I was listening to a sermon today about marriage. It had a lot of good points, and confirmed a lot of things for me. The one thing that stuck out was; “If you trust God during your darkest moment, He will lead you to greener pastures. If you trust Him in the desert, there is an oasis right ahead of you! Don’t quit!”.

Oasis- a pleasant or peaceful area or period in the midst of a difficult, troubled, or hectic place or situation.

My marriage has improved by leaps and bounds in a short period of time. (Minister did say a quick work!). I honestly don’t think either of us had imagined that we would be here, but I guess that is what we get for trusting God and not each other. :-) We pray together, we are both in our word, we want to spend time together, we share belly laughs. Our marriage muscles are getting worked out! No more spanx. No more stuffing the undies! We are off life support! And we rarely argue (coming from a couple who argued so much we generally provided entertainment for our dinner mates, this is big news! For a couple who could go weeks without uttering a word, this is magnormous!!)! I am not trying to paint the picture perfect marriage. We are far from that! But we have allowed Christ to reconstruct us, so much so, that we hardly recognize us. We can see the green pastures! We can see the water!

But there is still brokenness in me. It breaks my heart to say that, but it’s the truth. There are still things in me that I have tried to express, yet all I feel is that huge cry in my throat that strangles me. I can’t tell him, I can’t tell my friends. I feel the healing. I feel the progress. Like I said, our marriage is better, our children notice, our friends notice. But I still feel some pain. There is something in me, that has not been healed. Do you know how frustrating, how infuriating that can be?! To have come so far, yet have things still pulling me back? It doesn’t make me want to quit. But it makes me want to put all my guards back up. It makes me want to retreat. But if I did that, I’d miss my oasis! Taking my eyes off Christ will cost me my peace, while I am waiting on my total healing.

My God is a God of complete restoration. Not partial healing. He wants me whole, as a wife, a mother, His child and His worker. I know that I have done the things I have heard Him tell me to do. I know I have taken my all and given it to Him, in my effort to plead with Him to fix it. I have taken every broken piece of my heart and offered it to Him, like a little child begging her parent to fix her toy. James 5:13 says “Is there any among you suffering? Let him pray.”. So that is what I will continue to do, without ceasing. There is a great work for my marriage that needs to be done. We won’t be fully effective for God’s kingdom if I am not whole. And I realize that the enemy is going to stay on us, continuously trying to break us, push us backwards, destroy us…whatever he can do to stop that work. But greater is He that is in my marriage, than any tactic the enemy has planned!

Because I want so badly to be whole, to be done with this, my tears make me feel guilty. But they shouldn’t. My tears are not from defeat. I haven’t given up. God is in control of all of this now. And He has already proven what He can do. “For with God, nothing will be impossible” Luke 1:37. My tears are evident of the pain I have endured, which is allowed. I was made with tears ducts that work so it’s ok to use them! I don’t use them as a tool to stir up his guilt. In fact, now I hate for him to see me cry. But even in that, my tears are different. My hate is gone. HALLELUJAH!! Minister once compared this process to recouping after surgery. It is not anything you want to rush, because you might re-injure yourself. And sometimes re-injury is worse than the first injury! I have to remind myself that I am on God’s timetable. He knows what He is doing, and I am so sure He is preparing me for something so great. He can take the most broken of things and turn it into a masterpiece, a beautiful testimony for Him. It may not be good while it’s working, but it’s working for my good! And in the meantime I can be thankful that my sadness is not as often and it doesn’t take over, in the ways that it used to. It doesn’t consume me. I can praise God for the awesome man He is forming my husband into. And he is rather awesome! And I can praise Him for the day this saga is a memory, and the lump in my throat is gone. Isaiah 43:18-19 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 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.”

Write ya later! :-)