Pain in the Offering

I feel rather shallow for only singing gloriously the praises of God once we leave this hell hole we have been in. I feel, after reading so many things that have pricked....or stabbed....my heart with conviction, that I have done nothing but gripe, whine and cry throughout this whole journey. I am learning to embrace that it is in the pain and suffering that I will grow. I have learned over time to be absolutely entirely thankful for everything we have been given and continue to be blessed with so it's not really so much a thing of ever being ungrateful of anything we have been so exceedingly blessed with but more of a learning to be grateful for that which continues to make me grow. How do I expect to grow in sheer comfort, wrapped warmly in my convenient little packaged box? How will I ever know who I am as a person, what I am made of, and who I am in Christ if I am never prodded...or pushed.....forward? Do I really ever know what it is to rely on Him fully and to fully understand beyond all of life what it is to "do all things through Christ who strengthens me?" That has to be about the most used, quoted, memorized verse in the entire Bible...so much so that one almost loses the depth of it in the lighthearted tossing about of it. I KNOW now more than I ever have what it is to live on that verse....to understand it to its height and breadth and depth. I can now pretty much quote any given part of Psalms after having walked out the last 4 1/2 months of our life. I heard once in a sermon what it was to call upon the Lord , to lament, to cry out to Him in the worst of times but to do it Biblically so that it does not become the begging, whining and crying that the Israelites were accused of doing. In the sermon he said that God loves to hear His people cry out to Him and you can never ever go wrong with crying out what God's word says because He is never wrong. In fact, we are told over and over to meditate on His word and to wrap our hearts within it....to bind His word upon our heart. So in order to cry out to Him in all of our hurt you can use Psalms because most of it is nothing but David's records of crying out to God to help him, to save him. So.....that's just what I've done. There are days I have not even been able to pray....not even wanted to pray. So, I just start reading Psalms outloud. After nearly 5 months of it I have unexpectedly memorized much of it. And we sing....the children and I. We put on worship music and we just sing. I can praise Him in my songs and I can cry out to Him in my songs. When words fail....where they so often do....we just sing.



But I feel as times as though I have failed miserably at this whole test. Because, truth is......I just haven't fared so well at all. I have failed to thank Him for what it is we are enduring. I thank Him for how blessed we have been but not for how He treasures me enough to stretch me and grow me into who it is He wants me to become. I don't ever thank Him for the absolute pit I sit in. But who would Daniel have been without his story of being in the lions' den and who would Joseph have been without being thrown into the pit by his brothers and then sold off into slavery? Jonah without his journey into the nastiness of the whale's stomach? I mean....really. Who in the world ever wants to take a trip down into a whale's stomach??? It couldn't really have been as picturesque, clean and lovely as the children's picture book Bible portrays. It's a whale's stomach....stench, fish, blood, gastric digestive juices, internal organs, sheer disgusting nastiness a hundred fold. He would have been a nobody in the Bible without it but even more so....who would he have been as a person? Would his life have been able to progress like it did...any of those people's lives....had they not endured what they lived through? Probably not. Or God wouldn't have allowed it to happen. And in every one of those incidents...and hundreds more throughout the Bible.....God saved them in every way. He changed them, molded them into what it was He needed in them to accomplish His work. Along those same lines....there were thousands of people living back then so who were these few that were worthy enough to have mention in the Bible? The ones that He saw had the ability to do what no one else would do. I'm not sure these guys were so entirely willing to do this stuff that they began waving a flag and begging to be signed up for the road of hard knocks but God saw something in them that was worth cultivating. He saw strength, character, passion, determination, endurance. He knew he had the ability to grow their faith. He did what was needed in order to shape them into the men they eventually became. But why? Why these specific men? I think it was so much more than all of the character traits combined....He saw their hearts. He saw in their spirit the devotion to Him and the willingness to sacrifice their all to do His work. He saw great men of valor because their hearts were turned toward Him and they were committed. So much more committed than what we think of as commitment in today's society. Passionate, all out, wild abandonment to His will. The devotion of one of these men would probably rival the devotion of the entire Christian population in the US today.

