If time healed all wounds, which it
doesn’t, I would have been healed a long time ago. I wouldn’t still feel all
the pain and all the rage.
I prayed off and on for years for God
to heal me emotionally. I honestly thought He’d just reach in and heal me as a
surgeon cuts out a cancer. Boy was I wrong! One day I got to thinking about it
and realized that maybe God wanted me to seek human help. So I started praying
about that and I said, “Ok Lord. Obviously you’re not going to do this work
yourself. So, where do I go? To whom do I turn?”
Every time I prayed, I felt the Lord
telling me that David was that person. My initial reaction was “What?! Are You crazy?! Have you lost your marbles and
the general universe isn’t aware of it, yet?!”
After all I thought He’d send me to a
woman, it hadn’t occurred to me that God would send me to a man and certainly
not that one. I could think of other men I’d far rather go
to. After going round about this with God a few times, I acquiesced. It wasn’t
easy. I still wasn’t too crazy about the idea, but God knows what He’s doing,
even when we don’t. I had to learn to trust God’s choice for me even though I
wasn’t sure I could trust David as I didn’t really know him that well.
I’d met David and his wife Jan at a
church we attended. I babysat their twin boys for them one night, while they
went out. I think that was the only time I babysat for them, but I’d see David
in church from time to time and we’d say “Hello. How are you?”
That was the extent of our
relationship pretty much until God told me that he wanted to use him to help me
heal.
A lot of the reason for my not
trusting David was that in the past, whenever I saw him, he looked like he had
so much of his own pressure, he couldn’t possible handle mine. Not only that
but on one occasion he shared something with me regarding his marriage to Jan,
which should only have been said to a counselor or minister; certainly not to a
former babysitter. Then on top of that he was the person who insisted I repair
my relationship with Andrew before going to Canada with him and Patty. No
wonder I didn’t think I could learn to trust this man!
I talked to him about what I felt God
had told me and he told me he’d felt God leading him to me as well. He’d been
helping mother deal with her own crap and had taken her as far as he could. In
fact, he tells me that when he told mother that he felt God putting me on his
heart, she looked at him and said, “Have fun.”
I started by going to visit him at
his house in an effort to get to know him better and learn to trust him. Unfortunately,
that didn’t work as well as I hoped. He was impatient with me and my lack of
trust. He often gave me what I came to think of as his, “I’m a Man” speech. Basically
he’d say, “Honey, I’m a man. As a man, this is the way I am with all my faults.
Etc, etc, etc.”
I never really understood how that
was supposed to help me trust him, but I persisted in hanging out with him
because I was desperate for emotional healing.
There were other problems with
hanging out at his house as well. His wife and sons would frequently barge into
his study where we were talking. I didn’t mind his boys so much as they often
had good reasons for coming in. His wife, on the other hand, seemed to suddenly
decide that she needed to work on some art project or other and the supplies
were in his study. After the third interruption, I looked at her and yelled,
“Don’t you ever knock?”
I think she thought she’d find us
locked in an intimate embrace doing God knows what in his tiny study. What she
didn’t know was that I had absolutely no desire to do anything physically
intimate with him. I was just trying to learn to trust him enough to allow God
to use him in my life.
There were other problems, too. At
times we’d get in his car and go looking for a place to park where we wouldn’t
be disturbed, but in a city like ours, that’s virtually impossible. Hanging out
where I lived wasn’t an option either. I lived with mother and her husband,
Bill who ran hot and cold about David. Some days he’d think David was okay,
others he couldn’t stand him. Then there was mother herself. We’d be in my room
as that was the only place in the house we could talk privately and if mother
wanted to talk to one of us for some reason, she didn’t hesitate to knock on my
door.
During this time, David was taking a
bath one day when he felt the Lord telling him to look in Song of Solomon as
there was something in there which I needed to hear. He asked the Lord where,
but all the Lord would tell him was that there was something in the Song of
Solomon he needed to find and give to me. David got out of the tub and went in
his study where he started looking through the Song of Solomon. When he came to
chapter 4 verses 12-16, he knew he’d found what he was looking for.
12 A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse;
a spring shut up, a
fountain sealed.
13 Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates,
with pleasant fruits;
camphire, with spikenard,
14 Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all
trees of frankincense;
myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices
15 A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters,
and streams from Lebanon.
16 Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south;
blow upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow out.
Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant
fruits.
David wrote this story in a letter to
me and included a copy of these verses, which I later lost. This didn’t crack
me open, but it did help me to realize God was in this. It also helped me
realize that God understood me.
With the holidays around the corner,
I thought it would be nice for the next two weeks to post holiday related
blogs. This means that for two weeks, my life story will be on hold. I will
resume posting it after the New Year. Thank you for your understanding.
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