For such a time as this

The ancient city of Corinth was a wealthy trading center, located between major shipping lanes of the Corinthian Gulf and the Saronic Gulf.  It was also known throughout the Roman Empire as a wicked, immoral city.  Consequently the young church in Corinth struggled with worldliness and sin.  In Paul’s first letter to the church, he addresses one particular sinner:

It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife (or insert the sin of your choice).  You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst.  For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present…I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.  (1 Cor 5:1-5)

But later, in his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul addresses the issue of this same man:

For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you with many tears; not so that you would be made sorrowful, but that you might know the love which I have especially for you.  But if any (the immoral man) has caused sorrow…Sufficient for such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the majority, so that on the contrary you should rather forgive and comfort him, otherwise such a one might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.  Wherefore I urge you to reaffirm your love for him.  For to this end also I wrote, so that I might put you to the test, whether you are obedient in all things.  But one whom you forgive anything, I forgive also; for indeed what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ, so that no advantage may be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.  (2 Cor 2:4-11)

What are we to do?  Confront the sinner, put him out of fellowship, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh – not of his life, but the enslavement to the flesh that yields the fruit of the flesh (See Gal 5:19-21).  But why?  That his spirit may be saved.  And then what?  With great love and compassion, acknowledging that the removal and turning over to Satan is “sufficient.”  It is enough!   No more hurt or abuse or punishment or rejection is warranted.  On the contrary, you should forgive, comfort, reaffirm your love to such a one.  Why?  So he will not be overwhelmed with excessive grief.  Again why?  So our obedience to the command of forgiveness might be tested.  And so that Satan can find no advantage against us.

Of all the so-called advice I’ve received, precious little has passed the test of Scripture.  Instead, most of it has, according to this passage, fallen right into Satan’s hands:  Anger, vengeance, fear, selfishness, punishment, self-righteousness, unforgiveness.  Our anger and unforgiveness is simply a door that allows Satan entry into our lives.  He uses our self-righteousness against us, as is frequently evident. 

These passages best describe my response to my husband.  That I should rather forgive and love and comfort, such as I can, than to punish or hate or cast aside.  I fear for those whose arrogance – like the pharisee who, referring to the ’sinner’, proudly prayed, ‘Thank you God that I am not like one of them‘ – makes them think they are somehow better.  It will be their undoing.

I want wholeness, healing, redemption, restoration, unity.  I know that is the heart of God as well.  I realize it is up to Him; I am powerless but to plead mercy and pray, and hope that God hears my cries and the groanings in my spirit.  What hope there is in this life rests in God alone. 

I see God at work daily in my husband; I see repentence, healing, renewing of life and washing with the Word.  I see the glorious tranformation beginning in him – the same transformation I myself have experienced.  But I am the only one who sees it as I am the only one, it seems, obedient to the command of forgiveness, love and comfort.  That’s not pride talking, that’s simply reality.  I know there are others who claim forgiveness, but do they live it out according to God’s Word?

My despair is so complete, my isolation absolute – I feel utterly forsaken by friend and God himself.  I know His promise is that He will not leave me nor forsake me.  Oh, that I could feel that promise now.

This is for all the people who claim to care about me, who claim to be Christ followers, friends and family members who continually, repeatedly, and painfully heap stones and injury and insult on me in addition to all that I’m already facing.  Enough!  It is the people closest to me who are causing me the most hurt and stealing away what precious little comfort I’m able to glean from these horrifying circumstances.

My marriage was never a mistake!  I am confident in God’s sovereignty over that decision in my life.  Through my marriage I have my children and grandchildren, I have experienced great blessing, and yes great sorrow, prosperity, ministry, love, friendship, more goodness than I can list.  The riches that God has bestowed on me through my marriage are my greatest treasures and NOT ONE MOMENT OF IT was a mistake.

My husband was and is my best friend.  If we were nothing else to each other, we have been friends, constant companions, partners.  We have planned and prospered together, dreamed and built and worked side-by-side to create some wonderful, blessing-filled things.  He has created this mess and, ironically, he has been the only person I’ve been consistently able to work through my grief with without being insulted, talked down to, or treated with careless contempt.  What does that say about the “caring people” around me that the accused is more a friend than they?

