The Choice

Usually I write about the mostly gentle happenings of my daily life. This has value. It reminds me of the blessings of my life. It also is a good break from all the crazy happenings in the world. “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” (The Hobbit) I do wish at times I could write about the deeper things that happen. I’ve sometimes tried, but I don’t have the words to adequately tell my story. I trust that if God ever wants my story told, He can enable me to do so. Meanwhile, EJ and I tell snippets to help people who are going through difficulties. Here are a few snippets for you. It’s only a brief skimming of a story, like stones skipping on a lake.

What would you choose if one day Christ offered you a choice between

1. Having all your dreams come true but knowing Him in only a shallow way
or
2. Getting to know Him deeply but only by going through deep suffering

Years ago, God offered that choice to me in a very real and vivid way, but I think we are all offered that same choice. Those who don’t know Him are repeatedly invited to come (Isaiah 55:6-7). Those who do know Him are told “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matt. 16:24)

The choice you makes will affect what you pursue and what you gain–or forfeit. Do you want wealth? Influence? Fame? A great job? A beautiful home? You will seek opportunities and make choices that will give those things to you. The things you don’t choose will fade by the wayside.

So what choice did I make those many years ago?

The impulse would have been to immediately exclaim, “I will go even to the death with You, Lord!” However, I paused and thought about it for several days because I thought that I shouldn’t make such a choice quickly or flippantly. I should count the cost and decide if I really was prepared to pay the price. After careful thought, I decided that all my dearest dreams-come-true would be nightmares if Christ wasn’t there. I told Him that I chose to trust Him through suffering so I could know Him deeply.

I wasn’t fully prepared for what happened next. Right after I made that choice–I kid you not–my life fell completely apart.

I had deeply loved my family and I was very close to my Mom. My parents had both told me that they thought EJ was “pure gold.” But after I told Christ my choice was to know Him, my Mom suddenly offered me a different choice: Choose her or EJ. I felt caught in a tug-of-war. I told her that I loved both her and EJ but if she made me choose, I’d choose EJ. Not because I didn’t love her–because I loved her deeply–but because I didn’t think it was right for her to force that sort of choice on me. She had once told me that she and my Dad had discussed their belief that I would do absolutely anything for them, but they would never be able to force me to do anything that I believed was wrong. I think that is true. I wished she had remembered that. I believe that in healthy relationships, children don’t stop loving/respecting parents when they become adults, but the relationship changes. As the Bible says, a couple becomes one flesh and must leave their father and mother and cleave to each other when they marry.

Before, my Mother had called me “the Caring One,” “What a Christian should be like,” and other similar labels. But when I refused to submit (I was 28 years old), my Mom turned mean. She told me that I was “a daughter from Hell, the worst daughter a mother could have” and “the worst Christian she had ever seen.” She refused to help me plan my wedding and wore black to my wedding. We invited just immediate family only because we didn’t know if any of my family would even show up. We prepared in case my dad refused to walk me down the aisle. Our pastor told us that in his 30 years of ministry, he’d never encountered a family as horrible as mine.

My Mom lied about me and turned all my family against me. For 20+ years EJ and I tried to reconcile with her and the others in the family without surrendering our personal freedom. But my Mom told me everything was my fault alone and I was the one who needed to bear the burden of reconciliation–which I understood meant that she would judge when I had done enough to prove my love for her and had sufficiently earned her forgiveness. Later she said that she considered all my efforts to reconcile to be a mere drop in a tea cup and no matter how hard I tried, she’d never forgive me. Years later I was disinherited when my parents died.

As bad as my family is, EJ says his family is worse. My family was covertly abusive. His family was overtly abusive. My family engaged in jealousy and hatred. His family is self-righteous bullies. His siblings tried to force us to have contact with a brother who was, at the very least, a manipulative scoundrel and (according to 4-5 abuse experts we talked to) very likely a pedophile who tried to victim-groom our son. When I refused to give the brother access to our lives, the whole family (except for one sister) verbally abused me in the family FB group . (EJ was at work when they attacked so I was the one directly dealing with them at first.)

