My trip to the bottom was 30 years in the making. Back in June of 1979 I married my high school sweetheart. From before our marriage, I carried secrets of wounds in my life that I didn’t even know I had. Other secrets I carried that I did know about were those of infidelity. Prior to our wedding and then through our nearly thirty year marriage I had cheated on my wife. I had a pattern of lies, and infidelity. It would come and go in waves. There would be lying and cheating, then fidelity. While in these patterns I had no idea the internal issues that caused me to lead such a despicable double life. I know for a fact that I truly loved my wife. The fact is that to this day, I still love my now ex-wife with all that I am.
There were warning signs in the past. A few years before I was caught a second time, I had a dream that shook me up. In this dream I was driving my car up a road called “Zion Street” near the town that I live in. Interesting street name, huh? I approached a corner I had been to many times. In fact on the southwest corner of this intersection was the local Armory. I leaned over to change the radio, as I did, something in that corner of the intersection caught my attention. I looked in its direction toward the ground. There was a post. From this point on in the dream it was all slow motion. Slowly I gazed up the post and saw His feet pierced to the post by a large rusty nail. As I continued my upward motion I knew it was Jesus on the cross. There was his body, the side where the sword had stabbed Him, then up to his arms stretched out with His hands nailed to the cross. I kept looking up and when I got to His face, He was bowed looking at the ground with the crown of thorns still causing blood to ooze from His head. He slowly moved His head up until our eyes met! As they met I could see the pain in His face as if He was saying to me, “I died for you once already, why do you keep putting me back up here on the cross? Let me LIVE in your life!” He and the cross then, still in slow-motion, fell forward. As He hit the ground face first I woke up in a cold sweat! That apparently was not enough to shake me from the patterns I had developed in my life. Those choices that I had been making, and were caused by a number of issues continued. Even though I had tried to reverse those patterns and choices of the past, I was trying to do it by my own flesh. You can’t do spiritual things by the flesh! I found out the hard way.
The wounds in my life included an emotionally absent father, an over bonded mother and sexual molestation by a male friend of mine as a young teenager. These, along with the wounded heart that we all are born with, led to many poor decisions and numerous occasions of infidelity during my marriage. I’m not blaming my choices totally on these wounds, but they definitely contributed to my patterns. The affairs were ways that I used to numb a pain that, through the years, I didn’t know existed. After being caught for a third time in our 29 year marriage, I finally realized “I have a problem!” Through biblical counseling I found out it was a serious “spiritual problem!” The problem I had had all along, led to other troubles. These troubles now started my tumble to the bottom. I lost my job in a career that I had for over 30 years, my wife filed for divorce, my family was devastated, and ministries that I had with people who had trusted me and even looked up to me had been destroyed along with those friendships. It was like free-falling into a dark hole. But when I hit bottom, I was NOT in Wonderland or Narnia. I was in darkness and silence.
I was exactly where God wanted me to be a long time ago. I was completely BROKEN!
While my trip to the bottom was because of lies, secrets and infidelity, there are other ways to get there. Addictions, bad habits, poor spending choices and other self-centered patterns that satisfy a need that maybe you don’t even know about.
The Bible tells us in Psalm 90:8 in a prayer from Moses: “You spread out our sins before you—our secret sins—and you see them all.”
My darkest secrets were out and my darkest days were ahead of me. And God loves me so much, that He finally brought me down to a place where He could actually begin a healing in me, as well as restoration and renewal.
God tells us that nothing is secret from Him, nor are our intentions. In 1st Corinthians 4:5b, Paul says, “For He will bring our darkest secrets to light and will reveal our private motives.”
The bottom, for me, included humbling myself before family and friends and confessing my sins, asking a close friend for a place to stay, and receiving divorce papers from the woman in my life that I truly love. She did the only thing that seemed possible for her to be able to survive and move on. Understandably she was tired of the lies and cheating. There was no other way.
I had a lot of work ahead of me. The exciting thing about the bottom for me, if you want to call it exciting, is that God knows His plan for me and He had to get my attention to be able to work that plan in and through me.
By hitting bottom I had nowhere to look except UP! And I found myself getting immersed in His Word, praying and reading books that would point me in His direction. As I grew sensitive to His voice, I actually heard in my heart things He would say to me. I’ve always been skeptical at someone who said, “God told me…” or “I heard from God…” until I started hearing from Him myself.
--To be continued--
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