A Thanksgiving Thought
A Reminder for Rob
Freedom comes through pain. Plain and simple.
If you can't deal with it, you will forever remain in bondage to a tyrant of one kind or another.
Why did God lay out the Passover festival? (Exodus 12:1–28, 43–50)
For his people to look back on the pain and suffering from which they were freed. So they would always have a grateful heart and demeanor toward God.
Interestingly, at those bondage breaking moments in time where God showed up for them, more pain was brought.
Think of the anxiety they faced standing at the edge of the sea as the Egyptian army closed in.
Hopeless and worried, anxious and wretched I am sure they felt.
Surely, they now doubted this "God" they served. Why would a “loving” God put his people through such pain and hardship? Sound familiar? Have you wondered the same yourself about your pain?
Pain, pain, pain.
Yet, the sea opened.
How often is this your life?
You want to be free from a miserable relationship, for example.
Yet, to do so will require simply a different kind of pain.
The benefit?
The new freedom you will feel once you have gone through the new pain, will be a cathartic relief you have never experienced.
BUT, you must go through the pain...or simply stay with the pain in which you are currently.
That said, this is where Thanksgiving or gratitude or thankfulness comes.
I think of a recent episode I experienced.
I am and have been going through some personal hardship myself (what the hell is new for me?) regarding a few relationships.
Specific to one of these, I received (and chose to take for some sadomasochistic reason) a call from my first, now ex-wife, in late October.
It had been better than a year since I was so privileged to her last liquid courage attempt to contact me. (And I still think it so very odd she continues to call me after all these years).
I took the call, due to above circumstances thinking there may be some information I needed or may be in store for from or about others.
Within 60 seconds of answering, I was able to determine she indeed was not calling me for reasons I fretted or worried.
It was here I should have immediately hung up the phone and moved on.
Instead, I was treated to (and chose to listen) nearly an hour of drunken insults and accusations (rooted in opinion lacking full disclosure and facts regarding that which I am being accused…something she of all people should be well versed in herself based on her own choices and actions years ago). Reprimanded for what a cruel father and grandfather I am and have been and then lectured on how lacking I am as a Christian and her sincere worry for me over what looks to be my pathway to hell. Kind of an exclamation point on the previous 12 months through which I had trekked and weathered.
I was shaken this time for once by her.
After about 4 or 5 days I came out of the fog and disarray from what I had taken in and felt. It was here I finally got my wits about me enough to say to myself and mean it…
“Thank you God for taking me away and out of that situation years ago. I never want to live with that again”.
Funny, 15 years ago when she left our family for her new husband, I was crushed and not sure how I would survive. I begged and pleaded with God to make her stay and to NOT make me go through what was in front of me facing divorce and running the business alone, raising the kids alone, home schooling alone. I went through then much of the same frustration, disappointment, hurt, caused by insults, false accusations, and lies by omission as I have recently. It was one of my Red Sea moments in the span of my life.
Yet, 15 years later, I assure you, I would in no way ever wish to return to that hell.
That call was my Passover moment this year.
A horseradish type of reminder from where I have been brought to never have to return again.
In the Passover feast, the Israelites are reminded of all for which they can be grateful to their God, the one who has, through the new covenant given us all the opportunity should we accept to spend eternity in his great kingdom.
Making an effort to drum up those things for which you have to be thankful, particularly for what God has done and is doing in YOUR life is a key to peace and freedom.
Ask me how I know.
When pain comes, when a drunken ex spouse calls you to tell you what an awful human being you are, be reminded from what or where you have been rescued and removed. (or at the very minimum…hang up the freakin’ phone)
It's good to do it often. Very often, not just on Thanksgiving Day.
Just my thinking tonight.
-rob out
