Yet light shines brightest in the dark, and 2019 held a long road of darkness that literally pulled the rug out from under me and knocked me to the ground. I barely spoke of the inner turmoil I experienced this last year to anyone other than a few very close friends. While I may have held it together on the outside, inside I fought a silent battle that left me grasping for any strings I could hold on to in order to survive. I'm a private person, and I share very little of myself with those around me unless I write about it or I talk about it in a small Bible study group. However, I stopped writing, and I gave up attending and teaching women's Bible studies this year in order to work on the main relationship in my life that matters the most (besides Christ)--my marriage. So my world got pretty quiet and pretty small. I never imagined that the year we planned to celebrate 20 years of togetherness would be the year that I would fight the desire to give up. Satan fought hard against us and probably felt pretty successful for several months, but God ...
Two things kept us together (besides the prayers of the few people who knew this battle was going on): Daily gratitude and a church that pours into marriage for the sake of the gospel through a program called ReEngage. I can't say enough about either of those two things.
Daily gratitude keeps me looking for anything positive I can find and keeps me thanking God for His daily gifts of grace. It keeps my focus on God and off of myself and all the problems surrounding me. It keeps me looking for the good that can come out of the bad.
One Thousand Blessings Journal, Ann Voskamp
ReEngage is a program we've been through before, just not while in crisis, so it was a comfort to know we could jump in at any time to get the help that we needed. There's so much power in numbers, being in an auditorium full of other married couples who are actually admitting their faults and talking about their mistakes and their struggles. For the last nine months, we've spent every Wednesday night hearing messages on God's plan for marriage, listening to testimonies of how God redeemed marriages that the world would have considered hopeless and written off, learning from other couples how to communicate with each other in a healthier way, and walking away with tools to help us continue walking forward through a difficult season. It's not magic, but we watched so many couples reconnect and reunite. You can't sit through ReEngage and not leave with hope and a renewed desire to make your marriage work. One of their popular mottos is, if God has the power to resurrect Jesus from the dead, then He has the same power to resurrect your marriage.
Wednesday nights used to be sacred to me because it was Bible study night with my lady friends. Now Wednesday nights are sacred because it's date night, our middle of the week chance to reconnect and focus on us. We're still a work in progress, but it's progress. I struggled giving up teaching Bible study, but I felt like God was going to use this struggle to equip me to help someone coming through one of my Bible studies in the future. Little did I know that He'd use our current involvement in ReEngage to reach out to another couple very close to us also facing a silent battle in their marriage that no one knew about. God never wastes anything, even our struggles when we're still in them. So, like I said, my world got pretty small as my focus surrounded one main relationship. I wondered how much I really lived up to my word for the year. Did I even have much of an opportunity to shine?
Then God gave me a devotional that pointed out something I never noticed before, and I knew He breathed it over me that day. Proverbs 31:30 says that "charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." Which also means to shine. I see it as "she glows". The more you fear the Lord, the more you radiate His light.
I ended the year getting these unexpected messages from friends around me who didn't even know I was looking for evidence of having lived out my word or not.
And also a text from another friend that I have honestly spent very little time with that said, "I love spending time with you, the holy spirit radiates off of you!!"
I'm truly thankful for these late year messages and consider them gifts from God, His way of speaking to me and letting me know that He sees me and hears my need for affirmation. Gifts I already added to my 1,000 Blessings Gratitude Journal.
So with that, I bring 2019 to a close and welcome the year 2020 with a new word. Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment