Hunting

As you have probably figured out by now, I love my husband so very much.  I am a stander for my marriage & I am one of many, many people praying for his salvation & the restoration of our marriage.  It is always a difficult line to walk, how much do I share & how much do I not put out there because I want to cover him in love, not hang him out to dry?  I want to respect my husband & treat him with honor.  That makes this post hard to write.  But this blog is about being real.  And I can’t  just walk around saying what Biblically sounds good letting some of you hurting friends think that I because I rest in God’s hands that I somehow don’t feel the pain of real situations.  So when you read this please know that each word was painful and was written as tears fell.  And that regardless of what the circumstances reflect right now, that my heart & my door will ALWAYS be open to my husband.   My God, He is bigger than all of it.  Bigger than the sin, bigger than the hurt, and oh so mighty to save.

This week/weekend is especially hard for me.  It brings front & center huge reality checks of the damage & the loss that has been done.  It is a reminder that the man that is my husband is so very lost as he is held captive by the evil one.  It shows me how hardened by sin his heart really is.  ANYONE who rejects the gift of God’s son & refuses to walk in His ways will suffer eternally.  And to see that being played out in my man’s soul breaks my heart more than anything else.

But it also brings the sweet reminder that this has nothing to do with me.  It has nothing to do with our precious children.  It has everything to do with my love & his relationship with his creator.  It is a reminder that I can walk in the freedom Christ has given me because I don’t have to do anything to fix it.  I have nothing to do with the problem and I have nothing to do with the solution.  He is in God’s hand; but that doesn’t take away the grief.

This picture was taken in November of 2002.  Tyler was not quite a month old.  Jon was so excited to have gotten this deer.  I remember the joy of bundling Tyler up to go out to take a picture with his daddy & his deer.  I remember sharing conversations over the years of just how excited my beloved was to have a son, for when the time would come to take him out and teach him to hunt.  To teach him the traditions of opening weekend, and the cabin, the calmness of the woods with the sunrise.  Of the man food and taking no showers and everything else that goes with it.  My husband & I shared so many dreams, his dad had done it for him and I was honored that I would get to watch him do the same with our own son.

Opening weekend is here, our son is 10.  He is super excited.  His sleeping bag is ready, his bags are packed, his lunches are talked about –especially the little candy bars for his pocket.  He can’t wait to get with all the guys tomorrow morning, he hopes that he gets to watch & help gut & skin a deer with them again this year (yuck, I know, but it’s part of the deal I guess).  But under the excitement he carries a burden that he shared with me.  A burden that breaks my heart, because I carry it too.

Like last year, our son will do opening weekend with a man that I am so grateful for, his grandpa, my dad.  We rejoice in this, yet we grieve the loss that he is not hunting with his own dad.  Which is not by our choosing! The husband & father that we once knew is gone.  His shell is there, but his heart & soul have been hardened beyond recognition.  The longer a person lives in sin, the harder & harder their heart becomes.  And situations like this weekend, remind me that his choices have nothing to do with me or our kids; it is just a real reflection of a heart separated from the love of Christ.

So what do we do?  We cry.  We rightly grieve another very real loss.  We pray.  We cling to God’s promises.  We speak God’s truths to expose the lies.  We leave everything in the hands of the One who is able.  We make the choice to love the unloveable because we recognize that when we were blind to God’s love, we too were unloveable – and yet He sent His son to DIE for us.  Apart from Him, true love is never known.  1 John 4:7-12 ⁷ Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. ¹¹ Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

And we hunt and eat candy bars.  And enjoy every minute of it knowing & walking in the truth that our God is good.  And praising God that with Him, all things are possible (Matthew 19:26).  Please don’t walk away from this blog post angry at my husband or feeling sorry for me & the kids.  Instead, take this moment to thank God for what you have.  Ask God to reveal where your own heart may becoming hardened so that He would pour mercy out on you and stop you from walking deeper into sin.  And please, take a moment to pray for my husband and our family.