Writing a book...

I thought it would come easily. Perhaps it's because I didn't know what to expect from the process. I thought I had been given an idea to write a book about what women could do to stay on track, to follow Christ, thereby bypassing all the pain and humiliation that I went through. I thought I could give all of the knowledge I had away, but the more time that goes by, I realize I have very little to write about or at least not enough to write a whole book about. Yet, I feel compelled to not give up. I'm reading about Ezekiel, I'm reading about God's wrath on Jerusalem and Israel against those who have turned away from God, who have broken their covenants with Him, and have turned and done their own things. I don't want to do that, let alone think about all the ways I have once done that in my old life. It is sad to read in Ezekiel how God describes His anger towards Jerusalem,  "an Adulterous Wife."

You see, there is a semblance between God's love for her in her youth and how God felt about me, how He feels about us, as children. He says that He sees her and when she is old enough for love, what does He do? Does He throw her to the world and say, "Learn quickly, dear, how to please those around you in order to succeed? To survive?" NO. He tells her, "I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your naked body. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you...and you became mine"(verse 8).

He protected her. He cared for her in a way so soft and gentle and pure that it seems foreign to my jaded-American mind. I find this sort of romance obscure, and enticing. It is so different from not the love stories of our time, but from our realities. So many of us fell prey to hands who hurt us, into paths we thought we could trust only to be deeply and painfully betrayed. A life so wretched we built up our walls and declared that no one, ever again, would possess the power to hurt us. Maybe, like Jerusalem, we turned into those hurt women who "lavished [your] favors on anyone who passed by and [your] beauty became his." Why? Why would we do this? Is it because we had lost our self-respect all those years and times ago of violence or because we learned by example and the proverb that God quotes is unfortunately still true, "Like mother, like daughter."Maybe it isn't your mother and maybe it wasn't mine, but we are led by example and what we saw was women with loose values and tight clothing and we thought that was the example to live by. But, God has redeemed you and He has redeemed me and He is calling us to a higher life-style.

He never stopped thinking of you as beautiful. In fact, at first He provided you with your beauty, your jewels, your provisions, your clothing, and your fame. "But, you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute." Again, why do we do that sort of thing? I wouldn't be able to have an answer for myself, let alone for everyone. What I do know is that God's love can overcome even our darkest deeds, even the one area in our lives that we would hardly be able to forgive someone else in, betrayal. He does though. By the end of the chapter God promises to restore our fortunes along with our sisters' who have committed similar sins, although they are sins of different natures. He says, "I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you" (verse 61). All throughout Ezekiel God is raging against the people of Israel and Jerusalem, all to ensure that they will know that He is Lord.

I wondered, at first, why He would do that but when I read this chapter, Chapter 17, I realized how true this story was for me. I had been protected as a small child and favored as a youth and it wasn't until college that I believed that beauty, that attraction, came from somewhere in myself so I began mining a well that was not very deep. In fact, it went dry very quickly and without God, it wasn't being replenished. So, like Jerusalem's sisters, Sodom and Samaria, I found my older, purer sister too good, too matronly and my younger sister too bothersome, too innocent. I shamed myself over and over by seeking lovers who, in God's good plan, would have gone their own ways leaving just one, the right one for me. I got to the point where I could no longer stand. I was alone and weary and needing to renew my covenant with Christ. He came through. He pulled me up from the pit I had so willingly and blindly jumped into. He gently guided me away from shame, from embarrassment and from pain and led me into the arms of my husband. A man who I am learning to trust and who is patient with me. I'm learning to rely on God's promises as well and to know He means it when He says that He will establish a new covenant with us. I want that and I need that and I remember He is the Lord of my life every minute, if not more.