"What shall we eat in the seventh year?" - My Testimony

My friend wrote a beautiful blog post recently about a gem she found in Leviticus 25. God commanded that the promised land itself be given a Sabbath every seven years, when the people would not be allowed to sow, reap, or even gather what grows of itself. Just take a moment to ponder the implications! No food in the seventh year, but then no food in the eighth year either, because they wouldn’t have sown in the seventh, and then after sowing in the eighth, still no food until the harvest in the ninth year! But as my friend pointed out, Leviticus 25:21 also tells us that God had a plan: He promised such blessings in the sixth year that the land would produce a crop sufficient for three years! As my friend pointed out, God always prepares the way. I’d like to share from my own life how I have seen this principle at work.

Two and a half years ago, I went through the most earth-shattering experience of my life. My husband of 20 years, pastor for the last 10, was arrested because he had attempted to solicit a prostitute who turned out to be an undercover cop. I found out about it—and the church where he was pastoring found out about it—and the internet found out about it—all in the same dreadful weekend. Life was turned upside down in an instant, and ugly truths kept tumbling out; it turned out that the incident that had prompted the arrest was only part of a decades-long pattern of deception and bondage. He was forced to step down as pastor (thank God!) and we embarked on the path towards separation and now divorce.

As you can imagine, I felt much like the Israelites must have felt, wondering, “What shall I eat?” and so many other questions. I cannot possibly overstate the anxiety of those first months. And yet, God met every need. I soon realized that He had prepared the way before me, putting safety nets in place that He knew I would need, so they were there when I needed them the most.

First, several months before the arrest, my clinician at my holistic health center retired in order to become a foster mother. Since I have a history of health issues that forced me into a wheelchair at one point, it’s important for me to take care of my body, and so when they considered passing my case to a brand new clinician, I asked if someone with more experience was available. The senior clinician looked at my file, said that she had tools in her arsenal that could help me greatly, and promised to take my case at the billing rate of my previous clinician, even though it was half her normal fee! Indeed, my health improved in leaps and bounds under her care, and that was important since I would be shoveling snow and performing a myriad of other new physical tasks due to the separation. What a contrast, considering that I had previously not been able to walk across a room without leaning my weight on my husband’s hands!

Secondly, several months before the arrest, an old friend had said that God had laid it on her heart to pray for me. She said that her children were growing and becoming more independent in their homeschooling, and she wanted to spend an hour each week just talking on the phone and praying for one another. When the catastrophe hit, prayer time with her was a lifeline already built into our schedules!

Thirdly, several months before the arrest, I had begun to receive counseling from a Christian counselor. I had shared with my best friend some recent flashbacks to incidents that had occurred 18 years previously, and she had insisted that I set up time with the counselor, and that she would foot the bill! (We were living like paupers because all of our family finances were going towards strip clubs at the time, only I didn’t know it. I thought we were “suffering” for the sake of the Gospel!) So when the catastrophe hit, my regular counseling appointments simply shifted focus into triage mode, dealing with the issues I was facing during my transitions.

The last way in which the Lord prepared the way before me was the most unexpected, because on first appearance, it looked like death to me: six months before the arrest, I was uprooted from my hometown of 40 years, my family, my friends, my doctors, my church, my homeschooling community (and passionate calling), my support systems…all because my husband insisted on taking a pastoral job in a town two hours away, even though the children and I privately begged and pleaded against it. After the forced move, I felt abandoned by God. It was the darkest spiritual time of my life. And yet, what looked like death was actually God preparing the soil for new life. In fact, the place of my pain has become the place of my blessing. York (my new hometown) is where God provided networks and resources that would be vitally important to sustain the children and me in our new life, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Living in York is part of how we keep afloat financially (well, almost) and still homeschool; we live in York where the expenses are lower and I work in Philly where the income is higher. York is where I met my pastor, an insightful counselor who has a huge heart for abused women (into which category I hadn’t realized I fit), and an entire church that cares for the widow and the orphan in such practical ways. Since this church has a heart for expanding ministry to other women like me, I hope to be involved in encouraging other sisters through this ministry someday!

I could list other ways in which God clearly was preparing the path before me for the road He knew I would need to walk as a suddenly single mom. So much of the preparation didn’t even look like God’s provision at first! And yet He knew exactly what He was doing.

If I remember my Old Testament history correctly, I believe one reason the Lord cited as a grievance against His people for which He sent them into captivity and exile in Babylon was disobedience of this very Scripture passage: they never did give the land its Sabbath or keep the year of Jubilee. Ah, yes! Here in Leviticus 26:34-35 the Lord warns them what He will do if they disobey, and then here in 2 Chronicles 36:20-21 the awful promise comes true. I think it’s recorded elsewhere as well. I can’t say I blame the people; I can’t imagine how much faith it would take to obey that command to give the land a Sabbath every seven years. It must have sounded like sheer crazy talk! Yet how much more foolish is it to disobey the Lord than to trust Him even when it seems like what He is calling us to do is foolish.

Thank you, my friend, for pointing out this precious gem in Leviticus 25! Thank you for the reminder that the Lord takes care of us and goes before us preparing the way. He always keeps His promises; therefore, we can trust Him and not fear. So now, this gives me the confidence to shore up my faith and ask God to reveal to me where I am not trusting Him. What has God called me to do that feels foolish and unreasonable? God, help me to trust in You. You are sufficient. You are trustworthy. You’ve got this.

Feeling the Hole

Some days, I feel the hole in our family more than others. Today was one of those days. (This is a depressing journal entry that will likely be of no value to anyone but myself. It’s not literary. It’s not beautifully expressed. But I need to process, so here goes…)

In the backdrop is the pressure to make a decision. By the end of this month, I need to decide whether to re-enroll the kids in their homeschooling co-op, and for the first time, I’m not sure what the right decision is. So I’ve been praying for wisdom, and asking God to make the choice clear.

