The Good Thing About Torn Apart Houses

As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 2:4-5

From: 70weeksuvprayr – Kristyn

Subject: Under Construction – Week 49

Date: October 31, 2002 

Thoughts from Kristyn, November 2002—

Mother’s Day 2001. Not a happy day for Wilma, Ethyl and Lucy (not their actual names). I know this because each of these friends talked to me about it in the two days after Mother’s Day. Three separate conversations with the same theme: pain and weariness in a marriage marred by alcohol.

After the third conversation, a still small voice whispered…

Gather them together to pray

The nice thing about a still small voice is it can be easily drowned out by busyness and, failing that, loud music–even praise music will do in a pinch (and one can still feel virtuous when listening to praise music!).

Why would I want to silence that still, small, voice, you wonder? Why silence that voice with its innocent message? What could be wrong, after all, with a gathering of women, praying for their families, their marriages, their husbands?

Well, you see, I had heard this message eleven years before and that time I fell for it.

Back then, in response to the still, small, voice, I timidly invited another group of hurting women to my home to pray. I had some expectation that God would then intervene in our marriages. Perhaps, He would teach us how to be better wives. Perhaps he would deliver our husbands from those things that were tearing our homes and bruising our hearts.

Then again, perhaps not. Only two months after that original group began meeting for prayer, my husband moved out. And he was only the first. Others in the group experienced an acceleration of the difficulties in their marriages. This was not what we were hoping for. In some cases (including mine) divorce came to look certain.

Then, somehow, after the most painful three months I’d ever experienced, my marriage was restored—brought back from the brink of destruction.

I was grateful for the lessons learned and the miraculous second chance, grateful even for that painful time of separation. For in that season of pain, I felt God’s love and presence in a more real and personal way than ever before.

Still, when I sensed that familiar message to gather and pray in May of 2001, I resisted. The intervening years had taught me how to live in a pretty functional, somewhat joyful way with my husband. These other women were struggling, sure, but if I listened to the voice and started this group, I feared—superstitiously, perhaps–my marriage would be the first to be broken.

I didn’t resist for long, though. That still, small voice is relentless. The busyness and the loud music have to stop sometime, and there it is again, with its gentle, persistent message… Gather them together to pray.

So, I did.

Four months later, my husband Paul was arrested–his first DUI.

Life was getting harder, but my friends and I prayed on. Maybe this would be his wakeup call. Maybe now the cost would be so high he’d be willing to do whatever it took to be free of the drugs and alcohol that held him captive. Maybe now God would answer my prayers for my husband.

Maybe.

Three months after his arrest, Paul moved out.

This was worse, yet. But we prayed on. By then, the members of our original group had been slightly recast. Though her husband’s struggles are of a different kind, Rachel (her actual name) had been added and Ethyl could no longer meet with us because of  scheduling problems. (She may have gotten out just in time.)

Two weeks ago, Wilma called. “I asked Yogi to move out, yesterday,” she said. “His drinking and behavior just keep getting worse.”

Now Wilma is walking around in that semi-conscious state I experienced in the hours and days and weeks after Paul left. Yesterday, I gave Lucy a call. Her husband, who had been living sober for nearly a decade had slipped back down into the sludge of addiction. She had asked him to move out. There was nothing more for her to do.

Now, before you say, “Thanks for that wonderfully inspiring story about prayer,” let me share an illustration that came to me as I spoke to Wilma. I was thinking about how we brought our marriages to God back in May, asking him to repair them.

“Here’s a mess,” we’d said, “Please fix it.”

Now, it’s messier than ever.

But, wait.

Have you ever looked around at your orange shag carpet, Formica counters and harvest gold linoleum floors and said, “This has got to change”? What do you do? You call up an expert, invest a small fortune, and expect to have your home transformed into a place of comfort and beauty. Then, what happens? Well, those guys invade your home and start-ripping up carpet and pulling down cabinets. Before long, you can’t even have dinner in your own house, your hair is full of sawdust and it’s a perilous journey just to get a soda out of your refrigerator—if you can find your refrigerator!

Where is the cozy home of your dreams? It may not have been pretty. It may have even been a bit embarrassing. But your home was clearly a better place before the “experts” stepped in. What you had wasn’t so great, but now it seems you’ve lost everything.

So, do you kick the experts out and try to salvage what you can? Do you? Of course not. What do you do? You sit tight and do your best to ignore the mess. You trust that the work being done is a necessary path toward achieving the result for which you asked.

That’s right, you trust, and you wait.

I think back to those nights when those women and I first gathered to pray. We weren’t especially happy with the state of our households. We went to the Expert and handed the project over to Him. And now, things are pretty torn apart for Wilma, Lucy, Rachel and me.