I am not a mindless, brainwashed, manipulated idiot.  I am fully aware of my circumstances and the price that has been and continues to be required of me – MORE SO THAN ANY OF YOU COULD POSSIBLY IMAGINE.  I see very clearly and I’m acting in the best interest of my family, knowing that whatever I do I have already lost everything.  There is no way to escape the brokenness, the pressure, the strain of this.  We, my daughter and I especially, have no choice but to go through it.   No one but me gets to decide how I should best deal with my loss and grief.  Who among you have had to sacrifice one loved one for another?  Who has chosen to forfeit every dream they’ve ever had to preserve the safety of their child?  Then do not claim to relate or understand.  And please do not presume to advise me.

Do not tell me what is in store for my husband.  Don’t you think I know?  How do you think I, as a loving, faithful, devoted wife, can live with knowing the future my husband is facing?  It’s devastating to me and yet there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.  How is it to my benefit to hear the horrific stories or for you to add to my fear that is already crushing ?

Please people, THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK.  Are the words about to come out of your mouth going to build me up, comfort or encourage me, or are you simply adding pain on top of pain?

Consider this:  I am a widow without any of the benefits.  There is no financial support, no life insurance.  There is no grief support group.  There are no understanding shoulders upon which I can cry because who has experienced this?  Of all the cases of abuse, such a small percentage are even reported and, when they are, most wives and girlfriends do not do what I have done.  I have done the right thing – and it has cost me everything.  Why then do well-meaning people keep trying to take what little is left?  Why do they add insult as if I am the guilty party?

You do not have the right to try to nullify the last 14 years of my life!  We are all guilty.  We each sin, fail, fall short.  We are each deserving of death.  Yet we each have the ability to love, to do good, to be gentle and genuine, to show compassion and generosity, to touch people’s hearts and lives in meaningful ways.  What makes you think that is not also true of my husband?  Our entire life together was not marked and made void by this.  Would you so willfully and selfishly steal my loving and wonderful memories as well?  Our end is tragic, but our whole life together has not been.  There has been awesome and genuine goodness as well.

Your anger is not my problem.  I have enough problems of my own.  I have been as compassionate and patient and gracious as I can be, but where is the compassion, patience, and grace in return?  It does not help me to hear you vent your hostility and hatred.  It does not encourage me to hear you reject, ridicule or diminish my life and love.  It does not bring me comfort to hear your suspicions or accusations – that’s too little too late and I DON’T WANT IT!

If I choose to wear my wedding ring it is because I am married, and until God in Heaven releases me from my covenant vow, so shall I remain.  If I choose to forgive, it’s because God commands it of me.  He has forgiven far greater of me than He is asking me to forgive.  If I hate the sin and its consequences, yet love the sinner deeply, faithfully, abidingly, how is that different than what Christ has done for all of us?  Have we not sinned, yet His love for us endures forever? And yet I am being judged and scorned for the that very thing that Christ himself taught us to do.

Enough!  If you are of Christ, then love as Christ, forgive as Christ, have mercy, grace, and compassion as Christ.  We are to comfort one another with the comfort we have received.  Instead I am being stoned by fellow believers and crushed by their carelessness.  You who is without sin cast the first stone.

In old testament times, grief was a public display.  Think of Mordecai in the book of Esther.  Upon learning of the great murder plotted against his people, Mordecai, cousin to the Queen of Persia and her guardian, removed his robes, put on rough sackcloth, covered himself in ashes, and wailed at the gate.  He raised such a fuss and racket that the Queen learned about it even deep within the great palace.  Elsewhere in scripture, mourners are described as gathering together and weeping, shaving their heads in their grief.  There was no mistaking.  Even professional mourners where hired!

I am grieving, deeply, in brokenness and groaning, but there is no sackcloth, nor ashes.  The occasional tear leaks out as I pick Wheat Thins off the store shelf (my husband’s favorite), my lip quivers as some bone head makes a careless comment or laughs cruelly at my sorrow. I feel ill as yet another newspaper article (front page again) pours salt into this open, festering wound.

My grief is private, alone, unseen by most.  It’s hours of tears throughout the night, and a necessary hardening of the heart during the day.  The truth is I am, and have been deeply, completely, faithfully in love with my husband.  I have stood by him through every possible trial and hardship, from having nothing to being prosperous, from the peak of health to chronic, painful illness.  We’ve clung to each other through disaster and loss and grief.  We have dreamt together and planned and I was so looking forward to our empty nest, just us two, ’til death do us part.

I have tried to hate him – I can’t.  I am angry at sin and the consequences of sin, yet I feel God’s compassion and mercy upon His own.  Timothy was God’s gift to me for a season.  And what a gift – through him I have in my life those that I love more than life.  But now the season has come for me to return him to God’s care.  It is difficult to let go of that which we love so much, yet I must.

