A Hard Post

I've started reading a new book.

Marsha sent it to me. Marsha is the best kind of friend, because she is funny, witty, and sweet, but most of all, because she cares about my soul. She spurs me on!

So, I started reading Beautiful In God's Eyes by Elizabeth George. It is an in depth study of the Proverbs 31 woman.

I just started it this morning, and already I'm convicted. I'm challenged. My thoughts are provoked.

Before I started reading it, I did just what Mrs. George suggested the reader do: I prayed that God would open my eyes to the truths in the book that I needed to see. I prayed that He would soften my heart. I prayed that He would forgive me for being hard and stubborn and lax.

Allow me to digress.....

My attitude and lack of vigilance had gotten so bad that it culminated in a huge fight with my husband the other night, in which I threw my cell phone across the room, cussed at my husband, and though he stood in front of the door and forbade me to leave, I did anyway......

I tore down everything that God had done in my heart in the past three years in one fell swoop. I dishonored my husband, deeply hurt him, and shamed myself in the process. I became as rottenness to his bones.......In that one short moment, I became contention. My heart was full of rage, selfishness, and wrath, and it all came spewing out, all over my gentle and unsuspecting husband.

My heart still hurts just thinking about it!

I had allowed myself to get indolent and insouciant.

And when I stormed out of the house, God did not allow me to go alone. Nope. He went with me. Our God is like that. There is no place on earth that I can go to get away from His love. Not up to the farthest reaches of the heavens. Not even to the darkest depths of the sea.

As I pulled into Janie's Place, I got out of the car and crumpled on the grass, close to her. It's peaceful and beautiful there and the Lord has met me there so many times.

I didn't cry. My heart was too dry and shriveled for that. But I did pray. I asked God to please forgive me and to take me out of the dry, barren place I was in.

I didn't want to come home. I felt that I had destroyed the peace of our home. I felt I had soiled the holiness that dwells here and didn't deserve to enter into my husband's home.

I did come home, but I sat out in the van. I was so ashamed and embarrassed and the knowing that I had made my husband ashamed was nearly my undoing.

I got out of the van and sat on one of the chairs on our front porch. I was just to scared and too abashed to go in.

After a while my husband came out and I couldn't even look at him.

In the end, everything was put to rights. My husband forgave me and when I told him I was not good enough to share his bed and that I would sleep on the couch, he wouldn't hear of it.

He invited me back in. He gathered me up and in that moment, he put my heart back together.

Doesn't that sound just like our God??

It took me about two days to get over what I had done.

Since then, I realized all of my anger had nothing to do with my husband. I realized the reasons why I was upset and hurt, and yes, even so mad at God.

Through the preaching of S.M Davis, I had a revelation. I saw that I didn't understand why God had done the things that He has done to me. I wasn't okay with the fact that He can because He is sovereign.

That was a major a-ha! moment for me.

So, this book has come to me at just the right time. The Lord has once again tenderized my heart and is bringing me out of this hard and parched place that was of my own making.

Would you yourself be brave enough to get the book and allow God to shake up your heart again?