Contentment Lesson #12

Chapter 12 - Trusting God with the Whys
Calm My Anxious Heart - Linda Dillow

It is hard to believe it is the last chapter already. I really do feel like I have grown as a person through this study, and I am glad that I was able to take you all with me on this journey! I know that I usually come off as a hard person to get to know - but I really think it is more because I am quiet and I am not very verbal...not so much because I am afraid to share or don't want to open up. I hope that is obvious after baring my soul these last 12 weeks, sometimes in ridiculous honesty :) :)

Anyway, back to the book...

I think from the title, you can probably guess what it is about - why God allows certain things in our lives, why we have to go through hard times, etc. And the first thing that came into my mind was why we had to go through the very dark, difficult times when Stephen was really struggling with those memory issues I mentioned several posts ago. WHY? It just seems hurtful, painful, hard on our marriage, and destructive to us financially, personally, and to our reputation. Why would God allow that? But Stephen and I have grown as a couple - and just the other day we said to each other, "Now I know why God allowed this!" There is a woman that is bipolar and struggles with depression, and sometimes she has similar episodes with her memory and it almost caused them to lose their house. Her husband had no idea. We sat down and talked with her, and that night after she talked with her husband we talked with both of them. There is a lot of hurt, pain, distrust, anger, etc...and I know what her husband is feeling - because in a similar way, I have been there. Stephen and I would have had no idea what to say to this couple if we had not been there ourselves. I wouldn't have been able to be honest and share with the husband that I wanted to leave Stephen, to walk out and not deal with his problems, how sometimes I felt trapped because of our decision to never divorce...but painfully CHOOSING to stay with Stephen and not run away from pain and hurt and hard times - because running away doesn't solve a thing, and it made us stronger as a couple to fight through those times.

All that to say, if nothing else, if their marriage can survive this hard time, it made our difficult situation worth it. Even though all this time we wondered Why?!? But sometimes we don't see the answer to our Whys for years, decades, or never.

Again, back to the book...but I felt it was important to share all that.

Linda quotes Ecclesiastes 7:13-14, which says:

"Consider the work of God, or who is able to straighten what He has bent? In the day of prosperity be happy, but in the day of adversity consider-- God has made the one as well as the other so that man will not discover anything that will be after him."

She says, "The crooked times are difficult, not just because they're crooked but because we can't see how God is working. But those are the times that require faith. Remember, God is fitting things together even when we can't see. It just doesn't feel as good or as safe." She also quotes Myrna Alexander who wrote a Bible study called Behold Your God in which she says about the above verse:

"There is the crooked that God causes and the crooked that we create for ourselves and God allows. We make mistakes, blunders, messes. We can create disorder, chaos, sadness, and suffering by breaking God's instructions concerning how life is to be lived. Yet He who is in control over all things says, concerning the seemingly crooked that He has made or the crooked we have caused, "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.""

That was definitely true for us in the situation I mentioned above.

Linda goes on to tell that her favorite book of the Bible is Habakkuk, mainly because it is Habakkuk petitioning God with Whys, basically his testimony as he communicated with God about issues with the Israelite people and why God seemed to be silent - why it seemed like He was not working. Here is Habakkuk 1:2-4...

"How long, O LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, "Violence!" but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted."

God answers in verses 6-7:

"I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwelling places not their own. They are a feared and dreaded people; they are a law to themselves and promote their own honor."

But isn't this an even bigger problem?? Wouldn't that make things worse?? Habakkuk definitely wondered - it just didn't seem like God's plan was any good. Anyone could come up with a better plan than that, right?

Linda puts this into a current example to help us really understand Habakkuk and his situation. She talks about how there is so much crime, abuse, sexual immorality, alcoholism, fear of rape, murder, etc. We might be like Habakkuk: praying, wondering why God is not doing anything. Well, what if like in Habakkuk, God explains His plan. What if He said, "Look, be astonished and wonder! I am doing something in your days you would not believe if you were told. For behold, I am raising up Osama bin Ladin, that evil terrorist, to take over America."

Um, yeah, if I was honest with myself, I think I would have the same response as Habakkuk - what a terrible plan, God! Right?!? Now maybe you can see from Habakkuk's perspective, and what he was thinking and feeling.

Do you know what Habakkuk said back to God? He didn't scream, "That's not fair!!" he went back to God's character, specifically His holiness and purity. Then he asked God Why again in Habakkuk 1:12-13:

"O LORD, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, we will not die...Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?"