In my fervent prayers today, I confessed to God the deep desire of my heart – To wake up from this nightmare, to have my husband and best friend restored to me, to experience the love and wholeness in marriage that I long for, for my home to once again be a place of peace and rest and safety, for my children to be healed, and for all of us to be together again.  I told Him, I know all that is impossible.  He was very quick to correct me, reminding me that with God, all things are possible.  That gentle and true reminder brought peace and joyful expectation to my heart.  God, I don’t know how or when, but I love you and I trust you.

I do not own sackcloth.  I have plenty of ashes, but our culture wouldn’t understand that.  I have, however, cut my hair.  My husband was my covering and now he is gone.  My covering shall be the blood of the Lamb.  This small change is my public mourning.

Father in Heaven, I pray for healing, restoration, transformation, redemption, freedom, comfort.  Come quickly, Lord Jesus.  We are weary and longing for home.

Oh, I hate this feeling.  There is a reason I drink non-alcoholic beer.  I like beer.  But I hate the buzzed feeling I get after more than half a glass of good quality ale.  So I drink the lesser quality O’Douls.  They have a non-alcoholic amber ale that tastes better than swill, but still not so good as a fine artisan amber ale.  And living in Oregon, there is an abundance of good artisan beer.

But we’re talking VODKA here.  Before I lost Tim, he had been working on a batch of biodiesel.  He’d processed it, but hadn’t distilled out the methanol  yet.  So it’s been sitting in the distiller for a month.  And it’s leaking, drip by drip, into a bucket.  Biodiesel, glycerine, and methanol.  Did I mention methanol is a neurotoxin?  It’s bad.  Attacks the liver and nervous system. And what do you think the remedy is?  Alcohol.  High proof alcohol.  Oh, joy.

I was trying to pump the contents of the bucket back into the distiller tank and spilled quite a lot on my hand and on the floor.  How the heck did he get this stuff in the tank?  Hmmm.  So I came in and poured half a tumbler of vodka along with half a glass of Safeway sparkling pink lemonade.  Have you had straight vodka?  Eew!  All of this on an hours old bowl of Life cereal.

I hope I’m spelling well, because my brain is definitely slow right now and manual dexterity under the circumstances is not my forte.

So here I am, trying to work, do bookkeeping, answer the phone (I’m really exagerating my enunciation, just in case – I hope no one asks me a tough question), and stay in my chair.  I keep trying to shake my head to literally shake off this feeling, but when my head stops shaking, my body….

So it’s lunch time and, while I may not be technically drunk, I am most definitely experiencing THE BUZZ and I really hate it.  I had hoped to get so much done today.  It has been a very difficult and heart-wrenching couple of days for me and alcohol limits my ability to keep my emotions in check, not to mention what it does to my ability to think.

So to my daughters, Lauren and Charlotte, who were teasing me about having a fully stocked bar the next time they visited, not likely.  I’ll stick with beer-flavored Kool-aid whenever I can.  Love you!

What breaks my heart most in all this – beyond losing my husband and best friend, beyond my children effectively losing their father – is my grandsons.  They’ll never know their Poppa.

Ages three, two, and one, they won’t remember him as they grow.  They’ll not learn all the valuable lessons he has to teach them, have adventures in the forest, hear tales about logging, go fishing with him.  The volume of wisdom and the depth of love that has been denied is, perhaps, the greatest loss of all.

And it was all so unnecessary, so selfish.

I got hid hard by a nasty head cold – God’s way of making me slow down and rest – that, and the natural outcome of insane amounts of stress and no sleep for three weeks.

So now it is Monday morning.  I’ve already fielded a few calls, I’m trying to get my head around the work I have to do this week – continuing to try to save my business and income and build some kind of new life for myself – steering myself toward the workout studio so I can get at least 15-20 minutes on the TotalGym.  And the stress and anxiety is creeping in very quickly.  So I begin to pray, God please order my days and direct me through your Word.  I open up a bible and what encouraging word is there before me?

Song of Solomon, Chapter One.  Oh, for cryin’ out loud.  Is this a joke?  I’m wondering if perhaps one of Satan’s imps is loitering around messing with my head.  But, I was in sincere and fervent prayer, seeking God’s encouragement and direction.  This is what He says to me today:

“The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s.  May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine.  Your oils have a pleasing fragrance, your name is like purified oil; Therefore the maidens love you.  Draw me after you and let us run together!  The king has brought me into his chambers.”

