I’m going to be honest but I’m not going to wallow.

I’ve had two separate (but familiar because they are so similar) disappointments recently.

Two distinct opportunities that I thought God had placed in my lap. Two ways in which (somehow) I’d been in good favor.  Two amazing things in which I would have been able to speak to the hurt in others, proclaim the beauty He’s made from ashes, and see people healed. Two platforms to share our (mine and God’s) story in a more public venue.  Two opportunities through which I would have been able to point glory to God.

But both things fizzled.

Follow: feelings of rejection paramount with a high school I’ll-never-be-popular-enough mentality.

Obviously someone had made a mistake.  These two things seemed so… PLANNED BY GOD. How can God plan something and then, I guess, UNplan it? I’d come to expect His grace and favor, so these disappointments seemed like a kick in the teeth by a God who I thought had my future in mind.

He does have my future in mind, and He didn’t kick me in the teeth. In fact, he’s preserving me.

What I’m realizing is that I can’t make God love me any more than He does right now. Any favor I’ve received from God or man is by His grace.  Not because of anything I’ve done and I can’t do anything to grow in favor. I’m His costly, expensive treasure whom He’s already bought with His blood.

And God will have His glory regardless of the opportunities He puts in my path. His message will be shared whether it is my lips (or pen) that speaks it.  The beauty He creates from dust will be shown even if its not the beauty He’s created in me, but the beauty in someone else.

Back in the spring, God gave me this book to write.  And then in the summer, He told me He’d give me the time.  And ever since I’ve been trying to carve minutes out of my already busy days to do it.  Maybe these disappointments would only have served to be distractions. Maybe God does know what He’s doing. This might be God giving me time to do what I know He’s called me to do and helping me preserve my heart-energy (something that comes in small portions lately) for the things that are most important.

He protects me.

He preserves me.

He stands beside me.

And any platform that I might use to speak God’s story should only be the platform that Jesus Himself has built. I don’t want to stand on anything else.

So yes, I’m disappointed in the giving and the taking away.  I’m disappointed that I can’t share to those people who would have heard. I’m saddened that I won’t be changed by the women and men I might have met.  And it sure doesn’t feel good to be disappointed.

But now I’m seeing these disappointments as a means to God’s end in me.

Have you been disappointed lately? How is God using it to change you?

I used to be afraid of healing.

What it would cost.

What it would mean.

What it would require of me.

Years ago, trying to function in my marriage while having an affair was like trying to run a marathon on a broken leg.  It just wasn’t working and there was something really, really wrong.

I knew things had to change and part of that included my healing, but I was worried about what that mending would cost.

What would it take to stitch up my heart, to make it pliable again when it had become so hard?  As if the pain from the healing would be worse than the pain in my current state.

Healing takes time I wasn’t wiling to give and energy I didn’t have.  It also takes a submission to the Healer that I was reluctant to begin.

And the worst of it, mending requires introspection. Looking at myself, at a blackened heart, is ugly.  I didn’t want to see it and I didn’t want anyone else to see it either.

Wounds need time for the air to purify and clean them.  Tendons and relationships need to grow back together where they have been severed.  Bones and trust need time to form new bonds and new connections.

When the pain in me became to great to  bear and the current state of me was uglier than I knew I could repair on my own, I broke in half.

Bones shattering, tendons ripping, ribs cracking, muscles tearing: the ugliness of breaking was almost as great as the carrying of the sin itself.

This is why healing is scary.  This is why people stay where they are — filled up with the hurt and the loss and the wrong — because it feels so much safer.  The pain we know is easier to medicate the pain we don’t know.  And I won’t lie; the tearing hurts.

But this pain was different.  It had a purpose.  Break in order to mend.

Because it doesn’t end there:  in the breaking.  The breaking is only the beginning. The Healer breaks, and then He mends.

Now I know that mending, even though it costs energy and time, even though it requires me to be silent and wait, even though it means looking closely at my broken places and ugly scars, is the only way to peace.

Peace with God.

Peace with myself.

And there is no fear in that.

Why do YOU think healing is so difficult and scary?

I’ve never been so thankful for an hour.

(Not since last November’s fall back time change).

Because I hate it when I’ve packed our family schedule so tight that none of us can wiggle.  There is no space for mistakes, no leeway for lateness and certainly no time to take off our shoes in the backyard and feel the new grass. It’s during times like this that I struggle to write because I have no time to think, no time to hear anyone else but myself recite our daily schedule in my head.

Weeks like this are rare, but when they happen, we all have to fight to function well.  We move from school to lesson to dinner to event without much stopping.

This is one of those weeks.

But yesterday, I had an unexpected and undeserved hour of quiet.

The second grade field trip ended by 1:45 and I asked Hope’s teacher if I could take her home.  What were they going to do until 3 o’clock.  Could she finish her work from there?

Absolutely.

So I piled Hope and her backpack back into the now empty car (still echoing with the memory of six seven- and eight-year-olds 15 minutes before) and drove her home.

I drove slowly and she was quiet in the back.  We both needed this extra space in our day.

At home she finished her work quickly and then we played together.  Her sister wasn’t home but had spent the afternoon at her Mimi’s and it was quiet in the house.  Hope noticed this,

It’s so quiet, Mama. I like this.

Away from the classroom.  Away from the other kids. Away from the TV or the Internet. Free space.  In our day and now inside us.

A chance to wiggle our toes and take off our shoes for a little while.  We both needed the time to rest and to be restored.

After a few minutes of arranging horses in made-up family groups on the floor of the playroom Hope got dressed and we headed to our next thing. We both felt healed in small ways.