So this all lead me to think as I lay in bed consumed in tears and wondering when this all will end.....would I do it all again if I knew that only one person in the entire world came to know the Lord through my journey? If only one person in the entire earth accepted Christ because of what I have endured would it make a difference in how I felt about it all? Feelings of shame overcame me as I had to actually deliberate and weigh out this new thought. To my astonishment my inclination was to say no....I wouldn't do it again. Cause afterall.....there are millions of people in the world....millions of Christians.....and wouldn't that one person have a shot at it through somebody else witnessing to them? Tears of utter selfishness turned to rivers of shame. How could such severe mediocrity as a follower of Jesus Christ have so overcome me? How could I just rely on someone else to seemingly toss a Bible at someone and assume that would be enough? And once again....where has my willingness to suffer gone...or did it ever truly exist? What would it be to enter Heaven and have just one someone throw their arms around me and say, "It is because of you that I am here"? And there I lay in the darkness and the tears actually having to decide if I would do it again if it meant that one person were to know Jesus like I am coming to know Him? How selfish....how shameful......how utterly self focused on pleasure and comfort my life has become. But that also meant having to say that I would once again lay in bed awake while unknowingly to me our little girl was being raped down the hallway under the same roof. It is still very much a daily process for me to let go of the immense guilt of all that transpired that night. It is still daily coming to accept that it did happen and that it will truly always be my fault but that God does forgive. Millions of times each day I have to once again accept His forgiveness or I otherwise will never overcome this. But admitting that I would do this all again for just one person to accept Christ and know Him like I am coming to know Him was purposefully saying I would let it happen again. More tears fell. But as we have been told so many times before by everyone involved that helped us through those first few weeks, she is surrounded by the people and tools to help her overcome all of this. So much so that 4 months past it all she has been given miraculous reports on her assessments for how she is overcoming it all and how untraumatized she has been by it. Knowing that God gave her to us to raise according to His will and to recognize who she is in Him and what her purpose here is....would I go through it all again? If it meant someone's life was changed because of our testimony...or perhaps her's when she is older? It also meant that I would once again go through this seemingly infinite miscarriage. It meant seeing that second little line on the pregnancy test and being absolutely elated......so much like little baby waving gleefully at us that July 4th day. It meant knowing our baby would die and knowing I would have a very complicated miscarriage that lasted months upon months. It meant being unable to get pregnant for quite some time. It meant watching women carry their babies successfully to the same due date I was given and not having our baby to fill it. It meant watching other women announce their pregnancies while I cannot. It meant living through the guilt and suffocating, claustrophobic pain of what happened to Aubrey. If it meant doing all of this again for the sake of just one person....would I do it? Long hair wet with tears by this point I realized the excruciating pain there is in the offering. What it is to sacrifice oneself for His purpose. Thoughts of Abraham standing before the alter with knife held above head ready to pierce his one and only son...the very gift God had been so faithful to give....danced throughout my mind. He was going to do it. He was going to sacrifice his little boy for the one and only God.

So one quiet thought lead to another.....if it meant no one in the world ever came to know Him due to all of this would it change my outlook? Would I then be free to resent it all and to continue my anger at God for the present situation I currently endure? If nothing but self growth came from it and not one person was eternally changed due to this specific situation would I do it again? If God was using this to merely grow me into an Abraham, Joseph, Daniel, Paul, Job or Jonah would I do it again? He called upon Abraham to sacrifice his son, though in the end Isaac's life was spared, just to grow Abraham into who He saw that he was within. He had to develop him....to grow him into that person he became. No one came to know the Lord during the time Joseph was in the pit. It was an incident that God used to shape him and mold him and write his life story that he would become who he eventually became. All of these people learned what it was to completely die to self to truly live. It is in dying that they lived.

With tears still falling freely I whispered audibly into the dark room, "I would, Lord. I would. I would do it all again for you." The passion within my own heart cries out to be shaped and grown into what it is He has for me...for Brad and I as a couple....for our children...and for us as a family....for each of the children individually as their own persons. I want to be an Abraham, Daniel, Joseph or Paul. I want to be someone so passionate and abandoned to His call and His will that He would find me worthy of putting in the Bible. I want to be called His servant. "Many are called but few are chosen." I want to be one of the few He chooses because He sees in me something He can work with. I want Him to see the passion, diligence, determination, meekness, endurance, faith. I want Him to see my heart and that I have given Him my all in total, wild abandonment....that I will die for Him.


So, let there be pain in the offering. Because in the pain I become who it is He wants me to be. In the pain I learn to rely solely on Him for my every breath that I take. In the pain I become the person He can use. In the pain I learn to reflect His image. Because of the pain oneday He will look at me and see Himself clearly.