[sunday meditations]

Prayer has become difficult for me. This time last year I considered myself a “man of prayer”: I spent more time praying each day than I’d done for years. Much of my prayer revolved around my relationship with the Wisconsinite, my future move up to Wisconsin, and our upcoming marriage. I coated us and our relationship in prayer, and I believed with every ounce of my heart that she was an answer to prayer and that God had been working in my life to bring us together. It was a wonderful story, and I was blown away at God’s providence and favor towards me. On June 16 that all fell apart. I felt betrayed not only by her but by God; abandoned not only by her but by Him. I blamed God for what happened, since He could’ve prevented it. I begged Him to answer WHY He did it, why He took her away from me, why He saw fit to thrust my dreams in front of my face, dangling them like a fisherman with a lure, and then snatching them away the moment I came to embrace a comfortable trust. It’s easy in times like those to blame God; it’s no small leap to begin perceiving God as some sort of capricious, malevolent deity who has far more in common with the pagan gods of old than with the Jewish carpenter who sacrificed his life to redeem the cosmos. 

Only within the past couple weeks have I come to believe that what happened doesn’t lie on God’s shoulders but on hers; she, not God, is the one who chose the outcome. She’s the one who kicked me to the curb in a ten-minute phone call and then cut me out of her life; God is the one who stuck by my side. These revelations (if you can call them that) have brought a measure of peace: I didn’t lose her because God never intended us to be married in the first place. I have to believe there’s a rhyme and reason to all that happened, but the specifics may not come out until later, perhaps even until I cross from one side of the Curtain to another. In the avenue of prayer, the words of Timothy Keller have been encouraging. He makes two points about prayer, and I add a third:

(1) God answers the prayers we would pray if we knew the full story. I have to trust that God knows what He is doing. If marrying Mandy would’ve been the best for me, then that’s what would’ve happened. Amanda has pointed out time and again that my idea of what marriage with her would’ve been like is based more on fantasy than reality. I cultivated the Fantasy over a period of five years so that by the time we were actually together and planning marriage, I bought into the Fantasy more than I accepted Reality. God knows what's best for me. He's for me, not against me. He wants to see me prosper. He doesn't delight in seeing me suffer, and He doesn't work in my life to thwart my hopes and dreams. 

(2) God knows what it’s like to have a prayer go unanswered. One of the most ironic stories in the gospels is that of Jesus in Gethsemane: looking ahead at the cross, Jesus asks God if there were another way to secure redemption. He feared the pain and he feared the cross. He asked God to spare him of all that, and God said No. The pain I’ve felt in the face of unanswered prayer is bit a microcosm of the pain Jesus felt when God told him No. God can relate to my pain and understand it; not only can Jesus relate to temptation, but he can relate to the agony we feel in our own versions of Gethsemane.

(3) Sometimes God doesn’t answer our prayers because He has plans that go beyond us. One of the most endemic plagues in western Christianity is that of solipsism: a big word that basically means we think the world—and God!—revolves around us. Even in our faith we’re narcissistic: the original sin in the Garden was putting ourselves in the place of God, and even in redemption we need a renewing of the mind to see that we aren’t at the center of God’s plans. We orbit around God, not the other way around. Sometimes we ask for good and honorable things and God doesn’t answer our prayer the way we want; it isn’t because He’s mad or upset or out to upset our parties. Rather, His greatest aim for us isn’t our own happiness and contentment but our conformity to Him, because that’s what’s best for us. We are His children, and He seeks to use us in this world to advance His kingdom as He sees fit. As Paul says, “We are His workmanship, to do good works.” That often fleshes itself out in God taking us where we don’t want to go but where, rather, He intends to use us. Although I wrestle with the lie that God took Mandy from me because I wasn’t good enough, because I’d blown it one last time and missed out on everything God had for me, the reality is that I’m not at the center of things, and perhaps God wants to use me in ways that don’t line up with life with her. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but one that must be swallowed nonetheless.

Months ago I wrote down a quote in the little black journal I carry around. It’s a paraphrase of something I heard off Christian radio, and it’s brought me a lot of encouragement: “What you release, you risk; and God will replace that which was released with something different and better. God will write a different story than the one you supposed, but a story that glorifies Him and is better for you.” It’s a struggle to believe that at times, but it’s a wrestling well worth the effort.