Wednesday, April 10, 2013

I Will Fight For You.

Daughters,

to be honest I'm not sure how much I have to share about what's on my heart. This past week, while out of the country, something peculiar happened with God and me. He reached out.

To allow you to see how peculiar this is, I'll back up. Two years ago, as of March 1st, my Father killed himself. On one hand I could say he abandoned me, I could call it a loss, I could say he left this Earth, or that he just gave up. No matter how I look at it one thing is for sure, I'm fatherless.

They talk about it in the Bible. They would group me in the same category as the oppressed, the widows, and the orphans.  The weak ones who need our help, what most people would confuse as pity. Those people you never thought you would be.

The first year was difficult. Three months in I found myself in my bedroom drowned in sorrow far too often. That summer I felt isolated. In the winter strangely calm. Somehow a year later I felt completely numb. Until about 3 weeks ago, that's exactly where I stayed. Numb.

I began to believe lies over the course of time; that God wasn't here, He didn't care, He was silent, He was definitely not a Father to me, that this would plague me for the rest of my life. Especially the lie that healing was not possible for me. 

In trying to comfort me, people would remind me that no one could understand what I was going through. But that was one of the biggest lies. I began to believe, through that that I could not connect with anyone emotionally on this issue, that this was my burden to bear, alone, and that God Himself didn't understand my pain.

However, I became numb to even these emotions. Because, you see, we convince ourselves that we have to be "good Christians". That we can't step out of line and be so faithless, we can't be angry or confused at God, we can't question what's happened to us. We have to understand there's a purpose etc. etc. We begin to banish our emotions because they simple aren't acceptable.

Oh, but then there's Job. Everyone loves the first few chapters. He lands on his knees, crying that it's all in God's hands, but they forget that for the rest of the book Job is battling lies. Everyone condemns his grief, but God doesn't once say Job does wrong until he finally breaks down in anger at God Himself.

Then God restores him.

I'd like to say, then God was able to restore him, if I may. This has been my trial, that all this time I've become subject to the lies, denied the emotions and then finally God broke through. I began to pray that I would feel again, that He would restore me. The emotion He gave me was anger. I began to be angry at Him, at family, friends, my fiancé, and then finally after 2 weeks of tireless emotion I realized why.

I was angry at my dad all this time and I was angry at God. The funny thing about God showing me this is that anger seems to be one of the emotions that you can easily become ashamed with. That bitterness and rage can't be masked by excuses, it just reveals truly how evil and sinful your heart is. There's nowhere left to hide at that point, all you can do is repent.

I say in a room with 30 people in Ecuador, with bitter tears on my face and pleaded to God for the first time to save me from my own angry heart. And He did. He answered in such due timing, just like He said He would. Just like I saw He did to David in so many Psalms and hoped He would do for me.

I feel I could go on and on about the depth of sin that was washed from my heart. This entry can't do it justice. But something I do want to share with you, as Daughters of the King, is something our Daddy showed me.

He showed me He was my Father.

I woke up, the morning after coming home from Ecuador, turned over and read one of the most awful text messages in my life. Someone bringing me trouble, it felt like the Enemy himself. It should have read, "Chelsy, see how awful this life is, God isn't here, just give up, your family will never be restored." I stared at the screen, with a different type of numbness. It was one of those moments I said to myself, "This is when I wish my dad was here, he would protect me from this, he wouldn't let this happen." Before I got the chance to finish the thought, which I had thought many times before, it hit me.
 
My Father is here to protect me.

Peace settled in like a close friend to my heart. I looked at the phone and felt calm, which was much different than I had before. My Dad spoke and told me that He would take care of it if I let Him, He said that it was nothing for Him, but if I carried it, like I had before, it would break me. He didn't have to prove Himself there. He assured me that I didn't need to respond, after all, when He was accused by His enemies He didn't have to speak up for Himself either. I put the phone down. I wrote it out in my journal and then it was gone.

But something more miraculous had happened. I let the One who adopted me finally have a chance to gain my trust. Can you imagine a Father being calm with His newly adopted daughter for two years, hoping she would stop pretending everything was okay and sitting at the dinner table even convincing herself that she wasn't upset at all. Then she finally gets mad and refuses to speak with Him for weeks. To finally have communion again.
 
He waited all this time.

I hope this encourages you Sister.

Chelsy.
 

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