Is God Enough?

We watched the movie, The Heart of Man, over the weekend. Friends who have dealt with sexual sin recommended it, and I will recommend it to EVERYBODY.

It.
Is.
Powerful.

I won’t give you the synopsis (the link above takes you to its website where you can see the trailer), but I’ll just say that the cinematic retelling of the story of the Prodigal Son moved Hubby and I profoundly. The way they portrayed the intimacy that the son had with the father, then portrayed the death and enslavement that follows sin…let’s just say that at multiple points we were near absolutely sobbing.

Several things about the movie really struck me deeply, but I couldn’t quite pin down what it was that made me feel so unsettled. We had originally planned to make love Sunday night, but we were both still trying to process the heavy emotions that the movie stirred up (for him, the testimonies and father wounds brought up a lot). We laid in bed and talked for a while instead.

Yesterday, he ended up being home from work unexpectedly, so we were able to talk some more when the kids were napping. But I was so upset, I was having a hard time staying rationale; I felt overly emotional.

At first, our discussion was heated as I poured my heart out, sharing so many fears I have. I asked questions like, “Should I go back to work so I can save money for the day in the future when you decide your sin is more important than us? I want to make sure I can provide for our boys.” And, “Sure, you’re committed to recovery and integrity today, but what about when sin comes calling with her siren song again? Then how committed will you be?”

As we dialogued it out, he so patiently bearing my inner struggle, I finally got to the crux of the matter.

I have, of course, known that I am not in charge of his healing. I am not in control of whether or not he chooses us over sin. That has always been a really difficult thing for me to come to terms with, but the movie stirred up that reality even deeper.

In the movie, we see the son walk away from perfect, intimate fellowship with his father. They have something beautiful and real and rare…and yet the longing for lust is so strong, he walks away from perfection to pursue death.

And while I know that we are all sinners in need of grace, that scene in the movie was what unsettled me so much: the son’s choice to walk away. There is nothing–NOTHING–I can do to make my husband choose me; choose God. I cannot be a perfect enough wife, have enough sex with him, give him enough children, etc, etc to make him stay. That’s his choice, and I have no control over it ultimately.

I have spent so many prayer times begging God to show me how to surrender my husband to Him, to let Him deal with the transformation of my husband’s heart. And yet this weekend I realized that each time I asked God to take my husband’s heart and heal it, to help me step out of the way and let go of control, I was really seeking a guarantee. I wanted God to guarantee that if I fully surrender my husband to Him, He’ll give my husband back to me, healed and whole.

But it doesn’t work that way.

My husband has free will. While there is literally no indication that Hubby isn’t completely serious about seeking the Lord and working through his healing, he still has the choice to walk away. God will not force Hubby to love Him back. If Hubby decides some day that the hard work, the grace that Jesus offers, his family isn’t worth it, God will not make him stay and neither can I.

So now I am wrestling with the tension.

How do I love my husband completely and keep my heart engaged and unguarded, while still keeping my hands open, not clinging to my husband?

So we talked about that some, because Hubby admitted that he has always had a really difficult time surrendering me to the Lord, too. Before we moved to the mission field (we were in a war torn country), we had to deal heavily with the “what if” questions about losing each other. Hubby had a hard time then, and he still does. So we’re both wrestling with the tension.

But as we talked through that big question–how do I love you with everything I have without holding onto you too tightly?–I realized that there’s a bigger question underneath.

Is God enough?

If my husband decides in the future that I’m not worth the trouble and completely walks away, is God enough?

If I’m left a single mom with two beautiful boys, working alone to provide for them and make sure they’re loved and well cared for, is God enough?

If Hubby doesn’t physically walk away, but decides that a relationship with God is too costly or that sin’s luster is too alluring to ignore and turns away, is God enough?

If Hubby seeks true repentance, but falls again and again and my heart gets hurt again and again, is God enough?

It’s a really hard question, and while I want to say a resounding, “YES! He’s enough!” The brutal truth is, my fears confirm that I still don’t fully believe that God is, in fact, enough for me.

And therein lies the greatest struggle I’m really walking through. And I will wrestle with God over this. I will seek Him again and again until I get to a place where I can love the people in my life with open hands. I will seek Him again and again until I get to a place where I genuinely accept that His ways are higher than my ways, even if they hurt and I don’t understand them.

I will seek Him again and again until I get to a place of true, uninhibited surrender, until I can give a resounding, “YES! Father, You are enough!”

Much love,
C.

