What the Lord Asked Me

Before Discovering Her Goodbye Note

In the hour before I learned that June was making a suicide attempt, the Lord riveted my attention with these questions and promises. I include them here because they show God's strange but helpful ways with us, as well as the possibilities of our own response.

Trying to get June's heart mended and our life restored had carried me far enough away from the great battle for souls that the Lord asked me that fateful morning: No matter what happens with June, will you still run with Me into the fields of harvest? And I had to lay her on the altar and say, Yes, of course, my Love. There is too little time left to hold back. I will run with You no matter what never dreaming what it would almost immediately begin to cost me. Then, I heard Him say, No matter what happens, I will always love you and make everything work for good. He repeated the question and the promises three times.

Those promises were truths that I had been hanging my emotional life on for years, but it was immensely reassuring to hear Him speaking them to me directly especially in the context of the difficulty June and I had been going through. It sounded like all would be well. Better than well, deliriously great! I put The Happy Song  by Delirious on the whole-house speakers, then danced and sang it with them through the rooms. Eventually, I came down to earth and decided to go out for groceries, but I thought I'd better check on my inboxes before going out. The first email I saw was from June. She titled it Goodbye.

I'm sure you can see by this that I might have been screaming questions at the Lord, such as, I thought all would be well! In fact, what He told me helped to cushion the blow. I saw that He had given these promises to undergird me. What also saved me in my affections for the Lord was going immediately to Him in prayer early that afternoon and saying, I know that You are hurt by this even more than I am, that Your grief is greater than mine. It was Your dream for us that was shattered too not just mine. And You labored far, far harder for that dream than I ever did or ever could. So, I'm not going to allow any anger to get between us. I need You now more than ever and I know that You are not to blame. You're grieving with me.

This was when I pledged to Him that I would go through anything I had to in order to grieve her the right way.  Then, I asked for another twenty-five years not in a wheelchair so that I could give the devil a black eye for what he had just done.