“The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;
may the name of the LORD be praised.”
JOB 1:21
What if you have yielded to God and your husband, yet trouble has compounded in your life? How can you find joy in the midst of unbearable circumstances? Every wife goes through seasons of pain and trial. Maybe it’s marital trouble or financial crisis. Or, as in the case of Carol Kent, it’s a child in desperate need.
Carol and her husband, Gene, had been happily married for many years. They were proud of their only child, Jason, who was a graduate of the US Naval Academy and heading into a great career. But as quickly as you could flip a light switch, the Kents’ lives went from sunny to black. Their son Jason had been charged with first-degree murder.
Jason had married a previously married woman with two little girls, and there were multiple allegations of abuse from their biological father. It looked like that father was about to get unsupervised visitation with the girls, and Jason began to unravel. He became fixated on eliminating that threat of abuse and harm to his family. He disastrously took the role of avenger and shot his wife’s ex-husband. Carol and Gene were thrust into a two-and-half-year wait through seven trial postponements. It was overwhelming. Carol says,
When you face a trial of gigantic magnitude, the little things become big things. Gene and I found that sometimes we would be nitpicking at each other over little tiny things. It was crazy.
Maybe I didn’t have the shelf in my bathroom all cleared up, and he would say, “This looks like a mess.” And I would yell back, “Every other room in this house is ready for company right now, can’t I have this one simple little space to myself?” I would start to cry, which seems so melodramatic in retrospect, but then we said, “This isn’t the real issue, is it?”
We both realized we had to make a choice. We could instantly recognize that everything that went wrong seemed to be exaggerated, and it was really the big thing in our life that we had to come together for or else we wouldn’t make it. I think many times people just start fighting, and then they think, We can’t make it. Our marriage is falling apart. And often when you have a gigantic crisis in a family, you will see a marriage falling apart. Because it just becomes so hard to keep communicating without emotion coming into it.
A Difficult Verdict
In 2002, Jason was found guilty of murder in the first degree. He was sentenced to a lifetime in prison. Through his letters from prison, he’s participated in every chapter of Carol’s book Between a Rock and a Grace Place. He is genuinely remorseful, and his parents miss him greatly. Carol shares,
I’ll walk by a closet and see a naval academy uniform, and I will just have that overwhelming sense that that life will never be ours again. And so we give each other permission to grieve. Even though we have a joy and a happiness in our hearts that can only be explained in the supernatural dimension, it is okay to give ourselves permission to have some grieving days as well. Because otherwise it just becomes a Pollyanna plastic smile that we slap on and say, “Hey, God is good. Heaven is tomorrow and everything is going to be okay.” We sometimes forget we live in a very fallen world where bad things happen even to Christian people.
Joy is a process. You begin by communicating daily with God. Sometimes that splash of joy comes in a Scripture verse that leaps off the page when you read it. We don’t have the life we wanted, but we do have a life that is filled with purpose and even joy because of what God has allowed us to do with this horrible thing that has happened. So we had a choice to use it as a platform on which we can give hope to others, and that brings us a lot of joy.
Another way to keep the joy and find the happiness is to be sure to stay involved with people. Because when you go through a difficult place, it’s natural to cocoon and to not be available. That really is the time when you most need to be with at least one other person.
Do yourself a favor and take this advice from a godly woman who has endured more than most of us will ever experience. Allow yourself to grieve. Communicate with God daily. Keep looking for His splashes of joy. Use your hardships as a platform to give hope to others. Stay involved with people.
Divine Multiplication
I saw a pickup truck with large words printed on the back window: “Happy to be here, proud to serve.” That sounds like a fitting attitude for someone who is serving Christ, doesn’t it? We are happy to be part of God’s family and we’re proud to serve Him wherever He may send us. Maybe you’ve been through hard times and found yourself at odds with your husband simply because you’re at odds with life. Remember, there is joy waiting for you when you yield to your husband and value him above yourself, even when you are hurting. Listen to these words from Carol:
The real answer to finding the joy of yielding is that there is something almost supernatural and very godly that happens when we yield to our husband and when we yield to God. You find the joy that you bring to that person is so great that they just pour love all over you in return. It’s about partnering with each other. One yields to one, the other yields back. It’s like when you fall into the embrace of God. You feel Him loving you and you just can’t resist it. And then you want to love Him even more. It’s a multiplication type of thing.9
My eight-year-old son, Ethan, has what’s called Minuto Loco (the Crazy Minute) in math class every day. It’s a drill of how many multiplication problems students can complete in one minute. The goal is ninety. That’s crazy, right? You may think it’s crazy to yield to your husband and to God during times of crisis. But remember, it’s a little like crazy math. When you yield to your husband, he’ll more easily yield toward you, and the happiness in your home will multiply.
Don’t let the hard times divide you from your spouse. Attack the problem, not each other. Lean into the strong arms of God and get ready to watch Him work with splashes of joy and divine multiplication.
Today’s Picture
If you are experiencing a major disappointment in your life, use the following as a to-do list and picture yourself checking off each one:
Allow yourself to grieve.
Communicate with God daily.
Keep looking for His splashes of joy.
Use your hardships as a platform to give hope to others.
Stay involved with people, especially your husband.
Today’s Prayer
Lord, You can do anything! You can make a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert. Come and do a new thing in my life. Renew my hope and joy right now as I pray. I yield myself completely to Your plan and will for my life. I will look for Your splashes of joy today. I will not allow Satan to divide me from my husband. Instead we run under the shadow of the Almighty and ask that You deliver us from evil.