So when my 12-year-old son gave me such behavior problems today that I was unable to teach him, I thought, “Maybe this is the guidance I’m looking for. If he can’t learn from me, he needs to go to a school.” But then the onion began to shed its layers, and I began to see the issues behind the issues. Now I’m not so sure about the school decision, but I am sure of this: there is a hole in our family created by divorce, and there is nothing I can do to fix it.

My son! Our progeny can say the most hurtful things. The disrespect was intolerable, so I finally ended the math lesson to focus on the character lesson instead. What good are academics if we neglect the heart?  I think I recall some great quotes along those lines.  Ah, yes, here's one by Aristotle:

Apparently I am insufferably embarrassing to my son. The root cause of his problems is that I am such a nerd and so annoying. (These were his exact words.) As he continued to speak, his anger then unleashed itself on females, claiming that moms and girls are trash. He then bemoaned living in a household of girls and lacking a dad in the household with him five days a week. Hastily after that, he added that he doesn’t want a new dad; he wants his dad. Dad understands him. Dad has similar tastes, and they have fun together. He’s able to study better at Dad’s house, because Dad has better control, because…well, because he’s Dad. He doesn’t want me; he doesn’t want a mom. He wants his dad. My son’s tears began to flow.

And there’s nothing I can do about it.

Divorce stinks. It creates a sucking, gaping hole where the heart should be and leaves one gasping, choking, sputtering, grasping at life but feeling doomed to failure. There is a hole in our family, and I cannot fix it. Even when I am free to remarry, a new dad cannot fix it. No one can fix it but You, Lord.

Lord, I don’t understand what you are doing. I ask You for wisdom about school decisions, and You highlight a painful, impossible abyss in our lives. What’s that about? Whether my son goes to a school or whether I continue to homeschool him, the hole will still remain; he will still miss his dad. In fact, if I do put him in a school, he’ll see even less of his dad. I’d get a break from his angst, but I’d have fewer opportunities to train up his character, and he seems to need it more than ever.

Lord, I need You to fill this hole. I have no idea how, but I don’t have to know. You are the God; I am only Your handmaiden. Lord, please fill my family’s hole. Please fill it with Yourself…although I have no idea what that looks like. Please show me what that means, or at least as much as I need to know. I am hurting, Lord, but I trust You. It’s all I can do.

Tango and Trust

Have you ever heard the expression “it takes two to tango?”  Well, now I believe it.

I used to think that if one wanted to learn any dance style, tango included, one needed only to practice…with or without a partner.  You can always dance with an imaginary partner, I figured.

Not true.

This past Saturday I got to attend a milonga for the first time.  A milonga is a tango social dance.  I don’t know much about it yet, but I’m learning bits and pieces.  For example, when a gentleman asks a lady to dance, it is customary to dance three songs together in sequence, called a “tanda.”  At the end of each tanda, the music plays a “cortina” (curtain) in a different musical style, to signal the end of the tanda.  If a partner says, “Thank you” at the end of one of the songs but before the final song of the tanda, it is a polite way to say that they don’t want to dance the rest of the tanda with that dance partner. 

I learned this last point of tango etiquette in an amusing way.  I was blessed to have some fabulous dancers ask me to dance even though I was a complete newbie.  After one dance with a gentleman with an excellent sense of rhythm (who turned out to be a drummer—that explained it!), I had enjoyed myself so much that at the end of the dance, I instinctively exclaimed, “Thank you!” simply to express my gratitude for the dance.  He cocked his head and with a confused look asked, “Do you want to keep dancing?”  “Oh, I’m enjoying myself tremendously.  I’d keep dancing as long as you wanted to!” I answered, with great gusto.  He grinned widely and explained the point of etiquette.  Mortified, I apologized profusely.  He laughed and assured me, “I thought you might not have meant it that way.  That’s why I asked.”

What I discovered in the course of the evening was that tango is all about trust and the art of connection.  It is all about the communication between the leader and the follower.  He must take bold, decisive steps so that she can feel where they’re going.  She must pay attention to his cues, his hand placement, the way he is angling her.  She must relax in his arms and let him lead her.  She must trust him, because she is almost always dancing backwards, blindly, and with no idea what is the next sequence of moves that he has in mind.  But if he is a strong leader, she can trust him and enjoy the surprise of what enfolds.  I felt this connection, this communication so much more with some partners than with others.  My greatest delights were the moments when something happened that was unexpected to me but that my partner had apparently planned out, and he softly muttered, “goo-ood.”  But since I’m a tango newbie, all too often I would realize too late that I had missed a cue.  Thankfully, one excellent dance partner in particular, who took great pains to explain moves to me and teach me, also had a gracious way of reacting to my errors: he would silently smile when I missed my cues.  My only correction was the good-natured curl of his lips, but it gently gave me all the feedback I needed, and we tried again until I heard the soft, “goo-ood.”

The relationship between a man and a woman, or a husband and a wife, has often been compared to a dance.  As I reread the previous paragraph, I can certainly see some helpful parallels and life lessons for these relationships.  Life works best with a strong leader and an attentive follower.  Two leaders would not work well together, nor would two followers.  We are not created identical but complementary, each with a special role to play.  God, may you bless me with a dance partner for life itself, and may we move in one accord, with gentleness and trust.  As we grow on the dance floor of life, may we be patient and gracious with one another, so that we might enjoy the process of becoming more and more one, creating a beautiful, unified, living, moving work of art.