. As a medical freedom activist for many years, I was quite active in 2020 in efforts to get information out to the public and to fight against the system of tyranny and injustice. It was in June of 2020 after my husband and I sold our marital home that I realized I had to figure out this thing of my identity. What was my identity? I decided to stop hosting protests because even though I was praying with people beforehand at these events, something shifted in me. Here I was, expending so much energy proclaiming the truth about tyranny, but what about the truth about the Gospel? What if I focused as much effort on getting the truth about Jesus out there?
I didn’t know how to do this anymore because I felt my own issues and sins in my life made me unqualified to speak the truth about Jesus. I found myself up against these “church ladies” who seemed so virtuous and pure that I felt like an ugly, deformed misfit and that all that would happen is that people would find me to be a hypocrite. It’s a funny thing; this walk with Jesus and getting deep into God’s word and how it unfolds like a beautiful flower, and you see. You enjoy its beauty, and in doing so, you see that you fit right in with people like David (who murdered his friend to gain the friend’s wife) or Lot (who was willing to sacrifice his daughters to a group of thugs who had come upon his home) or the woman at the well.
Did I really think everyone else was so perfect in their walk with Jesus that I couldn’t proclaim his truth? Did I think God gave us David, Lot, and all those others because they were perfect? How would I discern between walking with Jesus and just knowing and believing in Him? How would my discernment teach me great lessons about myself and the type of relationships I had over the years? How would I extricate myself further from those purporting to walk but behaving terribly? I mean, I feel like I am terrible at times, too. But we see, don’t we? We see the fruit that people bear. We read in Proverbs so many quips on how we should behave toward one another, and with that, we discern. We gain boundaries and learn to respond not in anger but in grace. And we learn to walk and not just believe.
Comment Form