I have lived most of my forty-six years outside the will of God. I have been prideful and arrogant. I’ve always insisted on keeping parts of my life sequestered from God’s will, never willing to fully surrender everything to Him though I knew it was wrong. However, I could not hide from God’s will. He found me no matter where I attempted to hide, and in His infinite wisdom, He brought me low so that I’d have to look up to Him. I wish this could be a happy little devotional filled with promises of God’s mercy, but this is a more realistic testimony. This is a story about suffering, but it is a tale rooted in God’s love – tough love it’s true, but love nonetheless.
I have lost almost everything that ever made me happy in this world. Although my sinfulness and selfishness were well established long before my punishment began, it all really started with the death of my best friend and club brother. For months, I watched him stagger toward an early grave after a melanoma on his shoulder metastasized and formed tumors in his brain. He was one of the strongest, most positive people I’ve ever known, and yet, in the final painful days of his life, he confided in me that he’d lost his faith in God; in fact, he wondered if God really existed at all. When he died, as is the custom with my motorcycle club, each of his brothers took turns covering his coffin with dirt. Because of my friend’s admission about his lost faith, there was something terribly final about each shovelful, so I fell into a depression so deep and dark that I could no longer see any light. In hindsight, I realize that God was calling out to me even then, but I refused to give my pain to Him. I held onto it and it started to destroy me.
I’d always been an angry person, hanging on to past hurts and disappointments like sick treasures, but after my friend’s death, my anger became an all-consuming thing. It stripped me of my ability to show tenderness to my wife. She was the greatest gift God had ever given me – I knew that on a soul-deep level – but instead of giving my anger to God, I nurtured it until it turned me into a monster. One morning on our way to work I threatened her. I knew in my heart that I’d never hurt her, but because of my anger I wanted to intimidate her. In my spitefulness, I wanted her to feel some of the fear that I lived with. A few months later, she left me and moved back to Oregon with her family. A part of me died on the day she left. I prayed daily about my anger, and God – in his grace and mercy – burned it out of me. Even as I prayed for God’s intervention in my anger, however, I was already holding something in abeyance, reserving for myself what should have been given to God.
After my wife left, I let bitterness take up residence where anger once lived. I argued with God about all of my loss and pain. I refused to learn from my past mistakes. In my bitterness, I began to doubt God’s goodness. I couldn’t give my bitterness to Him. I held on to it tightly, and the bitterness eventually transformed into another deep depression. I took ridiculous chances on my motorcycle. When I was on the highway, speeds in excess of one hundred MPH were the norm. I split lanes, driving between cars at high speeds, and one of my club brothers asked me if I had a death wish. I just laughed, but in my heart I knew he was right. I wanted to die. Two weeks ago, I almost got my wish. I was going about fifty MPH over the speed limit, following a car far too closely on a country road. The driver slammed on breaks, and I had to lay the bike down to keep from going through the back window of the other vehicle. I wasn’t wearing a helmet, so I hit my head, scraping and bruising it all around and getting a horrible concussion in the process. I flew into a ditch where I was knocked unconscious, and I broke three ribs and my collarbone. I also landed in poison ivy, so I am now covered in blisters.
If you’re hoping for a happy ending, there isn’t one . . . yet. I don’t know how this will end. However, I have finally surrendered to God’s design. Every day since the accident, I have given my pain, sorrow, and bitterness to Him. I’m holding nothing back, nothing that I can selfishly cling to as outside the providence of God. I pray He will search me and shape me into the man He wants me to be. I sing his praises through my tears. And most importantly, I have figured out that my best friend was wrong. There is a God, and He will do whatever it takes to wake us up if we aren’t living for Him. I am just waking up to His power and mercy, so I know difficult days are still in my future, but I face them now with the knowledge that He might punish me but will never leave me either.
I have lost almost everything that ever made me happy in this world. Although my sinfulness and selfishness were well established long before my punishment began, it all really started with the death of my best friend and club brother. For months, I watched him stagger toward an early grave after a melanoma on his shoulder metastasized and formed tumors in his brain. He was one of the strongest, most positive people I’ve ever known, and yet, in the final painful days of his life, he confided in me that he’d lost his faith in God; in fact, he wondered if God really existed at all. When he died, as is the custom with my motorcycle club, each of his brothers took turns covering his coffin with dirt. Because of my friend’s admission about his lost faith, there was something terribly final about each shovelful, so I fell into a depression so deep and dark that I could no longer see any light. In hindsight, I realize that God was calling out to me even then, but I refused to give my pain to Him. I held onto it and it started to destroy me.
I’d always been an angry person, hanging on to past hurts and disappointments like sick treasures, but after my friend’s death, my anger became an all-consuming thing. It stripped me of my ability to show tenderness to my wife. She was the greatest gift God had ever given me – I knew that on a soul-deep level – but instead of giving my anger to God, I nurtured it until it turned me into a monster. One morning on our way to work I threatened her. I knew in my heart that I’d never hurt her, but because of my anger I wanted to intimidate her. In my spitefulness, I wanted her to feel some of the fear that I lived with. A few months later, she left me and moved back to Oregon with her family. A part of me died on the day she left. I prayed daily about my anger, and God – in his grace and mercy – burned it out of me. Even as I prayed for God’s intervention in my anger, however, I was already holding something in abeyance, reserving for myself what should have been given to God.
After my wife left, I let bitterness take up residence where anger once lived. I argued with God about all of my loss and pain. I refused to learn from my past mistakes. In my bitterness, I began to doubt God’s goodness. I couldn’t give my bitterness to Him. I held on to it tightly, and the bitterness eventually transformed into another deep depression. I took ridiculous chances on my motorcycle. When I was on the highway, speeds in excess of one hundred MPH were the norm. I split lanes, driving between cars at high speeds, and one of my club brothers asked me if I had a death wish. I just laughed, but in my heart I knew he was right. I wanted to die. Two weeks ago, I almost got my wish. I was going about fifty MPH over the speed limit, following a car far too closely on a country road. The driver slammed on breaks, and I had to lay the bike down to keep from going through the back window of the other vehicle. I wasn’t wearing a helmet, so I hit my head, scraping and bruising it all around and getting a horrible concussion in the process. I flew into a ditch where I was knocked unconscious, and I broke three ribs and my collarbone. I also landed in poison ivy, so I am now covered in blisters.
If you’re hoping for a happy ending, there isn’t one . . . yet. I don’t know how this will end. However, I have finally surrendered to God’s design. Every day since the accident, I have given my pain, sorrow, and bitterness to Him. I’m holding nothing back, nothing that I can selfishly cling to as outside the providence of God. I pray He will search me and shape me into the man He wants me to be. I sing his praises through my tears. And most importantly, I have figured out that my best friend was wrong. There is a God, and He will do whatever it takes to wake us up if we aren’t living for Him. I am just waking up to His power and mercy, so I know difficult days are still in my future, but I face them now with the knowledge that He might punish me but will never leave me either.
