Wills Be Undone

I think we can all recall a moment, or several, that shifted the core of what we believe. I have had a few myself, but I remember this one clear as day.

Eight years ago, I stood in my friend's kitchen bent over mangled Chick-Fil-A bags strewn across the counter. She thoughtfully asked how I was hanging in during one of Ryan's many chemo weeks. Waiting for the words to find me, I stared at the half eaten kids meals with my nerves feeling equally chewed up and spit out. As I gradually explained the daily challenges, I concluded with a thought I didn't want to admit having.

"I never wanted this kind of story and I don't know what I did, or what turn I took for this to be our lot."

She stared blankly at me for a moment, as if she saw the same admitted flaw in my statement as I did. I shrunk as my friend delivered a truth I desperately needed to hear.

"You didn't do anything for this to be your lot, Renee, and it's a broken theology to even entertain the idea that God will keep you safe from something that will make you more and more like Him."

While she continued to explain the flaws of the western church and the prosperity gospel it spoon feeds us, I fell silent as conviction washed over me. Like Christa Black Gifford said, I had lowered my theology to match my pain, and I had already begun making it an idol. It was in that moment I realized that the confusion in our circumstances surpassing the threshold of God's good sacrifice was a much steeper price to pay than crumpling up my plans and starting from square one with the original author (Phil. 3:7-8).

"This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins...And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgement: In this world we are like Jesus." 1 John 4:10,16-17

If this passage is true, I can believe with unwavering confidence that God loves me, not because of anything I am or anything I have done, but because of who He is. I am not the object of my faith, nor the end of the Gospel. God is. The kingdom result is that my hurt, as real as it may be, will never have the final say.

We have spent countless late nights with our dudes consoling big fears and doubts. It's beautiful, it's necessary, and it's exhausting. This week we tucked them in and left their room with heavy hearts. To cut through, I promptly cracked an inappropriate joke and Ryan's big, handsome smile only reached half of his face. Stunned, I realized that I was watching facial palsy barge into the picture. For someone who rarely has big facial expressions anymore, he stared back at me with his eyes lit up and relief in his voice, "Babe, heaven looks so good right now."

Yes. Yes, it does.

"When we are powerless to do a thing, it is a great joy when we can come and step inside the ability of Jesus." -Corrie Ten Boom

Our problems are quite literally growing. There may be unknowns bigger than any question we could think to ask. There may be fears too enormous to borrow, and doubts too crippling to wade through. But the Joy set before us wouldn't be as joyful as Ryan expressed, if our wills and consequent idols weren't also being meticulously unraveled.

Tonight I sit in this wake, facing an excruciating test of courage; Ryan's health is slipping out of our control. Though none of my doubts are in my Savior, "courageous" is the farthest from what I feel. Yet, according to His word, I'm enabled. Enabled to trust His ending enough to venture a little deeper into what lies between.

Copyright 2022->Renee Sunberg