I'm back!

Oh, it feels like months since I've "blogged". There's a particular reason for that, which of course I'm going to share below. It's good to be back.

I'm just going to dive in. The last almost-9 months have been insane. To me, at least, they've felt insane. Actually, the last year and 4 months have felt insane. A year and 4 months ago, I obeyed a call I heard from God to leave my job in MN, leave my life there, pack up and move to Seattle, WA, to intern at Mars Hill Church for a year in the biblical counseling department. The call was clear. I remember the year of seeking, and the 2 years prior of seeking until God redirected my gaze from graduate school to church. I remember the Scriptures he spoke through, confirming his word. I remember the confirmations (there were many). What's beautiful about this clarity, is that when the doubts came, I could fight by remembering what God had spoken to me. I could not argue that God's call to Seattle was clear. Even now, I can't argue it. God wanted me here. It's the only time in my life I've heard a clear call to an actual place, a city, a church. Very cool, and exciting.

A summary of that first half of the year: my life as I knew it seemed to change overnight. New relationships, new struggles in my relationship with my parents, loss of the familiar. Circumstantially I was walking through lots of changes, but that wasn't it. God had specific work he was doing in my heart, and it began a couple weeks prior to moving. The previous four years in Minnesota had been filled with healing, restoration, a deeper understanding of who God is as my Protector and my Healer, and even glimpses of him as my Husband. It was an amazingly sweet time of knowing and experiencing God's redemption of my life. During those four years, God began healing me and showing me himself in some amazingly intimate, sweet ways. I still tear up when I think of those four years, and how he stripped me bare of the things of the world, exposed this deep, ugly thing I had hidden in my heart, and then made something absolutely beautiful from something horrendously ugly. I really started to come to know my Jesus in an intimately personal way. My journals were full. My heart was being filled with Scripture, and my mind was being renewed. I started to see and understand more of how God was orchestrating my life. It was beginning to make sense.

That's where I was. Coming to Seattle, God opened a whole new chapter in my heart. This one was more uncomfortable, more difficult, and I couldn't understand it at all. I tried to keep up, tried to wrap my mind around what he was doing, but I couldn't. It was too much for me to understand, too confusing, too different from what I had thought he would do. He began opening my heart to more deeply understand the good news, the Gospel, of Jesus. I learned what really happened at the cross. I learned that I am more wretched of a sinner than I think I am, and that He is a better Savior than I think he is. I got immersed in the simple Gospel of Jesus, told to meditate on it, read about it, write about it, study it. I was put in circumstantial challenges where God asked me to live out my trust in him (finances was the biggest area for me). Oh, everything felt suddenly different and harder. Then I got engaged. Then I got married.

Ah, marriage. What can I say about you and the almost-9 months I've experienced? I can say this: it was another chapter of my life, another way God opened up my heart and shone light on things I didn't know were there. Perhaps every newly engaged person thinks this: marriage will be "fill-in-the-blank". My "fill-in-the-blank"s were: "better", "more fun", "challenging", "a place where I will be understood and loved", "a ministry to my husband". It's like dreaming about what living in a third-world country will be like without ever experiencing it, only reading brochures or testimonials about other's experiences. I had no idea what God was writing for our lives together. One important point, however: I do remember the day, the moment, the place that God confirmed for me that Greg was the one He wanted me to marry. God's voice here was also clear. I was getting ready to back out, actually, and God told me to stay. God told me that this was the man I was to marry. So I did. Enter more pain, more confusion, more unmet expectations, and anger at God.

Without going into the details, marriage wasn't what I expected. My husband wasn't who I thought he was. I had no idea it would be so hard. I had no idea things would come up on our honeymoon. I didn't know! I felt completely blindsided, and tricked by God. Granted, I think a lot of what we hit early on was "typical", after talking with other married couples who have more time and experience on us. However, my new husband confessed some pretty serious sin on his part about 6 months in, and his heart before God became exposed in a way it never has before. However, that's his story, and I am not the one to tell it. What I began realizing, as I was walking through something I never thought I would need to walk through as a newly married woman, was that I was angry with God. I didn't like what path he had allowed in my life. It felt too hard, too painful, too disappointing. He called me to marry this man. He wanted THIS to happen? He knew, and he still said yes??? Oh, how familiar this sounds! When I began wrestling through my pain, I asked the same things of God and his character. "How could he do this to me?" God never does evil, nor is he to be blamed for it. God is sovereign over evil, and he uses it for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8). Now another painful season of life hit, and my response was to complain, doubt God's character, become angry at him for allowing pain in my life, and then I tried to distance myself from God. Deep down, I knew I couldn't live life without him. I knew Jesus Christ was the only way to life. I knew I couldn't renounce my faith in him. But because what he had allowed in my life hurt, I wanted to stay at an arm's length from him. I didn't want to get too close. I didn't trust him. I knew he was sovereign, but whether he was truly good was in question in my mind again. Because of pain. Because I hurt. Because of sin. I hear from God pretty clearly when I journal, so I stopped journaling and blogging. I stopped listening to him in prayer, because I hear him when I pray. I stopped bringing to him the deep hurt and the things on my heart.

I finally opened up to a dear friend of mine about this, which was masked in a desire to go back to the way my relationship with God was when I was single. I wanted the comfy couch, Bible and journal open, hours with Jesus, Scripture memory, sweet and intimate moments back again. I had had sweet moments with God recently, but deep down I knew I wasn't drawing near to him. Not fully, not truly. I was holding back because I wasn't sure if this God was good, and because I didn't understand what He was doing. She challenged me, bless her heart :) She knew in this current season of life that I have plenty of "couch time", but more importantly, she reminded me that the God we serve doesn't change. Even if every circumstance of mine has changed, why would the sweetness and intimacy of God's presence and voice change?

A couple days later, God changed my heart and gave me repentance. I finally drew near to God, all of me, and it was incredible. All I was met with was MORE sweetness and intimacy than I had known before, welcoming arms, absolutely no condemnation, but grace and forgiveness. I heard his voice, and I knew his love for me. It was better than anything I've experienced before. My foolish heart forgets so often Jesus' love for me. Praise be to God that His love does not depend on my faithfulness, but that He is faithful despite our sin, and always will be. I still don't understand what He's doing, or why, but at this point I don't want to or need to understand. He's God, and his ways are above mine. If I could understand them, I'd be at God's level, and that's a smaller God than the one I want to worship. And I know He's good. One of the things He immediately whispered to me as I drew near to Him was that "it's okay that you're grieved and hurt over sin committed against you. It's okay that it hurts. It was wrong, Melissa. It grieves me, too." It wasn't a free ticket to hold bitterness or unforgiveness, but an invitation to grieve with my Daddy, with Jesus who knew the ultimate betrayal. Although painful, it was freeing, and it moved me towards forgiveness. And it showed me that God hates sin and evil, and yet he is powerful and sovereign and can use it for his glory and our good. There truly is no one like our God.