Beautiful Endings

I know many of you out there who read this blog are hurting from lost love and waiting for new love. I speak especially to you today.

Three years ago today, I awakened to an email from my dear friend, Julie Crandall, who was one of many God-ordained friends who walked that dark desert journey with me. After answering {very well} some questions I'd asked, she closed with these words: Relax. The outcome of this situation is not on your shoulders. It is in God's hands. "The one who calls you is faithful and HE will do it." - 1 Thessalonians 5:24...Lifting you up...Julie

I opened the devotional book I clung to with great dependence that year, Streams in the Desert, and read these words: Habakkuk 2:3 - "The revelation awaits an appointed time. Though it linger, wait for it; it WILL certainly come and WILL NOT DELAY." The devo that followed said, He will use His refining fire to burn away our impurities and will then gloriously come to our rescue. Do not grieve Him by doubting His love. Instead, lift up your eyes, and begin praising Him RIGHT NOW for the deliverance that is on its way to you. Then you will be abundantly rewarded for the delay that has tried your faith.

Then I sat with my journal and penned these words: I have to trust You for the amazing journey of crossing the river into the Promised Land. I have to trust You to speak to his heart...I have to trust You to calm his soul enough to know he is capable of love. Capable of leading. Capable of being desired and served. I want to wash his feet. I want to humble myself and bless him by washing his feet. Quiet my soul so I may wait for YOUR ending. Your beautiful ending that You've written just for me.Make this journey a beautiful picture of Your grace, Jesus.

You see, when Isaac came to me and said he needed to go away alone into a wilderness to work on his heart, I felt God leading me to believe that we would be healed and restored by the 4th of July. You have to understand. I'm not a girl who senses things like specific dates or specific ANYTHING when it comes to prayer. But that time, I did, and it was unmistakable. So from that night in April...all the way through May and June, I just ached for July 4th to roll around because I just KNEW that on that day, he would come back to me in a grand display that would surpass any fireworks show in the nation. 

I knew it. 

That last hour of July 4, 2010 was beyond excruciating. I sat by the front door, awaiting the sound of footsteps on the boards…awaiting the sound of the phone ringing with a call or text. I ached for God to bring about some movie-like ending. And I had no idea what would do if I went to bed and awakened the next morning...still alone.

And that's exactly what happened.

July 5th dawned bright and hot, and my phone lay silent beside me. He hadn't stepped onto the porch to ring the doorbell. He hadn't called. He hadn't texted. 

And that ending that I ached and prayed for never came.

Many of you read this blog right through that time and know how I struggled with the loss of that love and how deeply my faith was shaken in the way he did not come back as I felt certain God said he would.

But I say this to you today, July 4, 2013, three years later, after having just celebrated seven months of marriage to Ryan, 

God. Answered. Every. Word. Written. Above.

 The outcome of the situation was not on my shoulders. It was in God's Hands. And He brought to me a man named Ryan to claim what Isaac would not.

He will use His refining fire to burn away our impurities and will then gloriously come to our rescue. I am not the same woman I was in 2010. God used my dark, hot, lonely desert to burn away impurities on every side from my life and then gloriously came to my rescue by bringing me into a new career and making me ready to receive real, true, abundant love.

Then you will be abundantly rewarded for the delay that has tried your faith. You got that right.

I have to trust You to speak to his heart...I have to trust You to calm his soul enough to know he is capable of love. Capable of leading. Capable of being desired and served. I don't know what went on in Isaac's heart as I prayed these prayers, because he never told me. But I DO know that God spoke to Ryan's heart and calmed his soul to know that he was capable of loving, leading, being desired, and being served, and he lives that out every. single. day.

I want to wash his feet. I want to humble myself and bless him by washing his feet. Isaac never could accept that gift from me, but Ryan did - including the morning of our wedding, when we washed each other's feet on the same sand where later that day, we promised our lives to each other.

Quiet my soul so I may wait for YOUR ending. Your beautiful ending that You've written just for me.Make this journey a beautiful picture of Your grace, Jesus. It wasn't the ending I expected that day, but it was the ending He wrote...and what a picture of His grace it turned out to be. 

And so it was that on another day, in another year, I heard steps on the porch...and a man named Ryan said he was interested in me....and in a movie-like ending, he pursued me unmistakably, told a radio audience he wanted to claim me to be his for life, and in a sunset wedding, he offered me his forever and promised to care for me for the rest of my forever.

Today, I celebrate that. Today I embrace the joy that God took a date on the calendar that was so broken in my life...and He has healed and restored. Not in the way I expected.

In a way far better.