What does God want from me--and for me?

Denial is part of the human experience. We do not want to believe so we seek every means to not believe.

I did not want to believe that divorce proceedings could be any part of my future so I refused to consider them for many months longer than the first time such a thing was demanded of me. This in spite of the fact that it was my husband making the demand and that since 2002 the single most prevalent lesson and message the LORD had been working on me with was submission: to Him and to my husband and to my pastor and to my boss and to my circumstances.

Let me say right now that submission is not obedience because it is so much more than obedience that I cannot even try to explain it in this post. I have not figured it all out myself yet. But at one time I thought submission was simple obedience. I thought it was some kind of rating or ranking that established the one who submitted as less: less valuable, less important, less worthy, less intelligent -- or make your own "less". But I was wrong. Submission is more like an exercise program; or a theory of management than a simple action.

I must submit to a hurricane, but does that submission mean the hurricane is "better" than me? No, certainly not. But God has established submission as within the way that He teaches us and within the creation He has designed. I have come to believe that if a person cannot submit such a person cannot walk with God or have the life or the end that God would wish for him or her.

My personal battle with submission was highlighted in the relationship with my husband, but submission to any authority was not something that rested easily on me. I remember the very night I finally broke through that stronghold and submitted, crying and broken, before the LORD accepting and confessing that I wanted Him so much that I would bow, I would submit to whatever He brought before me.

Of course, I'm still learning ways that require or demand submission that I never thought of in my simple linear thinking, but submitting to that learning, to inviting that experience and that teaching came in that long ago "one night".

That night, broken and submitting, He took me right to the Book of John where Mary is sobbing and broken, lost and bereft with the "gardner" before her. "They have taken my Master and I don't know where He is. If you know where they have taken Him, tell me, and I will go to Him."

I felt just like that! My Heavenly Father, Abba, He Who told me to get to know His Son and I would avoid so much of life's trouble, He Who my whole life had lifted me up, regarded me as a princess, treated me as His most precious child, yes even spoiled me! -- through His Word, through His Son, had now told me that He always intended I should submit to my husband--submit to some man!

How could this be? Was it true then? Was I really just some second-class citizen? Or second-class subject? Had I fooled myself for most of my life that I was special in the eyes of the LORD? -- They have taken my Master and I don't know where to find Him -- I am lost now, broken, and confused...

O yeah, as I read Mary's words in John I knew exactly where she was standing, exactly how bereft and lost and confused she felt in that moment. And when I read Jesus saying, "Mary!" I heard, "Melanie!"

And I didn't hear some elegant, deep, Hollywood timbre; I heard a husband's amused exasperation.

His woman crying and sobbing and truly upset, but He knows everything is fine and adores her and will never let anything stand that brings her grief, AND SHE KNOWS THIS, and right now he REALLY has to get out the door, but he loves her and thinks she's is marvelous, but right now she has to stop and be good and let him go.

All of that in one saying of my name. "Melanie!"

I was sitting in that chair, sniffling and crying and reading, and when I read, "Mary!" and heard, "Melanie!" and heard it with that amused, loving, exasperated tone of voice, my head shot up like He was standing in front of me, too.

And I knew, I had to accept submission with all its ugly connotations because that was the way I perceived it and submission requires that you accept the sovereignty of God in all things. But I also knew in my spirit that submission was NOT as I believed it to be. It was as though Jesus said, "NOW would you like to learn about submission as I conceived it?"

It was like scales came off my eyes when I heard Him say my name and say it in that tone of voice. Here was my Jesus, on His way to our Father (to finish the ritual, taking His Blood to sprinkle it on the altar of God if I have the Old Testament teaching correct) and He stopped and wouldn't go on as long as this beloved woman of His was crying and broken hearted and bereft without Him? On His way out the door to work indeed!

No, I had submission all wrong. There was more to it than I perceived because Father and Son LOVED ME with all and every part of their/His being.

There was no one on the earth or in heaven or in all of creation that God loved more than He loved me; no one He cherished or adored more. He would die for me. He would descend into hell for me. He would accomplish everything for me. O yes, there was something more to submission than what I was perceiving; and it was awesome and it was a key to understanding everything.

Jesus said to the disciples with Thomas that those who saw and believed were blessed but blessed were those who did not see and yet believed. That describes me then, and now, in my attitude towards submission. I do not really "see" even now, and I stumble and even doubt over submission at times, but I believe all the same.

I remember studying the third chapter of Genesis for several weeks. Everytime I would think I had everything those Scriptures could possible teach me, it was as though the LORD would scoop me up and take me to another another vantage point (higher or lower, to the left or right) and the lessons would start all over again from this new perspective.

These years of learning submission have been taught and received in the same fashion. Granting my husband the divorce he demanded I file is simply the latest and most confusing in that curriculum.

It is difficult and it is confusing in some ways. But in my faith and belief it is crystal clear.

Proverbs 20: 5 says, Knowing what is right is like deep water in the heart; a wise person draws from the well within. I know deep within my heart as well as from my experience that while short-run submission bears a cost of discomfort, in the long-run not once has obeying the LORD and submitting where He has taught submission EVER brought anything but good to me.

So what does God want from me -- and for me?

He wants submission from me so that He can provide good for me. And I want that, too. It is good to be in agreement with the LORD, however to the contrary the circumstances may appear.