I hear the Lord say time. It takes time, Gloryanna, to break chains from the past that have held you all these years.
It takes surrender. Daily surrender to give up myself and embrace the abundance the Lord has to give me in return.
Forgiveness. Lots of forgiveness towards him and towards myself. Forgiveness is such a loaded word and principle. But for now, it’s a step I take so I can move forward.
I have to trust Him. I have to choose to trust Him. I have to trust Him during the time it will take me to heal. When it doesn’t look like I want it to, I have to trust that His way is better than my way. Clearly my way doesn’t work anyways.
To wait with time, to surrender myself, and to trust Him is going to require prayer. Not some legalistic prayer that says if I get up and spend 30 minutes every day then God will help me. No, a prayer walk that says if I don’t get up early, then I won’t pray like I need to for God to fill this void. If I don’t get up early, I will live as a slave to myself and to my fear. It’s not about legalism. It’s about freedom.
And grace. Lots and lots of grace. Grace for myself and for my husband. Grace for when he comments about the diapers and I want to argue with him about how he isn’t enough either. Grace for myself when I feel guilty after said argument.
Grace to know that my husband, a man whom I believe with all my heart was handpicked by God just for me, is not enough. There’s only One who is enough. And to live that truth and believe it daily, to believe it sometimes hourly, can be one of the hardest truths fully understand.
There’s so much in our world that clouds this truth from our hearts.
I allow the demands of the world to etch away the truth and promises from the Lord that I keep hidden in my heart.
And it takes an argument about diapers to bring me back. To scream “Gloryanna, you’re running in circles! You’re stuck in the cycle!”
It’s a cycle I fall into when I pull away from seeing what the Lord wants to reveal to me about my heart and focus on what the Lord needs to do in my husband’s heart instead.
I’m not saying we don’t have conflicts to work out. I’m not saying it’s OK for my husband to just ignore my needs. I’m saying that he is a flawed human just like I am.
But he is also a child of the King like I am. And he is loved more by God than I could ever love him. And when I come to the Lord on my knees with all my mess, I see the mess in my husband too but with grace eyes.
This new lens makes all the difference. It really is what it means to be broken together.
To not be enough together.
Because when we can come alongside one another before the Lord, then we become full.
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This article originally appeared at GloryannaBoge.com.
