Bumps along the road

Judges 7:2 – The Lord said to Gideon, “The people who are with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel boast themselves against Me, saying, My own hand has delivered me.”


My Christian Journey has hit some bumpy roads these last few days. I believe the primary defining characteristic of being a Christian is to love God and if you love God, you must love His children. It’s so easy to love someone who is good to you, someone who shows you love. For me, it’s even easy to love a stranger, especially one who has a need, or a sad story. The most searingly difficult part is loving the way Jesus loved. Jesus prayed for His enemies. Jesus asked God to forgive the ones hammering nails into his hands, the ones pushing thorns into his head. I and my family are coming up against a person who is totally unreasonable and selfish. This person does not care anything about my children, they don’t even care about their own child’s feelings/relationships/wishes. This person cares only about their own feelings and about enacting revenge on someone who they feel hurt them more than a decade ago.

I am a Christian, I know I am supposed to love everyone, but 2 days ago, if I would have seen the aforementioned person there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I would have …. (edited out due to legal reasons) I will say that it would not have been good for that particular person. At that moment, I had so much hatred, I was asking God to curse them and another person involved in this issue. Eventually I calmed down and asked for forgiveness. All I could think about was Jesus. I thought about how his pain, hurt, betrayal had to have been 1000 times greater than mine yet, he still forgave them, he still loved them.

Have you been brokenhearted before? I mean truly brokenhearted where you couldn’t imagine the next day, you couldn’t fathom your body being able to rise back up if you went to sleep that night, a pain so deep you thought your body would shut down on its own. I’ve felt that way a couple times, mostly as a teenager, and I never would have thought this particular situation would bring me back there – yet here I am.

So, as I attempted to cope with the knife twisting through my heart over and over, I thought about how much more Jesus didn’t deserve to suffer the way he did and how much harder it was for him. I just kept asking Him to help me. I finally reached the point where I was able to pray for the salvation of the hateful person I’ve been dealing with. I wrote out my pain and finally felt some peace. I came to the realization that God still has me – he still is holding me in His hand and still cares for me and loves me more than I could imagine. He is not letting me and my family go through this for nothing.

This brings me back to my chosen verse, Judges 7:2. We actually recently studied this chapter in Sunday school so it obviously came at the right time. In Judges 6 & 7, God is giving the Israelites a huge victory over their enemies, but He is doing it in such a way that will show everyone that the victory was only possible because of God. I believe we have suffered a setback now, but that in the end, everyone who knows of our situation will be able to look at it and realize that we won in the end ONLY because God was on our side. Either He will cause this other person to completely change, or they will receive a crushing defeat.

I am on my way to loving them. I am praying for them. I haven’t completely arrived yet, but I am on the way and I do believe I will get there. It’s funny because my husband is staying positive and he is not showing much pain even though I know he is probably more deeply hurt than I am, but he told me that if he didn’t get anything else out of this setback, he realized how much I am truly on his side. Of course he knew that I loved him, but going through this has brought us closer and shown him another level of my love for him and that’s something you can’t put a price on. I almost want to thank that person who put us through all of this for that reason alone. :-) I’m sure they were hoping that this situation would put us through financial stress, causing us to argue and be resentful, but it’s done the opposite. We have grown closer and look out for each other even more. Thank You, Lord, for using my enemies to strengthen my marriage! LOL (The sound of that LOL was the sound of me getting the last laugh! LOL again!)