Did we make a mistake, do you think?

Or do we just need to wait and trust that all these things will work together for good?

It seems to me that God must be at least as reliable as a construction worker.

“For I am confident of this very thing. That He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 1:6)

Trusting in Him,

Kristyn

Thoughts from Kristyn, years later—

That still small voice. Have you heard it? Have you, like me, tried to ignore it? Even been afraid of it? I have to admit obedience to God does not always make life easier. Or even happier. And sometimes, it triggers a whole remodeling plan that isn’t at all a project I want to get into.

But we’re always in some phase of remodeling, aren’t we? At least those of us who have entered into a saving relationship with Jesus. Whether or not He restores the marriage, fixes the issue at work, builds the ministry so passionately longed for, there’s that little thing called sanctification in the fine print. There’s that continual construction. That transformation process. And for what purpose? That we might enjoy a better life? More peace and joy and inspiration?

Sometimes I wake up heavy with no clear reason.

Usually, when this happens, I just say a quick inward prayer or sing a few lines of a hymn or praise song to remind me of what I know.

Usually that’s enough to get me up and at ‘em.

I like having a few prayers or songs in my pocket to lift my mood and inspire me for my work of the day.

But it doesn’t always work that way.

Sometimes I exhaust my catalog of morning prayer and praise and that heaviness just hangs on. Then my failed attempts to lift myself by turning to the Lord add a sense of guilt to that weight.

I must not be doing it right.

Or maybe God isn’t listening or doesn’t care.

I don’t often go there these days. I know better. But sometimes those thoughts enter in, as they did yesterday, and I grapple for Truth. I wrestle through the strands of my tangled mind for the right verse. For the right prayer. Sometimes I don’t find it and, eventually, just get my heavy self out of bed.

No joy. Not much hope of that changing today. But I’m vertical, anyway.

Yesterday, in that heavy, mopey, joyless state, I reluctantly went through my morning routine. I almost skipped the prayer I’ve been reading lately with my morning coffee. Almost.

I’m so very glad I didn’t.

Because there it was. The very thing I needed, in the first line of that liturgical reading. Not an answer but a question:

Oh, children of the Living God, what is your Father’s greatest desire for you today?

There in the prayer I had been reading daily for the last few months, God picked me up out of my sludge and faced me in a new direction. Or, at least, a new angle. I was still facing Him. Only now I could see I started the day asking Him questions that all had an Oh, God, what must I do to feel good enough to get up and face this day for You flavor.

Not bad questions. Not bad to be looking to God to be my Helper and Sustainer and Inspiration.

Only, now I saw (to my shame) I had not considered asking Him what His desire was for me that day.

Honestly, even if I had considered it, feeling as weak and low as I did, I may have been reluctant to ask.

I guess there are still times I’m afraid to hear that still, small, voice. Still afraid of the next big construction project that might ensue.

That small voice asks such big things of us sometimes.

The answer to that liturgical question, the next lines in the prayer, proved to be no exception. In fact, it is in my estimation, the biggest thing of all.

To love your Eternal King with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.

What an amazingly big request! What an awesome assignment! His desire is for us to love Him. Fully love Him. This is something I actually want to do. Yet, if I’m honest, far too big for me. Even if I could manage to love my Eternal God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength, it wouldn’t be big enough.

Looking at that verse from Peter about living stones, I know my best efforts of love are not holy enough, not perfect enough to be truly acceptable to our Holy Perfect God. I guess that’s why all that dusty, dirty, noisy remodeling is necessary.

But, friends, that messy building project I sometimes want to sidestep is good news for all of us assigned to the task of being “a spiritual house, a royal priesthood.”

Good news because of this: As we come to Him… we are being built up… through Jesus Christ.

The very thing He desires of us–a thing we can never do sufficiently on our own–He is building us up to do successfully.

 

INSPIRED BY A TRUE STORY

In late fall of 2001, Rachel Wilson, a ballroom dance teacher living in the small mountain community of Pine Lake, California, discovered her husband, Ben, in an extra-marital affair. Her initial response was much as might be expected—tears, anger, despair, thoughts of revenge and more. But, through a series of unlikely events she was led to an unexpected response – a 70-week journey of prayer with friends.

She wrote an email asking if anyone would commit to praying for her family for 70 weeks, not supposing many would agree to such a long endeavor. To her surprise, more than forty said yes.  

Kristyn is a new friend who joined Rachel’s prayer journey after her husband Paul, who had been struggling with alcoholism for years, walked out on her and their four children. As their friendship and faith grew, Rachel asked the group to pray for Kristyn’s family as well as her own and invited Kristyn to add her own stories to the weekly email updates.