He is Still God

Be Still and Know that I am God… Isaiah 46:10

Nothing caused my world to stop so suddenly as my husband’s confession to an affair this summer. In that moment everything seemed to pause and life as I knew it changed. I wanted to hold on to my “bubble” as I call it. The bubble was the percieved reality that I had a moment before the truth came crashing into my secure world. Shock and disbelief was probably the two biggest emotions I felt in those first moments. As the truth started to sink in, there was also the anger towards my husband. But I was wrestling with God as well and had anger over the fact that this was now my life. Many times I felt the fury of wanting to beat my fists against the ground and scream, “THIS IS NOT WHAT I WANTED!”  Over and over I kept coming back to this. Couldn’t I just crawl back into my bubble, my safe little world and forget this ever happened. This was not the life I asked for.

Wasn’t infidelity something I had prayed against? Didn’t I have enough sex with my husband to keep him satisfied? Hadn’t we just been spending the last seven months going to a counselor and working on our marriage? Yet, here I found myself, whether I liked it or not. I was not happy with my circumstances and felt some anger that my prayers hadn’t been answered (well at least not in the way I wanted them to be). However I was not about to walk away from God. I needed Him desperately. I think about Jesus’ question to the disciples and Peter’s answer in John 6:67-68.

”Jesus said to the Twelve, “You don’t want to go away too, do you?” Simon Peter answered, “Lord, who will we go to? You have the words of eternal life.”

Though I didn’t like my situation, I truly believed that there was no better place to be than in God’s hands. Nothing else and no one else could comfort, love, heal and restore me like He would. I didn’t know how things were going to turn out but I knew that God had me and that’s all that mattered.

Words from “The Desert Song” kept sticking out to me.

“All of my life

In every season

You are still God

I have a reason to sing

I have a reason to worship”

When I took a trip to the mountains after the confession to pray and seek God, I also got a tattoo with the words “He is still God so I have a reason to sing”

Somehow I just wanted a visible reminder on my skin of God’s power in my life. God gave me a song a few days after the confession as well. I am a singer songwriter and music is often a way for me to express my walk with God and the lessons He’s taught me. This song brought me back to God’s faithfulness to me despite what my husband had done. It was a comfort to have that song during this time. I called it “My Faithful Love”

So here was my life. My desire for how it would look and be didn’t work out. But God had a plan. He was writing my story, not me. He has done so much already in our lives. My husband has changed so much. My heart and walk with Jesus has deepened as well. Our marriage is honest and open in ways it never was before. And our “new” marriage is growing into something beautiful. There are still times I feel that old feeling of wanting to throw my tantrum again and say  “But this is not what I wanted!” Just this last week in fact, our marriage felt good, I felt love for him, I felt happy. Yet there was the past still there. Our perfect moment was nice, but I still dragged the question back out, why? Why did it have to happen? We live in a sinful world, and therefore experience the effects of sin and the sinful choices we ourselves, or others make. Now I know that though God did not cause my husband to have the affair, God was not taken by surprise with these events. Nor was His power unable to redeem this sin and change our lives for the better even with the pain and heartache it caused.

I clearly have seen God’s word alive and active in us through Romans 8:28-29 “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose. For those He forknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…” If this pain is what it takes to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus, so be it. He is changing me, filling me in ways I never would have without His work even through the affair recovery.