another sunday.

It’s Sunday night again.

Tonight feels like a gleam of light in a dark week.

Yesterday I laid in my bed and cried out to God, “I need your help.” 

I am weak and miserable and my heart is so wicked.  I am beset by doubts and temptations I have never faced before.  I am sick with a wracking sinus infection.  I am unable to get along with my husband or go through one hour without exploding at my children.  I stare at my Bible – when I take time to open it – and the words run together and I am distracted and bored.  I get frustrated with my teammates and want to hole up in my apartment to avoid them.  I am irritated with the noise outside and with our dripping kitchen faucet and with having to re-fill our milk pitcher from dirty bags every day.  I am swallowed up with guilt over the poverty that is all around me and over how much we have, and how much it takes to make me happy.  I am questioning a God who would give me so much and them so little.  I am scared.  Scared of all the unknowns in our future.  Scared of growing hard-hearted and cynical and away from God and my husband in these trials.

I didn’t have the energy to voice all of these things to my Father last night; I just told him that I really, really need help.

And then, today was different.  Subtly so, at the beginning, but still different.

I awoke with a throbbing headache and couldn’t even get out of bed.

So David took Amelie to an English-speaking church in our neighborhood this morning, and Judah stayed with me, “to keep you company, Mommy.”  I laid on the couch and read books to Judah and prayed for David’s time, that it would be energizing and nourishing in some way.  And he came back home at noon with a spring in his step.  He was fed there.  God heard my prayer.

Today was still up and down, but it felt a little more up somehow.  A few less harsh words spoken.  A little more peace in our home.

Tonight, after we put the kids to bed, David and I settled down in the living room and listened to a Tim Keller sermon that Maggie recommended.

And that was when things started to really change, almost palpably in the air around us.  That was when I realized our biggest problem: we are starving.

It has snuck up on me here, this spiritual drought.  We were warned of course.  But we have taken responsibility for our spiritual nourishment before; I felt confident we could do it again.

What I didn’t take into account is that things are different here.  We are so much more isolated.  Everything – the loneliness, the stress, the discouragement, the temptation – is so intense, in a way I can’t put into words.  I told David once that on my worst days I feel like we are in exile, so far from what we know and love.

Last night, laying in bed, David said,  “I feel like our marriage is under attack.”

Normally I shrug off comments about spiritual warfare, but last night I listened.  And I agreed. 

So – even though we had been angry at each other two minutes before – we held hands and he prayed for us, out loud there in the dark.  I am ashamed to say that I can count on one hand the times we’ve done that together before bed since we moved here.

Anyway, back to tonight.  Keller’s sermon was on the end of Romans 8, about the love of God.

I have been doing a lot of striving this week.  Mostly I have been dismayed at this new South Asia me and all the sin my heart is capable of.  I am moment-by-moment aware that I’m failing in all these areas of my life – as a wife, as a mother, as a friend, as a missionary, as a child of God.  Not failing in that the laundry isn’t done or dinner isn’t on the table  – failing in the real, terrible sense of not speaking kindly and not showing compassion and not serving the people around me with a joyful heart.  Failing in the things that matter most.

You’d think after a week like that, what I need is for God to hit me over the head with his holiness so I will start to be convicted and start to get serious about obeying him.

But no.  That is not his way.

He wanted, instead, through this downloaded sermon tonight, to tell me about his love for me.  To tell me that absolutely nothing – not the worst sin my heart is capable of, not two months full of more failing days than succeeding ones – can separate me from his dogged, faithful love.  To tell me that he loves me, not because I am spiritual or smart or humble, but just because he chose to.  To tell me that, if Christ, when bomb upon bomb from the enemy was rained down on him, amidst jeers and rejection and agonizing pain, chose to stay there on the cross for me, then absolutely nothing will keep him from loving me now.  Who will, no matter what, keep me near, keep me facing him.   All of the evil inside me and all the evil outside of me cannot separate me from Him.

Last night, Tim Keller said, “This is the love you’ve been looking for all your life.” 

And my heart leapt.

“Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect?  It is God who justifies.  Who is to condemn?  Christ Jesus is the one who died – more than that, who was raised – who is at the right hand of God, who is interceding for us.  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? …  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”