Prayer

Starting Over

Posted on by Christina Chronister

I’m starting over.

In almost every way imaginable.

After 29 years, my marriage hit an impasse. (Insert sound of screeching brakes and then the car hitting a brick wall at nearly full speed.)

I moved across the country. Lived with family for four months. Bought a house. Moved in.

Here I sit, at my folding table piled with tools and a bag of snacks and various things that have no place yet in this celery green house.

It is a project, I tell myself. It will be great when it is renovated. I know this from past experience. But then past experience was in another life, another world, another existence and here I feel like I am walking on a frozen pond in the spring.

I want you to know something. I am grieving. I am not empowered or strong or striking out on my own. I am lost. I pray every single day for the restoration of my marriage. Every. Single. Day. So God is very clear that I don’t want this new life I am living and yet I am trying to be mindful that He is here. If I go down to the depths… still He is there. Here. Now. I say this because the most common response to my sharing about the hard thing I am going through is to tell me that I will be surprised by how strong I am and all I can do. I appreciate the desire to cheer me up, but it is misguided.

Any strength I have is God’s. Any moment that I muster the courage to do the next thing is only because the Holy Spirit lives in me and He gave me a shot of spiritual adrenaline. And when I fall apart (usually right in the middle of doing the next thing) He will tell me it’s okay to cry. He is not uncomfortable with my tears. He is not impatient with my grief.

I just thought you should know. Where I’ve been. Where I am now. What to expect when you click over to this blog. I need to write. I haven’t written much of anything for months, because the circumstances made it hard for words to form on the page. But I need to try. Because I need to remember who I am. Who I was before I was someone’s wife and mother.

It’s going to be messy. I’m probably going to overshare and then delete the next day a few times. I might be goofy one minute, angry the next. I’ll understand if you don’t know what to say, or if it’s too much for you. God willing, someday I will write words of healing from the perspective of one who is healed. To be honest, I’m hoping to find that secret path through this dense wall of grief-tangled vines with every word that I type.

I’d love it if you’d walk a ‘ways with me.

Stand Firm and See

Posted on by Christina Chronister

There’s a prayer in the Old Testament that I find myself praying on the regular these days:

“We don’t know what to do. Our eyes are on You.” (2 Chronicles 20:12)

“I don’t know what to do, God.”
This situation seems to go from bad to worse. This relationship that I have invested my life in is disintegrating before my very eyes. Everything I say, everything I do, only seems to make things worse. I have been brought to the very end of myself. I surrender. I lay it all down. I admit I am powerless.

“My eyes are on You.”
All the fight has gone out of me. I am so very tired. The storm keeps blowing and I don’t feel safe in my little boat. You, Jesus, are my only Hope.

It’s there, in that place of total surrender, that God speaks. His answer to that Old Testament king had three parts. Three steps for every battle I face in this life.

“… Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you…Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged…. the Lord will be with you.’” (2 Chronicles 20:17)

  1. Take up your positions.
    Put on that full armor of God. Figure out who you are and what matters most. Boundaries have to go around something – what is worth protecting at all costs?
  2. Stand Firm.
    “…after you have done everything, stand” – with that belt of Truth buckled tight. There are days when standing looks more like kneeling. More like laying prostrate before my Lord, my face wet with tears. But in my spirit, I am standing on the Rock, the firm foundation that will never ever let me down. The earth may shake, but the ground beneath my feet is solid.
  3. See the deliverance the LORD will give you.
    Keep those eyes on Him. Don’t falter, don’t look away. And don’t confuse my ideas of how things should play out with God’s perfect plans. Sometimes deliverance looks like going into a fiery furnace. Like spending the night in the lion’s den. Those three men who took up a position to honor God at all costs came out of the furnace – without even the smell of smoke on them. And Daniel walked out of that den in the morning “and no injury whatever was found on him, because he believed God.”
    “Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” See the deliverance the LORD will give you.

    Hold on my friends.

    The night is nearly over.

    The day is almost here.

Slow

Posted on by Christina Chronister

“Slow.” Such a nice, quiet word. An invitation to breathe deep, sigh a sigh of release, let go. I light a candle and put on quiet music and sit with my Bible and a calm hush comes over me. In that place of retreat from the chaos of the day, I feel safe and whole and true. And just a little bit smug. Because look at me, so good at being Still and Knowing God and how good am I at this Slow thing? So good.

But there is another Slow and that one I am not on such good terms with. It is the Slow of waiting on God to untangle the knots of relationships and circumstances that hurt.  An ache behind my eyes, a weight on my chest, a lump in my throat that is so constant that I have forgotten what it feels like not to have these ever-present reminders that All is Not Right in my world. It is praying every prayer in every way I can formulate, laying the burdens at His feet, releasing all the things. I trust You, I say and I mean it, I do.

And I don’t.

Because what is the plan? And is there a timeline? How can I know any of my prayers are even being heard? What if nothing ever changes? What then? And now my heart is beating faster, and my prayers are getting too specific, full of my plans and my priorities and how can it not be His will to do what I am asking? I am asking good things with sincere intentions. Thy will be done, I say in a tone that is quickly turning into a tear-filled beg, “Thy will be done – on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

And He turns my eyes back to the pages of my Bible and reminds me how His will is done here on earth. It is Abraham hearing a promise and waiting twenty-five years to see it fulfilled. It is Joseph having a dream of greatness only to find himself dropped in a pit and sold into slavery and thrown into prison, all, somehow, on the way to that dream being realized. It is Habakkuk, asking God for Justice only to learn that God’s ways look nothing like what he imagined and will cost him everything. “Though the fig tree may not blossom, Nor fruit be on the vine… Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.”

Even if I lose everything. Every. Thing. These were not just words for Habakkuk. It was his future and he knew it. And yes God promised that He would make things right but that day most likely did not come while Habakkuk lived on earth. That is a kind of Slow I cannot wrap my head around.

“All these died in faith [guided and sustained by it], without receiving the [tangible fulfillment of God’s] promises, only having seen (anticipated) them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.”

(Hebrews 11:13 amplified)

I don’t belong here. Some days the not-belonging is so strong I can hardly breathe the air in this place. But even that is a gift. A reminder. If I never see my prayers fully answered here, on this shore, all is not lost. And in the waiting, there will be moments of joy. Laughter comes in the midst of tears.  Sun and rain mix together, and a prism of color stops the world in its tracks for a moment, awe overtaking our mindless rushing. His all-surpassing peace comes in the here and now, sometimes in the candle-scented moments, and sometimes in the middle of a storm so loud the candle blows out and the thunder shakes my house. “The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness,” Peter assures us, “… He is patient… not wanting anyone to perish.” God is active. He has a plan. Those relationships that feel so impossible and hopeless? He hasn’t given up on any of them. The darkness is as light to Him. There is purpose in the Slow. I blink back the tears and hold on to the Truth that feels so contrary to what my eyes can see. I accept the invitation to breathe deep and wait for my heart to quiet its rhythm. And I pray. I believe Lord. Help my unbelief.