Chapter 18 (At a deeper level), adapted here as "I give You permission"
I decided to go back to church, "at least for a while." Divorce actions were just over the horizon. I started going to Sunday AM services with a mid-size congregation about 15 minutes from home, slipping out quickly after the last hymn.
Revival week rolled around, and I went every night, directly from work over an hour's commute away.
Divorce was a process looming, a dreaded change whose time had come.
"Best to get it done."
At the end of the Friday night service that week, I saw
no difference from the other evenings that week, except.... I found myself leaning into the pew ahead of me and gripping it, while praying silently: "I can't go back! I am not willing!"
I took a deep breath and to my surprise began to pray: "Lord, You know I want to go forward, and what that means to me" (divorce), "but I give You permission to make me willing to go backward, if that is Your will. I give You permission to work against my will in this." God's will be done sounds noble or good, perhaps, yet is the toughest way to pray in many cases.
I took a deep breath and to my surprise began to pray: "Lord, You know I want to go forward, and what that means to me" (divorce), "but I give You permission to make me willing to go backward, if that is Your will. I give You permission to work against my will in this." God's will be done sounds noble or good, perhaps, yet is the toughest way to pray in many cases.
My hands gripped the pew ahead so tightly that the tension took over my body. I had ceded my will to God. Scary.
"But, surely, He wants me to be happy (divorced), not miserable!," I thought.
"But, surely, He wants me to be happy (divorced), not miserable!," I thought.
(c) 1996; 2004; 2011 Jane Bullard
Jane Bullard (Not All Roads... pen name) lives in Howard County, Maryland, where she and her husband worship at St. John's Episcopal Church in Ellicott City.
Related
- "...Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done"-Luke 22:42 (King James Version).
- Not my will but thine be done\