When I don’t have wiggle room, I can’t hear anyone. My schedule grows up and over my ears and I’m deaf.  I can’t hear the needs of my girls or my husband because they are all heard through the filter of what I need to get done. I can’t hear in they way that I need to in order to sit down to write every day.

And I surely cannot hear God.

Only during retreat, during the quiet can I hear Him.  I have to quiet the noise, the schedule and the doing in order to be calm enough to hear. It kills me that I’m the kid with her nose in a book when God is trying to talk to me.  He calls my name ten time and I’m never concerned about what He’s saying.  I don’t want to live like this.

And I don’t want to live my life deaf to the lives and needs of those who are most important to me.  I want to hear and to hear I must stop and listen.

How’s your hearing today?

Because you will be tempted.

Someone will look at you in that way the same morning your husband didn’t thank you for getting up in the middle of the night with the kids.

Somebody will share their heart in a way that tugs at you and you’ll want to respond in kind.

You won’t always be in love with your husband.

You will get distracted with good things like kids and church and blogging.

You will be tempted.

And this title is a little misleading because I don’t really think you can affair-proof your marriage.  Not really.  By now, I hope you all know that we are fallible and vulnerable at times. It’s not like baby-proofing (because we all know babies who can climb over the gate at the bottom of the stairs) or fire-proofing (at a high enough temperature, something will burn or melt).

We all are capable.

All the boundaries are good things. They are what keep you from walking down a path toward someone else or another kind of life you think you want.  But boundaries are merely safeguards, not free rides to fidelity.  It is the heart is that truly matters.

So forgive me if any of you have given sermons or written books about 10 ways to affair-proof your marriage or the 5 things to keep your husband faithful to you. I’m sure there are some beneficial pieces of advice there.  But in all honesty I think it all boils down to one thing.

Follow close to Christ daily.

That’s it.  That’s the mystery.

Both of you. If you both are walking in close relationship to God, you will be in close relationship to each other.  If you are closely following Christ, attempting to allow Him to transform you on a day by day basis, you won’t want to be unfaithful to each other. There will be no need for it because Christ will be filling the needs you have and your spouse will be right there with you.  Daily dying to self and becoming alive in Christ is what does it.

Your desires become God’s desires. And you won’t commit adultery.

You can live your whole life trying to safeguard your marriage. You can do all the good and right things, but there will be someone someday (if it hasn’t already happened) who will think you are attractive and tell you so.  There will be someone who seems to know you better and listen in a different way.  There will be a need that your husband cannot fulfill in you and it will seem like someone else can.

When the boundaries that you’ve carefully placed become habits and the fences you’ve built become the necessary routine of your life, these temptations become easier and easier to combat.

But nothing takes the place of a living, breathing daily relationship with Christ. This relationship, this following hard after Him under girds all the boundaries you’ve put into practice. The boundaries are tools to a healthy marriage; they aren’t the heart of a healthy marriage.  Truly living for Christ is the only way to “affair-proof” your relationship.

All the boundaries, all the rules, are important. But love (for the two biggies: God and others) is the real rule.  Love God and you will do what is right for your marriage.

What do you think?  Do you agree?  Do you disagree? Why?

Let’s have a discussion today.

We spent yesterday at Disneyland for Chad’s birthday.  It’s easy because we basically live in Mickey Mouse’s backyard.  (Well not really, but close enough).

And I brought a stroller.

My girls are seven and three and both of my girls stopped sitting in strollers promptly at age two.  So even my youngest hasn’t ridden in a stroller regularly for at least a year and a half. Unless we go to some place like Disney.

Eighty percent of the day, the backpack rides in the stroller seat and twenty percent, Naomi sits down and watches the world go by at about 30 inches from the ground because sometimes her three-year-old feet just get tired.

In fact, most of her day at the amusement park is spent looking at the legs and rear ends of strangers.  Not a great view if I think about it.

So she sits in the stroller and she’s even shorter.  Even more engulfed by the pressing of the crowd, even more dependent upon me, and even more limited.

I take my own 5′8″ perspective for granted most of the time, as well as my own independence and my own freedoms.

But sometimes, she asks to be carried.  I sling my backpack in the stroller seat and hoist her up into my arms.  My older daughter pushes the empty stroller and I carry Naomi through the crowds, despite the lines, and eye level with the rest of the adults.  Her perspective changes because she is sitting on my hip and not so close to the ground.

She notices different things, looks over at her father and tries to kiss him on the cheek from my own arms. She sees the tops of the heads of other children, noticing their name-emblazoned mouse ear hats or princess tiaras.  She watches the clouds in the sky and sees the immaculate trees in the planters.

But I don’t think this is why she wants to be carried.

She wants to be carried because she wants to be close to me.  I don’t think she really cares about the stroller’s proximity to the asphalt or the jeans-view of ten thousand strangers.  Instead, she wants me to carry her because she wants to feel my arms around her and put her head on my shoulder.  She wants to be next to me, so close that she could reach up for a cheek-kiss if she needs it.

So I carry her and try not to complain that the stroller is easier to push than it is to carry her.  I understand she needs to be near me.

And sometimes I need to be carried too.  By Him, who is big enough to.

I need to be lifted in His arms to be near Him.  He picks me up from where I am close to the ground and then He carries me.  And the most amazing thing happens at the same time:  I begin to see everything differently.  Suddenly I’m above the crowd and everything changes.

I notice people differently, I see situations in a new light and I even understand Him better.

What do you notice when you are carried?

Tea Cups from Sarah Markley on Vimeo.