Abuse is like a black hole. An abuser sucks in others–family, friends, church, even co-workers, etc.–to help isolate and destroy a victim. Helena Knowlton, an abuse advocate, explains it accurately:

“This evil dismantling of our inner self is the result of systematic brainwashing…There’s no one outside of us that’s confirming our experience. We go to friends, pastors, even counselors, and are told the same thing our abuser is telling us– we’re over-sensitive, it’s a communication problem, we’re being too critical, it’s our fault. Nobody wants to believe that a seemingly normal person “would want to destroy the persona of his [victim]. Everyone around us is confirming the brainwashing. We are being gaslighted by our whole world.“

Besides the insults mentioned above, I have been told by various relatives on both sides of the family–and some friends–such things that I shouldn’t write. If I do write, I should write what they want me to or my writings should be kept private. They disapprove of what I wrote on FB. I’ve been told that nothing I do matters. I’ve been accused of being a hypocrite and a Pharisee. I’m unChristlike, without grace, without love, and disloyal to family. I am not worth the air I breathe. “Are you going to commit suicide?” I should accept their abusive brother who was victim-grooming our son because he is a TRUE member of the family. Everything is my fault. The burden of reconciliation rests on me. I will never be forgiven. I dishonor myself, my family, and my God (said one friend) because I refuse to submit to abuse.

EJ and I have suffered abuse/betrayals from people we loved and trusted. This involves lies, false accusations, insults, rejection, shunning, deep wounding. anguish. We have also experienced other difficulties such as chronic health issues: EJ with his back pain, JJ with cancer, and me with several years of chronic sinus infections, a couple bouts of mono, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I struggled to get pregnant, had a miscarriage, and two months later got pregnant with JJ and almost miscarried him. I had to be bedridden most of the pregnancy, had a difficult labor, and JJ almost died. I hemorrhaged and almost died a week later; our moms fought over infant JJ in the waiting room while the medical staff tried to save my life. We’ve had financial difficulties. No matter how much we try to save, some problem always wipes us out. EJ suffered at his job downstate, which was a difficult place to work. In addition, we’ve had a stream of other problems: leaky roofs, vehicles that needed replacement. On and on and on, one problem after another after another, year after year.

I’m not writing this to complain. This is merely context. My willingness to accept suffering in order to know Christ deeply has resulted in the following:

We’ve experienced miracles many times. Here are a few:

EJ has always been a faithful, hardworking, and skilled CNC machinist, but his company downstate once hired a new supervisor who immediately hired his own friend to take EJ’s job. He demoted EJ to the assembly line. We were friends with the replacement’s wife and knew the guy was extremely abusive to his family so it was difficult to endure. EJ prayed for help: that supervisor was fired and his friend left.

There was a time when that same company offered employees a choice: They could choose to be laid off or they could continue working with a 35% paycut. Most employees chose the layoff and they thought EJ was foolish to continue working, but most were never called back. EJ had to work a lot of overtime, which helped us through financially. Still, during that time, our roof leaked, our two vehicles both died, and our furnace quit working. We couldn’t afford to fix anything. We desperately called out to God for help. Several guys from our church fixed the roof for only the savings that we had in the bank. (How did they know??) Friends lent us a vehicle. We heated our house with our woodstove. One winter day JJ and I went out to the garage to bring more firewood into the house. We had only enough–maybe–to get through that day. Little JJ said, “Mom, we are almost out of wood. What are we going to do?” “Don’t worry,” I said. “God will provide.” About an hour later, JJ came running into the kitchen where I was fixing lunch. “Mom! Mom! God brought the wood!” I looked outside. There was an unhitched trailer sitting out there filled with firewood. I didn’t even see who left it. Months later EJ was restored to his full pay AND the company, for some reason, also reimbursed him for back pay. This company was not usually that generous. EJ was such an encouragement to the co-workers at that company, that even nonChristians often asked him to pray for them. Quite a few people quit after EJ left.

After JJ’s battle with cancer, we were all completely exhausted. I told God that I didn’t know if we’d make it if He didn’t give us a fresh start in a new place. Within the month EJ had a job up here in the north and started looking for a house for us. We made a list of characteristics that we longed for in a house/property but didn’t think we’d find. God gave us everything on our list and much more. We shouldn’t have been able to afford our house on five beautifully wooded acres but no one wanted it because the driveway was terribly eroded. (A few years later our neighbor told us he really wanted to buy it but his wife took one look at the driveway and said “Absolutely not!”) We worked very hard and were able to fix the erosion. It took multiple dump truck loads of gravel and stone to fill the deep gullies, plus building little rock dams and planting plants to hold the sandy soil in place. The gravel guy who brought the first load asked how we were going to spread out the gravel. “With a wheelbarrow, shovels, rakes,” I said. He felt my arm (for muscles) and shook his head in disbelief. Ha! But we did it!

One time I reworked our budget then told EJ that if we were very, very careful with our finances, if we pinched every penny till it cried out, we could just barely squeak by. We would have about $20 left after paying bills each week to make it to the next paycheck. Then something went wrong again. We had another necessity that we had to make payments for. Desperate, we asked God for help. “I don’t understand it,” I said later. “We could barely make it before. Now we have another payment. We shouldn’t be making it, yet we pay every expense and still have more than enough left over–even more than before. God is definitely helping us.”

