The Answer Is Love

There are times when we will be dealing with situations that are nothing but battles. For most of my life I thought that I wasn’t normal because there were so many battles going on throughout the years, but then one day a friend came to visit with me who I hadn’t seen since we grew up together. It was during a time in my life when I was dealing with a lot of stuff. My brother had died, my father had died not long before that, and I was going through a lot of emotional turmoil. She asked me about things in a general, in a how is everything kind of way, and for the first time in my life I started to tell her the truth of the battles I’d been in for years. She was quiet for a little while, just listening to me, and then she started to tell me her own stories. We’d known each other since we were four years old, and we had never known the depth of the pain we’d been dealing with over the years.

I wonder sometimes why we feel the need to hide our pain from others. I understand why you don’t want to be blithering at work or at the supermarket, but when a friend asks you how you are, why do we always feel like we have to say, “Fine!” But I suppose it’s because so many times we can’t really trust people with our stuff. When I first started writing stories and plays, I’d be telling stories that had a lot to do with my life or with things I’d experienced in some way. Sometimes I’d take a story that I’d heard and mix it up with my own, but there was always something of me in there. I wrote about a lot of things that were very personal, but there were other things mixed in so that it wasn’t completely true to life and autobiographical, but people still thought it was all my story, no matter what I’d tell them. Sometimes they wouldn’t even understand what I’d written, they’d just read a part of it and make an assumption about me or something they thought I was doing. I remember writing a story once and talking about “a boy I’d met,” meaning someone who was very sweet and younger than I was, but definitely not a young boy. He was 26. An actor I knew read it and accused me of dating “young kids.” The actor had been chasing after me and I wasn’t interested, so that was his way of insulting me and saying that was the reason I didn’t want to go out with him. People can get so messed up with their own stuff that they start to mess with ours.

I’ve been dealing with a situation for a while now with someone who is so messed up with their stuff that it has been messing with mine. It’s been very stressful because it’s someone who I have trusted, someone who I have shared secrets of my soul with, someone who I have shared my challenges and battles with, someone who I thought would never turn against me. It’s strange, because when that happens, when someone does turn against me like that, I’m always so shocked. It’s happened other times in the past and it’s been devastating, so I don’t know why I still trust people at all, but I do. Someone was describing this person as having “a suspicious nature,” and it’s very true. There are people who always assume the worst of other people, and this person is one of them. I’d never noticed it before, but hindsight is 20/20 as the saying goes. I see so much so clearly now that I hadn’t seen before. Comments that were made about other people, gossiping, pride. So many stories involving this one or that one “who came against me,” and now I see it for what it really was.

I don’t really understand how someone can call themselves a Christian and have a suspicious nature and be gossiping and prideful, but it’s possible. We all have our stuff, and I know there are things people must see in me that I don’t see, but God is always available to help us see what we need to see to keep us on the right path. We have to be willing to listen, though, and not make assumptions about other people based on what we think the situation is, and we have to be careful not to think we're always right. We can only understand other people as much as we know about them, and we can't really know anyone unless we are them. We can base our assumptions on what we think is going on, or on what we would do, but we can never know the whole story because we're not that person. The other day someone suggested that I check on something to make sure that the right thing had been done. It was a question of ethics, and I said that I didn’t need to check because I knew that the person I was dealing with had integrity. This other person looked at me like I had two heads. He’d seen it all, and he'd dealt with this person in other areas where integrity was questioned, and he wasn’t so sure. Later on I decided to start checking, and so far I haven’t found out that things were done correctly. I haven’t found out that they were not, but there are some questions about ethics that have not been resolved. Hmmmm . . . After all this time I don’t know why I always assume that people “would never do that.” Maybe I would not do that, or maybe I hope I would not do that, but how can I know what someone else will do, and how can I know what I would do in a situation where I was under pressure or where I thought I was right when I wasn't?

When I first started to talk to God, trust was one area where I had some big challenges. I have had so many experiences in my life when I couldn’t trust people, and then here He was saying, “Trust me.” But over the years I have learned that I can, and I have also learned, strangely enough, that having a suspicious nature isn’t smarter or any more full of wisdom. Trusting in God means we can still trust people, and love them and forgive them, even when they’re doing all kinds of awful things. This person I have been dealing with has been really going after me, trying to tear me down in every way imaginable, but I can still love her as long as I remember I can trust God. It’s not easy sometimes, especially when someone is coming at your face every minute with something else, but it’s possible, because with God all things are possible. He makes a way where there is no way.

Love is really the only answer. Being angry and reacting to things that people do just makes you feel even worse. When I lose my temper, something that thank God I haven’t done in years, I feel so out of control and miserable. When someone else loses their temper around me or at me now, I still don’t like it and it doesn’t feel good, but I don’t have to go where they’re trying to take me. I can hang on and hold on and let it go when they’re out of my face again. And then I can bring it before God and ask what He wants me to do, and the answer is always, “Love.”

On my way home last night I was having one of those talks with Him, one of the “what do you want me to do, I don’t know what to do about this situation” talks. In the morning, before I was verbally attacked by this person I’ve been dealing with, He’d given me Isaiah 43:1-2, “Do not fear for I have redeemed you, I have summoned you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the rivers I will be with you, when you pass through the waters they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire you will not be burned, the flames will not set you ablaze,” and verses 18-19, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing, now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” He makes a way where there is no way.

Before I went through my battle yesterday, I saw that passage as being an encouragement that He would be with me all the way through whatever battles I faced, and that is what it does mean, but it means something even more beautiful than that to me now that I have been going through it. I see that passage after what I went through yesterday, after having someone yell at me and make false accusations against me, someone who I thought I could trust, someone who I have trusted with some of my deepest secrets, after going through that battle and not turning on them with the venom they turned on me, I see that passage as a promise that I will not be consumed by the power of the anger because I am covered by the power of the love of God.

When I was on my way home last night, the Lord gave me Isaiah 54:1, “Do not fear for you will not be ashamed, neither be disgraced for you will not be put to shame,” verse 10, “For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from you, nor shall my covenant of peace be removed,’ says the Lord who has mercy on you,” verses 14-15, “In righteousness you shall be established; you shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear; and from terror for it shall not come near you. Indeed they shall surely assemble, but not because of Me. Whoever assembles against you shall fall for your sake,” and verse 17, “No weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue that rises against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is from me, says the Lord.” When the accuser comes, when they rise against you, if the Lord says you’re righteous, there is nothing that anyone can do about it. And remember, even if we don’t think we’re righteous, that can very often mean that He does. He came for those who know they are sinners, not for those who think they’re righteous. (Mark 2:17)

He has been giving me Isaiah 43 and 54 for over a year now, ever since He made a promise to me that was very hard to believe. And every time He gives me those words again, He reminds me that the reason there are battles going on is because of that promise. Abraham is known as the “father of our faith” because he believed in a crazy promise of God, and over and over again we see that it is faith that brings God’s promises to life. If I had given up on the promise, as crazy as it is and with as many battles that have risen up against me during this time, the battles would have stopped and I would have complete peace. But that peace would only be a peace of this world, and the peace that God gives is one that can help us stand strong in the midst of the battle. His peace is lasting peace that nothing can shake, even when someone we trusted we can no longer trust. When I was just about home, I saw some graffiti that said it all, “Always choose love." With God, the answer is always love.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan