For Granted: The Big Picture

I’m constantly being reminded of how much we take things and people for granted. I’ve paid heavily for that sin in the past. Be assured I have learned that particular lesson, but too often I find that I have fallen into it unawares. It is so easy to do. We expect certain things to be constant in our lives, to be “no brainers.” We become comfortable and lazy. We lose our first love. We lose the passion that first drove us. We lose. Period.

This is the first Thanksgiving in six years that I have spent with my family in Iowa. The last time was 2004. I made it through that Thanksgiving, but since that emotional upheaval, I have made plans to be elsewhere for Thanksgiving, preferably in England with my friends the Smylie’s. It’s not because I don’t want to spend time with my family, I do. But in 2002 Thanksgiving in Iowa served as a watershed in a long series of events, which I call my “mini Job period.” How I made it in 2003 is still unknown, but 2004 was horrid. Leading up to that week, I couldn’t figure out why I was always crying. It made no sense. Then I remembered 2002. It then became crystal clear why I was grieving.

In September 2002 my husband resigned from his position as youth pastor, a decision I knew was necessary even if I didn’t know just how necessary it was at the time. Immediately after that I found out I was pregnant for the first time in our 11 year marriage. In October my husband arranged to have a friend buy our house. At that same time I learned that my mother who was living in Alaska had broken her collarbone for no apparent reason. Shortly after that, I miscarried my baby. The day after Thanksgiving my mother had a biopsy. The Saturday of Thanksgiving my husband called me in Iowa to tell me he had left and that there were divorce papers waiting for me. He also left his wedding ring for me. A week after my mom’s biopsy, we were told it was cancer. The next Wednesday I discovered she was in the hospital and that the cancer was in her kidney, bones, liver and lungs. That Friday, on December 13,  I flew to Fairbanks, Alaska to take care of her. On December 27, I prayed with my mother to receive Christ. On January 4, 2003 my mother died.  So in the space of four months I lost my church, my home, my baby, my husband and my mother. This is why it has taken six years to come home for Thanksgiving.

Let me close out that part of the story. Because I would not sign my husband’s divorce papers, he finally went to court, two days before our twelfth anniversary, on August 29, 2003 where a judge rubber stamped it. I never signed a thing. I know for a fact that God told me to let him go, to let him have what he wanted. God knew what I would only learn years later. But that is someone else’s story to tell, not mine.

At times I didn’t know how I could be alive. It felt like I no longer had any lungs or heart; my chest was a void, hollow and empty. Virtually everything of real value was stripped away. What remained was God. He was the source and foundation of my life before I ever met my husband, and he is still the source and foundation of my life. While I lost all those other people and things, I also received the greatest gift of all: I lost my sin of pride.

To be freed from sin is the greatest gift of all. The yoke of sin that bore down on me had been there so long that I didn’t realize the weight until it was lifted. Such utter freedom! I had taken so much for granted, expecting it to be there no matter what. Yet we can take nothing in this life for granted. I remember sitting by my mother’s hospital bed in the dark of an Alaskan December knowing that I would probably never have a child of my own to sit by my bedside when I die. Yet what God showed me through my trial is that I would never be alone. In those times when I couldn’t understand how I was alive, God revealed himself. I remember him surrounding me, breathing for me, making my blood move through me. I had taken even God for granted. Yet I found him not just waiting for me, but actively moving to bring me fully back to life in him. I was as one dead but was raised to new life. My pride was dead yet I was alive!

My life is truly not my own. Over the last eight years God has brought me to the place where I can really live that out. I get to live out his life for me. The purpose he created for me. Some may think that my sojourn in mission since it is here in suburban America is fleeting or an experiment. This is no experiment. This is my life and my future. I have personally invested in this mission, God’s mission, using what little retirement I have built up.  This is God’s life and I’m living it. I’m still learning what that fully means, but there is no question or doubt in my mind. My life is not my own; it is His.