In late 2017, EJ’s doctor talked him into getting a flu shot. Afterwards he suffered heart problems, shaking hands, and mental confusion. He told his company that he didn’t think he could do the current job that he was on, which was very physical. He expected them to move him to an easier job. Instead they let him go. HOWEVER, they paid his wages and health insurance for the remaining two months of the year. This was unheard of.

After several months of dealing with his health problems, EJ got hired by his current company. Although the pay is less, the company is very compassionate and generous. The owner’s wife, who also worked there, had previously been a nurse. A couple years ago she recognized that EJ had the symptoms of a stroke so she immediately drove him to the hospital. I had no way to get there since we had only one vehicle. She called her MOTHER, who drove 45 minutes to pick me up and take me back to the company so I could get our truck and drive to the hospital. During his lunch hour today, EJ texted me that the owner of the company told him that they’d miss him and that he can come back next year if he wants.

Over and over we have had things like this happen. Provision that is out of the ordinary, that helps us through. Sometimes I feel like the widow in 1 Kings 17. When Elijah asked her to give him bread, she said, ‘“I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.” He told her not to be afraid. “The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.” She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah.

That is why I think God is providing for us yet again in helping us get a new roof.

Here are some of the results of us choosing Christ:

Abuse set us free from abusive family. That’s huge. God was (and is) our shield and defending who delivered us from the hand of the wicked. We were pulled out, rescued.

Abuse drove me/us to rely on God. There were times when I cried, ” I made this choice to follow You, Father, and I do not take it back. But I do not think I am strong enough to endure this suffering. I cannot endure more. So even if I cannot hang on to You, please, please do not let me go. You hang on to me.” And He did.

Abuse drove me into God’s Word as I struggled with deep questions: What does it mean to love enemies? What really is love? Does it mean doing whatever an abusive person wants? What is true forgiveness? If we are to forgive as Christ does–how does HE actually forgive? What is repentance? Do we forgive the unrepentant? How does God view and deal with the wicked? Father, I don’t know who I am: Am I really who family tells me I am? Is the abuse, the problems, the result of something wrong that I’ve done? When everyone else betrays, rejects, and proves unfaithful, are YOU steadfast and faithful? Or do You turn from me in disgust? How do YOU see me?

“I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me.” (Psalm 119:102)

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. (John 15:18-20)

“A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household…Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.  Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. (Matt 10:37-39)

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26) [I believe this means that Christ is to be more important, more vital, and of higher priority than family. If given a choice between God and family, choose God.]

Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me. (Ps 27:10)

Listen, daughter, and pay careful attention:
    Forget your people and your father’s house.
Let the king be enthralled by your beauty;
    honor him, for he is your lord. Ps 45:10-11

Abuse, problems…they have all driven me to God. “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you” (Ps 73:25). They have taught me valuable lessons. They have shown me who He is and who I am. They have deepened my faith. They have deepened my relationship with Him.

Pressed out of measure and pressed to all length.
Pressed so intensely it seems beyond strength;
Pressed in the body and pressed in the soul,
Pressed in the mind till the dark surges roll;
Pressed by foes, and pressured by friends;
Pressure on pressure, till life nearly ends;
Pressed into loving the staff and the rod,
Pressed into knowing no helper but God;
Pressed into liberty where nothing clings,
Pressed into faith for impossible things;
Pressed into living a life for the Lord,
Pressed into living a Christ-life outpoured.
~ Annie Johnson Flint

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 tread on the heights.
(Habakkuk 3:17-19)

Here’s one more miraculous thing:

I love to write, but I cannot write poetry. Yet, about 20-25 years ago, I wrote poems that poured out of me. It lasted for about a year and then the ability suddenly ceased. EJ and I believe that God gave the poems to me. “The Well of the God Who Sees Me” is one of those poems. A couple weeks ago, my poem was transformed into a song. I am not musical. I believe God used AI to help me write the song. Since I believe it came from God, I gave it back to Him to use in any way He wants. Maybe He will use it in a huge way to help others. (EJ said he shared it with a co-worker who got all choked up when he heard it.) But it will be enough for me even if God just uses it to minister to EJ and me. When I listen to it, I often cry because I’ve lived through the things the song describes: I have been afraid God would see my failures and reject me. I have felt heartache, sorrow, anguish, enemies, lost, wounded. I’ve also experienced the God Who Sees Me with grace, mercy, compassion, love, tenderness, and celebration. I echo Hagar who in Genesis 16:13: “…gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me, for’ she said, ‘I have now seen the One who sees me.‘”

Despite the hardship, I’d make the same choice today that I made long ago…because I’d rather have Jesus than anything.