God Was Not Surprised

Several years ago, we moved across the country to begin training for going to the mission field. We needed to be in the same city as our sending agency, which meant uprooting our life in preparation for our international move. It was big. It was scary. A lot of details were out of my control.

In the process of the move, some big things had gone wrong. I had a job lined up in our new city, but when we arrived, I discovered that they had mislead me about the timeline and the paperwork would take a while to process.

I was already so stressed out from the move and we were counting on my job to hold us over until Hubby found one. I was ready to quit the whole thing, get in my car, and drive back home where we could return to our old jobs and go on with our safe, predictable lives. I felt like I’d risked everything only to be disappointed and left hanging.

But one of the leaders at our mission agency felt like the timing was perfect and we were there for reasons we didn’t yet see. As we were processing whether to stay or go home, he said, “God is not surprised by this.”

That stuck with me, not just in that situation, but in several others through the years. And it came to mind again after my husband’s confession.

God was not surprised.

God knew what my husband had been doing in secret. God knew the shame and self-hatred he felt every time he looked at pornography. God knew how far my husband had strayed from His will. God knew the images he was looking at, the fantasies he was having, the lust that had overtaken his heart.

God was not surprised.

And God also knew what work needed to be done in my heart. God knew the exact moment the veil should be lifted so that I could show grace and forgiveness, so I could lean completely on Him, so I would be prepared to go to war alongside my husband instead of against him.

God was not surprised.

While it doesn’t magically erase the pain, knowing that God wasn’t surprised and that He, in His infinite wisdom, knew the exact moment to mercifully expose my husband’s sin brings tremendous comfort. I truly believe that God is in control and we’ve already seen miracles as He has been transforming our hearts, shaping them to look more like Jesus.

The journey isn’t over, and we know that recovery is non-linear. We expect bumps and bruises. We expect difficult days. We expect temptation and attacks from the enemy.

But we also know that we serve a God who is still on His throne, who is not surprised by any of this, and who will be with us every step of the way. And that, my friends, is worth rejoicing over!

What trial are you walking through right now that you need to hear, “God is not surprised” about?

Much love,
C.

I Trust Your Heart

That first night, after finding out my husband had been habitually using pornography, after countless tears, after hours of discussion, we finally collapsed into bed, exhausted and ready to sleep.

But I still had numerous thoughts tumbling around in my head. And the most prominent thought was, “How can I ever trust him again?”

It’s more than just the porn use. It’s also the lying and secrecy that absolutely obliterates trust.

While I had never point-blank asked my husband if he looked at porn until that night, he had never confessed on his own, either. He had masqueraded about as if everything was fine, as if his way-too-long trips to the bathroom were something else, as if I was the only woman he ever looked at or fantasized about.

And on the flip side, he struggled alone. He was walking a path of secret sexual sin that only leads away from God and toward death…all alone. We talked about returning to the mission field, but the shame he felt smothered any sense of calling. We actively served at church, but the sin he was in kept him from freely loving and worshipping our Savior. We slowly drifted apart, our one flesh marriage being torn, but the secrecy of his infidelity kept him from seeking true oneness and intimacy.

That night, God had given me His eyes through which to see my husband. He had allowed me to feel love and compassion, to extend grace, and to even begin forgiving him. It was nothing short of miraculous.

And yet there was still the gigantic issue of the fact that in one evening, I went from trusting my husband completely to feeling like I would never be able to trust him again. It was a hurdle that felt too huge to jump.

As we laid in bed and prayed together for the first time in a very long time, I realized that while I would not trust many of his words, I certainly wouldn’t trust him on the Internet, and I couldn’t imagine trusting him with my body again, there was still a sliver of trust.

“I trust your heart,” I whispered in the dark. “I don’t trust anything else about you right now, but I do trust your heart. I trust the heart of the man I married.”

At that, he wept. Any grace, any forgiveness, any love, any compassion I showed him was far too much for him to accept. Still today, he struggles to believe that he’s worthy of any of it. So I also repeated the Gospel to him.

“I know you feel like your sin is way too big to ever be forgiven. I know you feel like you’ll never get back into right standing with God, but Jesus died for even this. He pursued you while you actively turned away from him and chased your own selfish desires. If you are truly repentant and have turned back to Him, then it’s already done. When God looks at you, He sees the blood of Jesus. The sin is washed away and you’re made new.

“I know you don’t believe it right now, but I’ll say it until you do. The fact that God led me to that link, the fact that He uncovered your sin and brought it into the light is a true testament to His mercy and love for you.”

“And I trust your heart.”

Much love,
C.