Story, part 2 - Redemption

We don't choose our endings, but God is capable of redeeming our stories.

I made a friend a few summers back. I was in the mountains of Colorado with no t.v., sketchy internet, and three young boys. I had a lot of questions for God that summer and sought answers to them in two books - The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce (trust me, it's super fun:) and Genesis.

I read the divorce book to understand how my family dysfunction affected me, and I read Genesis with the question for God: "How do you feel about me, about your people?" And an amazing thing happened. Right there in the Old Testament, amid the smiting and stoning and casting out of Eden, I saw how much God loves us, how profoundly he delights in us. It was amazing.

And I saw how so much of what I believed about God was actually based on my messed up past, not scripture. It became clear to me that God loved how much I loved my family, my husband, my children. My intense love for them did not make God want to take them from me, as I had feared since I fell in love with Joel a decade earlier. I was sure that that verse on how we should hate our mothers and fathers compared to our love for Jesus meant that God would punish me for loving them too much. I saw how messed up this thinking was. How could the God of love be angry at me for loving people he loves infinitely more than I do?

How I tried to break up with Joel because I was too happy? - common among adult children of divorce. Desire to be with Joel my whole life, but terrified of marrying him? - because of the broken family. Constant fear that husband will have an affair and children will be killed in horrible accident? - part paranoid me, part serious dysfunction. It was crazy and eye-opening and freeing to have the wheat separated from the chaff, the truth from the lie, the true God from the false (and scary) image in my head.

I felt free, and had just begun my journey of understanding just how much God actually loves me.

In the midst of this journey came my friend. She was this sweet and beautiful girl who asked if I would mentor her. Our mentoring sessions consisted mostly of me sharing what I was learning in all of my studies, and her asking me questions and telling me her story, which was filled with plenty of dysfunction of her own.

Her parents had divorced years before and her father was an alcoholic. It was a difficult story to hear, but somehow God brought us together that summer and began her journey of healing as well.

A few weeks ago I was able to get with this friend after so many years apart. She had gone into full-time ministry for a few years, gotten married and is now teaching and thinking about starting a family. It was fantastic to see her and to hear how well she is doing, but one thing in particular has stuck with me.

She told me the story of how her father died.

After years of alcoholism, her father's body just started to give out, to shut down. He went into the hospital and eventually reached a point where he was no longer able to talk. He couldn't speak, but he was coherent. He was sober.

My friend visited her father regularly during this time, talking to him and somehow understanding what he was saying to her (she was the only one that was able to interpret what he was saying). And something amazing happened. This girl, who had such a broken relationship with her father, got to hear all of the things she needed to, things she should have heard years before.

Her dad said simple things like:

"I love you."

and

"I'm glad you're here."

Things she had never heard before.

He held her hand and looked into her eyes with clarity in his own and spoke words of love and affirmation to a daughter he had horribly neglected.

I sat there listening to my friend tell her story, open mouthed, in awe of God. I sat there in awe of his goodness, of his kindness, of his power to redeem, and of his desire to make things right.

When I met with her so many years ago I prayed that she would find strength in God, that she would seek out the healing I believed he offered. I hoped that she would find people to love her wherever she was, but I never dreamed that the story of her dad would be redeemed, I didn't dare to hope for that.

That goes deeper than any Hollywood ending. That is redemption of a life, and that is pure God.

I know that my Redeemer lives, what comfort that sweet sentence gives...

How amazing that we serve a God who not only redeems souls, but stories, too.