Someone
has been on my mind this day, and I find myself near to tears, in
longing, in knowing I do not deserve, in a surprising willingness to
wait. Regrading them, I now have no excuse. I must simply wait, and
pray both for myself and, as an intercessor, for her. No longer can I
cry out that no one has ever fit the mold formed by the pieces of
information God has given me over the years regarding the one whom He
would give me as my wife. As unexpected, and unthinkable, and
unfathomable as it is, there is, now, one female who fits every part
of that mold.
There
is one.
I
must not look for another. I must not seek for another. I must not
accept another (except she also fit that same mold, which I severely
doubt will ever again happen, anyway, genuine women of faith being so
very few and far between).
There
is one.
When
God told me, “She is in your life—right
now.” I had already been in the same place with her and her family
on at least one occasion and, I suspect, many more. When I was, at
that same time, given the impression that she would not stay but
would leave my life to return later, that also fits, because I left
the churches wherein I had been in their presence, until later, when
we both converged on the same congregation and became friends.
There
is one.
The
mark that God told me He had placed on me that would do me great harm
will never be removed from me, except that it be removed from the
heart of one special lady who would return to me in repentant Love.
When I placed that gift back on that altar, knowing it was her, yet
not understanding, she began to lose her faith, but, months later,
returned to me to repent (knowing nothing of this), and found herself
loved.
There
is only one woman who has EVER displayed repentance to
me whom I could have even mistake as being eligible by the mold—and
it was so stunning when I awakened to the realization of it. It was
so unexpected, so unthinkable, and so unfathomable, that I could
never have come up with it myself. I do remember a time, years ago,
when we took a ride together in my van, after dark. I had to go
somewhere to get something and return to where I was, and she decided
to ask to come with me—and
I was so disturbed by the energy that I felt in that van that I
pressed up against the
driver door and actually
avoided her for quite some time.
SHE
WAS ONLY A CHILD!!
She
is no longer a child, but a young adult who has my love and respect.
I must respect her freedom, so I must wait, and hope, and pray, that,
in her freedom in Christ, she will choose me. If not, I have no loss,
for I have Christ.
Oh!
Convince me, Lord! Convince my wailing heart! I feel as if I have
lost so many friends; as if everything is being shorn away! But I
will trust in Thee! Amen!
I
do not normally take so
much space for one journal entry. If you have been faithful to read,
even after our schism, then you know this to be true.
I,
you see, have been battling this all day—whether
or not to publish this entry as a blog post.
It is so exposing!
Reactions could be so severe. I do not so much fear consequences to
me. I have Christ, and nothing can tear that away from me. But what
of others? What of the
consequences to them—to
those I hold so dear? What right have I to expose them?
Let
me, at least reiterate the particulars of this situation, and at
least make an effort to put them in proper order.
I
had been a Christian for a short time. It was in the warm months that
I found myself in a park near the church where I was attending,
praying for a wife. Wanting to place my prayers “on the altar”,
so to speak, I was devastated when God told me, “Lay
it aside!” not
allowing me to do as I had wanted to do.
As
a Christian, I have always been a single man, wanting to be married.
It has been a long, solo, sojourn.
Later,
I was working at my job, paying attention only to my duties when, out
of the blue, “She is
in your life, right now!”
was accompanied by the impression, very clear, that she would not
stay in my life, but would leave, to return later. It was later
revealed to me that a mark had been placed on me that would cause me
great harm, causing women to fear me, and slander me and commit all
manner of wickedness against me—all
because of that mark—but
that the mark would be removed from the heart of one special lady,
who would return to me in repentant love. Mark that well: She would
leave to return later, and would be returning to me in repentant
love.
My
ensuing attentiveness left me so frustrated and embittered against
women—all
women who had done me such wickedness and evil, all
while claiming to be Christian—that
at times I would rail against the very thought of it. The wickedness
and evil of their unrepentant hearts was being exposed at my expense,
and I wanted no more of it.
And
the hatred fostered by my wounded heart boiled within.
Then
one day, quite unexpectedly and
exceedingly undeservedly,
a nine
year old girl befriended me, and
I began to heal. We have not ceased to be friends (I hope), but we
have not seen each other regularly in quite some long time, and, so
far as I know,
she has never had reason to repent, at least as far as coming to me,
that is, and I
would hold nothing against her if she did.
Within
the last, oh, year and a half, I guess, though, her younger sister
(the van rider) and I picked back
up our old friendship and began to correspond.
It
was then in October 2014 that I was pointedly asked, in the spirit,
“Will you accept or
reject My gift?”
Needless to say, I was quite thrown by that, and it left me in an
utter state of confusion, so I began to pray and to ponder and to
meditate, and the nature of the gift being referred to began to
become less muddy. It became clear that
the gift was not a what, but a who, and I began, then, and finally
formalizing it at the turn of the year, picturing myself once more
before that altar where I had been rejected all those years ago.
This
time, though, I was holding a magnificent gift in my hands, and
facing the altar. Over the months of seeking truth, I had come to a
conclusion as to what the safest course would be; one that would not
offend my Lord, and would not leave me running down errant rabbit
trails of loneliness-induced desires.
I
placed that gift on the altar, and, my entire being (body, soul,
spirit, and mind) shaking more severely than a fully loosed San
Andreas, backed away, fervently desiring to be given the gift back.
It
was some months later that I discovered, my own struggles being
completely unknown to her, that
as I placed that gift
back on that altar, the subject of the gift began to lose her faith.
She,
then, did something remarkable and, to my experience, completely and
totally unique: she turned to me to confess her faith struggles, and
I was granted the grace to be able to counsel her back into her
faith. Then, after that, on April 6th,
I, still in my own struggles, took a step of faith and wrote a hymn
thanking my God for the gift that I have not yet received.
On
June 26th,
in an email from someone blindly trying to counsel me, three words
were spiritually echoed: “Wait
for her!” which
command still reigns supreme.
So
great has been my struggle that at one point, while I was raging in
my spirit against the confusion that still rose within, thinking that
I was waiting for someone who needs (and STILL
needs) to come to me in repentance over what she had done to me, my
Lord and Savior spoke into my spirit, these words, which started a
river wide torrent of tears from within me, begging forgiveness for
my stupidity and blindness, “I
never said that she
would harm you, but that the mark
would harm you,” the
blind counselor remaking at its convenience, having never accepted
the fact that this was nothing that I had sought or conceived, much
less desired.
Then,
still knowing nothing at all of my struggles, nine months following
the question, “Will
you accept or reject my gift?”,
on the seventh day of the seventh month of the fourteenth year of my
solo sojourn, I opened an email to discover a recording of the
subject of the gift singing her
own music and arrangement—with
powerful, strident emotion—of
the very hymn that I had
written to God, thanking Him for the gift which I have not yet
received.
Since
then, my world has blown up in my face, but I hold to God, for
Satan cannot defeat this, except by driving wicked, evil, unrepentant
women to return to me in repentant love. Ponder
that. And ponder this:
For
we know that all things work together for good for those who love
God, who are called according to His purpose.
Amen!
May it ever be!