“We will rejoice in you and be glad; we will extol your love more than wine.  Rightly do they love you.”  Songs 1:1-4

Honestly, I don’t know how to take that.  I have been reviewing the lie that apparently was my marriage and this verse certainly does not apply to that.  So Abba, what are you telling me?  That there will be rejoicing and gladness.  That I am loved by many?  I’ll take that.

On another note, I am very grateful for the sympathy, prayers, good wishes and offers of help, particularly by a couple of good men in Christ who are blessed with very useful practical skills.  It’s going to take several skilled men to replace my husband who took care of so many things around here.  But I am sensing a trend that I’m finding, shall I say, disturbing?  I call it the White Knight Syndrome.  Granted, in the past few weeks as I’ve dealt with shock and grief, and just the horror of the reality that I wasn’t even aware of, I’ve been a certifiable wreck – at least as much as I ever have been.  

I can see where a caring, good man could potentially consider me a damsel in distress.  But here’s the thing:  I don’t need to be rescued.  I could use some help – actually, a lot of help.  Especially in the coming months.  But I do have full possession of my faculties, full of snot as they may be right now, I am competent, capable, and in the grand scheme, I have no fear.  I have faith in my own abilities and, more importantly, faith in my Father who loves me and who will provide for my every need according to His riches in glory.

So, help, not rescue.  Encouragement, not pity.  Strength for today.  Hope for tomorrow.  In time, we will thrive.  Of that I have no doubt.

Not in all the sorrow and loss of my life have I experienced grief with the depth, breadth, and all consuming power as I have today.  Even the devastating shock and loss of my beloved Nathan, the endless nights of weeping and the heartache of feeling the world empty of his presence, pale in comparison with this.  I am utterly broken.

I awoke in the early morning hours on Friday – 1:15 I think – and wandered through the house.  I eventually returned to bed exhausted, but my dreams were horrific.  Demons gripping me so tightly that I couldn’t move, speak, or breath.  Praying in my heart and mind, unable to give voice to my prayers, but seeking God’s aid and salvation.  After fighting a dizzying battle of prayer and praise over evil I was finally able to raise my hands to Heaven and call on Jesus and, at that moment, the demons were gone.  I awoke soaked with sweat, heart racing, panting as if I’d sprinted for miles.  God lifted the veil for me to show me what this really is.  It is spiritual war, and we are its casualties.

Today, yesterday’s anger was replaced by more personal grief.  This sin does not define my husband.  It has destroyed him, but it is not all he is.  And today I am missing the man that I love with all my heart.  My bedroom is no longer “ours”, but “mine.”  The desk is gone – replaced by a small writing table and a sitting area.  The bed that we shared, loved in, laughed and played in, cuddled in on cold nights, is gone, replaced by a smaller, newer bed that is mine alone.  I may be sleeping on the couch tonight. 

The tears were constant today and still flow.  I love my husband and I have lost him.  He is the one I would come to with my sorrows, but to whom shall I go now?  I know God is the great comforter, but who could possibly be His hands and arms for me now?  I am utterly broken and grieving, frightened and angry.  God, I cannot change what has happened any more than I can change the outcome of the path we are on.  We are in your hands.  I entrust my beloved to you, my children, myself.  God, please love us through this.  It is so dark in this place.

We’ve come home to Faith.  It felt so good Sunday morning to walk into the full sanctuary of Faith Baptist Church and be greeted by hugs and welcomes and friendship.  How we have missed these precious people.  Among the first to greet me was Jerry Flaming – the man whom my husband accused while he himself was drowning in sin.  Jerry’s embrace was absolute grace, as was that of his wife, Rebecca.

Another friend, Becky, looked me intently in the eye and said, “JoDana, God chose you!”  I hadn’t looked from that perspective before.  I know I was chosen for salvation, and I know that He loves me.  But to think that I may have been chosen, set apart, sanctified, for this – For Such a Time as This – is both frightening and humbling to me.  Is this the great work that He has prepared me for?  I cannot say.

I do not know why God permitted these things to happen, but over and over again He is showing His hand in it.  I know His purpose will be revealed in His time. 

Last night I found a photograph, taken the day of our engagement.  We had prayed for the Lord to give us an unmistakable sign of His confirmation and blessing of our union.  We received that sign, memorialized in that photo, and claimed the covenant promise that was the beginning of the dream that is Covenant Creek.  I do not know how He will keep that promise, now that my beloved is gone.  Yet I am trusting in the covenant promise God made to me that day … because He chose me.