This has been a fragile surrender. Coming out of a 24-year marriage with my own and two young children’s hearts to tend to, has stretched me beyond my already frayed edges.
A year before the marriage finally collapsed I desperately started asking Him to rescue me, rescue this, rescue us, somehow, anyway. And from that point, a subtle shift started to happen. I felt the shame lift off me; that despite my long-term work as a social worker with struggling families, that I somehow seemed totally unable to have even a basic conversation with my own husband. The sense of incompetence and failure had been heavy. But I also felt a quiet clarity that I had not been able to get any shift on our difficulties because they were not my difficulties to shift; whatever my husband was struggling with, he was stuck. I felt Him say to stop taking things to my husband to try and resolve, but to just keep bringing them to Him, just keep bringing them to Him. And so I did; hot, tearful prayers that weren’t pretty or reverent. They were sharp with hurt, anger, despair, hopelessness and deep loss.
Isaiah 54:6 says “The LORD will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit— a wife who married young, only to be rejected,”. My God is a God who sees me even in the most desperate places, who doesn’t avoid or dismiss my pain. He names it clearly, feels it acutely as His own. My wounds are so safe in His hands.
I also knew that this process was prising open my fingers from grasping a failing marriage and allowing it to fall as it may. That the stepping back would either allow my husband to breathe and open up again or it was the start of letting go. It turned out it was letting go.
In the aftermath of separation, in the wilderness of being alone, without my children when they were with their dad, and in the absence of family to run to, I had to look for another pair of eyes to lock with. Being distressed and needing comfort when no one is there is hard. In the absence of people there in front of me to talk with, be held by, I had to look further afield, use my long-sighted vision to find Him, where He was waiting to come intimately close.
He was a Lover, Husband and Father to me during that barren, beautiful wilderness time. My empty home became a wedding chamber where He came and didn’t leave. He is faithful to the end. He came tangibly close as I surrendered. Surrendered hopes, dreams, disappointment, wounds, what I thought my life needed to be happy. I spent hours kneeling at the feet of Jesus because it was the only place I wanted to be, that felt safe, where I felt known and held. My girl would come at 5am to find me kneeling, forehead to the floor, or curled up on the carpet where I had slept, just wanting to stay at His feet. I was Mary. Washing His feet with my tears and drying it with my hair in spent devotion. Emptied out, stripped of everything and just needing Him. And He was drawing me deeper into love with Him just as the love that I had had, fell away. All is not lost when we lose ourselves in Him.
I always imagined this scene, of humble surrender, as being an acknowledgement of His place on the throne, with us lowered down to our knees at His feet. That He was pleased at the rightful power positions of authority being in place. But now I know different.
I’ve found that as I have knelt in devotion, washing his feet with my tears, He too has got down on His knees to wash my feet with His water. He has joined me there without hesitation. That instead of staying above and removed, He has knelt with me, got down on the ground with me, in mutual submission and surrender. Pouring Himself out. Giving Himself to me without reserve or hesitation. I’m a Bride with her Groom. In the place of losing my marriage, I came to know Him as my true Lover and Husband. And to know He has been my real love story all along.