A Doxology in Darkness – Chapter 7 – Burning

Sharon August 18th, 2008

If you're just joining me and my story, here are chapters one, two, three, four, five and six of A Doxology in Darkness.

This will be the last online installment. If you would like to read the entire printed version of the book, email erik@keylife.org and he will make sure you know when it's available.

Three days later, I was suddenly plunged back into deep introspection when my daily devotional said:

"…If a grey day is not one of thankfulness, the lesson has to be repeated until it is…A great work requires a great and careful training." – God Calling

To me, the message seemed clear that until we can find a place of thankfulness in our hearts regarding "grey days," or painful experiences, the same types of situations will keep coming up until we do.

This brought to mind a quote by Oswald Chambers that had been taped to the wall above my computer since well before I had even met Tom. It said:

"The first thing God does with us is to get us based on rugged Reality until we do not care what becomes of us individually as long as He gets His way for the purpose of His Redemption. Why shouldn't we go through heartbreaks? Through those doorways God is opening up ways of fellowship with His Son. Most of us fall and collapse at the first grip of pain; we sit down on the threshold of God's purpose and die away of self-pity, and all so called Christian sympathy will aid us to our death bed. But God will not. He comes with the grip of the pierced hand of His Son, and says, 'Enter into fellowship with Me; arise and shine.' If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart."

Until we begin to trust Abba with all circumstances of our lives, not just the good and happy ones, He must keep bringing about instances where we are challenged. Once we learn to give thanks for the trials and painful situations, we will experience great and merciful breakthroughs never foreseen, especially in the shadows of looming pain and upheaval pressing into our comfortable circumstances.

Once mastered, areas of repeated weakness, through his guidance and strength, may become some of the strongest areas of our personalities. It therefore stands to reason that weak and painful areas are actually a blessing, because they alone can lead to the most healing.

I began to understand in a much fuller way, how we need to actually thank God for the pain! The lesson He had shown me a month or so earlier now came back with greater clarification: Once we stop running from the pain, or trying to medicate it, then we can move through it with Him, and never have to go back and experience that particular lesson in the same way again.

My life was, and is, speckled with a vast array of weak and painful areas. But probably the most troublesome had always been my penchant for getting into relationships which would inevitably lead to heartbreaks.

When I was a teen, I tended to go for the "bad boy" type, which, of course, always ended in me being abused in some form or another, then being spit out by the side of the road. As mentioned previously, the dragon-slaying, brave knight would end up being so firmly sealed in his cold, hard suit of armor, that I would never truly catch a glimpse of his heart entombed inside.
Even as an adult, once I had begun my journey with Christ, I still ended up in relationships where there was heartbreak and betrayal. Men who were also followers of Christ, like myself, who I firmly believed to be unlike any "bad boy" I had ever known, still ended up trampling my heart to dust, as they posed on their magnificent white steeds, armor and charming smile glinting in the sun.

I only now realized that it was what I did during the heartbreak that needed correction. I needed to stop medicating the pain, and cease running from it. I could not control what the various knights in my life did, but I could certainly control my reactions to their actions. My tendency in the midst of the upheaval was to immediately begin to look for another man to fill the void, in a misguided attempt to help me ignore the pain. Hence the Lord's direction this time that I not date!

This desire to avoid pain is, of course, not peculiar to myself. Almost every human being behaves this way. It is referenced in the dictionary as the "pleasure principle." Merriam-Webster's defines it in the following way:

pleasure principle: n. The tendency for individual behavior to be directed toward immediate satisfaction of instinctual drives and immediate relief from pain or discomfort.

Sound familiar? It did to me. Throughout my life, I would go about my daily routine unaware of my mind set that I needed a romantic relationship. Consequently, I would attach myself to some man, and end up with a broken heart. Not to be deterred from getting what I "needed," I would run to the next man I found to make my broken heart feel better. I never let myself go through the pain of the heartbreak, nor the pain of being alone. Just like an addict, I was not merely running to get the next high, I was running equally as hard not to feel the withdrawal.

For years Christ had tried to get my attention, because He had a lot to show me, but I would never let Him. "Not now, God…too busy…Gotta find something to stop this pounding in my chest…There's gotta be something better out there…We'll talk later." So on to the next heartbreak, and on to my hunt for the next relationship. In just this manner, the lessons had gotten postponed again and again. And now, after all these years, I had finally stopped the hunt for the next fix to medicate the pain. I had finally stopped to listen to what God was trying to say to me. The lesson could now be taught.

He showed me a picture of what I have now begun to refer to as the "Ring of Fire." It was the pattern I had unwittingly begun to act out regularly over the years, resplendent with textbook dysfunction. It goes something like this:

In my romantic history, when I would have my heart broken, the feelings were something akin to going through fire. Now, just like any other living thing, my instinct is to avoid direct contact with fire at all costs. I would therefore immediately begin trying to locate the path which led most directly out of said fire. Usually, this was the path which consisted of moving on to the next relationship, and never having to ride out being alone.

On the rare occasions that I would look in another direction before jumping into my normal path, I could just barely make out a different way that led into more fire. Much to my dismay, this was the path where the Lord was. There He stood, beckoning me to take some time, come near to Him, and hold on. Over the roar of the flames, I could vaguely hear His voice promising me that if I would follow Him, He would take me through even more fire.

But I don't want to go through more fire! Why would I want to go through more fire? And an even more pressing question: why would YOU want me to go through more fire, Lord?

I failed to see that His way led me into a crucible, which does indeed pass through the fire, but in a controlled and secure environment. With the Lord as my guide through the heartbreak and lonely seasons of my life, I would indeed pass through the fire, but safe inside the crucible. This critical difference meant I would come out on the other side transformed by the very pain of the experience itself, not damaged and scarred and bitter.

There was a period in my life when I worked with jewelry. I became quite familiar with melting down gold and silver in order to make castings of them for use in jewelry design. It was very interesting work, which deals with a lot of heat. One thing you learn very quickly in melting metal, or using torches to repair or create pieces, is that it is possible to scorch and burn the metal. In house fires, for instance, one does not normally find neatly melted little blobs of gold and silver where jewelry was once present. Instead, one often finds charred and ruined pieces of jewelry.

However, if you place the metal in a crucible, the heat can be turned up, and the metal will uniformly receive the heat needed to melt. In addition, the impurities of the metal will rise up from its molten state, enabling it to be cleansed and made more precious. The crucible receives the brunt of the heat, you see, encasing and protecting the metal resting inside, enabling it to go through the process unharmed, and only made better. Heated, but not burned

I began to see this was what God had always planned for me. He simply wanted me to go through the fire. To feel the pain, and let Him work out the plans He has for me. However, until now, my habit had been to look at the crucible, and the fire engulfing it, and run as fast as I could down the other path. There, I would find a temporary staving off of my painful circumstances. The heat would subside, and I could forget about all the fire. I felt medicated: nice and cool. That is until the "Ring of Fire" came around again, and the next heart break would occur. Then once again, I would find myself with the choice before me, and I would repeatedly take the path leading ultimately back into the Ring.

This time was different.

This time, I looked at my choices. Knowing little of what lay before me, I turned toward the crucible, in spite of the searing heat roaring before my face.

I closed my eyes, and stepped inside.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Christianity, Dating, God, Healing, Jesus, Loss, Pain, Prayer, Religion and Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.