Then Habakkuk waited - and listened for God's response. A challenge for all of us these days, I think. God reassured Habakkuk that yes, these evil people were coming, but he was to not live in fear, but FAITH. Linda said, "In other words, God didn't explain Why; instead He told Habakkuk to trust Him with all his Whys. Habakkuk was to trust God for what he didn't understand, what he couldn't see. He was to walk in the dark with God. From the human perspective, this answer is frustrating. We want to know Why...God is God, and He doesn't need to explain Himself. If we could fully comprehend God, He wouldn't be God - He would be like us. In those instances when God doesn't tell us Why, we will have to wait until we're in heaven for our answers."

Habakkuk didn't really like God's response, and he still was afraid of what was coming, but he praised God anyway (Habakkuk 3:17-19).

"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights."

He choices to praise God even though everything could be taken away and destroyed, when the future seems bleak. He will trust God. Here is a process that Linda concluded about this situation:

• He told his honest doubts to God
• He resolved to wait on God
• He chose to trust God in the dark

It seems like a great example for the rest of us!

But can we follow Habakkuk's example in those dark times? I know that I didn't choose that path in our situation with Stephen's memory problems. I did not trust God at all. And I sure had hoped that I learned enough to step out in faith and try to have a better response in the future, when the next Whys came my way...but obviously I haven't learned quite yet because I totally had a breakdown with my thyroid. I had a message from the doctor on our answering machine last week to call back about the lab work I had done recently...which means bad news. I found myself doubting what He is doing. Still questioning His plan because I can't see the outcome or what the point of it all is. Still crying out "God, WHY. WHY are you allowing this in my life? WHY are you not letting natural health work for me. WHY does it look like you are pointing me down a much more painful process? WHY can't you just heal me? What is the point of this whole mess?!?"

It all comes down to my perspective of God and who He is, and my place in that equation. When I start to doubt, when I start to feel that God doesn't really know what He is doing, when I don't like His answer (or His silence) when I am screaming Why???, I must make the PAILFUL CHOICE to trust. To surrender.

I am still not there. And I was excited and humbled to learn that my thyroid is still up, but WAY down from where it was before (it was 5.6 before, and now it is 1.34. It needs to be between .9 and 1.1). So there is significant progress. Here I was stressing that it was still as high as it was before, but in actuality I needed to just trust God no matter the outcome.

But I still really hope I can get to the point that Habakkuk was. And maybe having this in writing, so that I can go back and read this post again and again as I deal with my thyroid and as more hard times come in my future (which they will), I hope that it will help.

Linda has "though" statements that she writes and ends with trusting God...here are some of mine:

THOUGH my kids may make wrong choices
THOUGH Stephen and I fight and argue
THOUGH I am tired - on many levels
THOUGH my friend has lost an almost full term baby
THOUGH one of my coworkers at IWU recently died of brain cancer
THOUGH my thyroid is still not where it should be
YET WILL I TRUST IN THE LORD GOD. HE IS MY STRENGTH.

Maybe some of your "thoughs" are (Linda's examples):
...though my parents never understand or support me
...though I never have as [spouse]
...though my [spouse] disappoints me
...though I am in pain
...though my child turns away from God
YET I WILL TRUST IN THE LORD GOD. HE IS MY STRENGTH.

"Life has times of prosperity and times of adversity, the straight and the crooked. When your heart is breaking with a burden, do you wait on God? Have you seen Him in all His majesty, and can you say with Habakkuk that the righteous shall live by faith? We all need a faith that perseveres through the times when we can't see what God is doing but we can see Him, and so we say, "Yet will I trust You."

I want to leave you with a couple songs that just really hit me this past week. It was like the singers put into songs and words what my heart is feeling. First is the song from Nichole Nordeman on her CD Wide Eyed, called "To Say Thanks." Click here to listen. I also put the lyrics below if you want to follow along.

To Say Thanks
By Nichole Nordeman
Hello, Mr. Darkcloud
Never thought that we would meet so soon
Never thought I’d bundle up in June
Funny how the fog rolls
Funnier that I’d know who to blame
Never thought I’d have to own this pain
If all that’s good and true
comes from heaven
Then what’s a girl to do
when it rains?

Chorus
And I’m sayin’
Why, why, why, why?
I’m shakin’ a fist in the dark,
and I’m askin’
Why, why, why, why?
Why does it keep getting harder
To say thanks?
Tell me what's a girl to do...

Even fields of flowers
Dressing in their best because of You
Knowing they are blessed to be in bloom
But what about November
When the air is cold and wet winds blow
Do they understand why they can’t grow?

Chorus

And I could not pretend
to know the difference
Between the storms You send
and those I find

Chorus


I also wanted to share this video from YouTube that was shown at our Girls Day Out at church this past Saturday. It is a slideshow put to Mandisa's song "He Is With You". A great reminder for me with all my Whys.