when profound thoughts wound

****Blogger is pissing me off tonight, changing some of my stuff and rather than ensure the post is the perfect way I want it, I'm deciding to say screw it and post anyway.  I guess we'll just call it a step toward beating perfectionism..... *****


Today I had a very profound thought, one I'm not so sure I like.  I could tell you all the steps that led to it but then you would have to follow the incoherency of my thoughts as I put them together.  The end result is this...

Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 

 

This is a verse that brings me much comfort.  While I was still lost in sin, Christ came for me and died for me.  He came because He loved me enough to want to save me from the wickedness of my own heart.

 

And today this same verse brought me much grief.  While my attackers were still sinning against me, Christ died for them.  Someone on the radio mentioned the book The Shack.  I haven't read it yet so I don't know if this is a spoiler alert or not, but she mentioned that God loved the victim and God also loved the perpetrator.  I am so glad that I left my youngest at home and was not quite to my older kids school yet when I realized that God loves the men who hurt me.

 

That thought made me really angry.  God, how could you love them?  Didn't you see what they did to me?  How can you love me and hurt with me and yet love the ones who hurt me?  This isn't right.  This isn't ok with me.  How can I believe that you love me when you love them?  How can you love us both?  I felt like my breath had been stolen away.  It couldn't be possible.  Of course, I believe that Jesus came for everyone.  Of course, I have always been a person who believes He can redeem anyone.  And today, He asked me to believe that He came for those men just as much as He came for me.

 

 That is a big pill to swallow.  Angry and hurt I said out loud, God loves........but I couldn't even finish and say his name.  I tried again with the next one, God loves.....but I still couldn't finish it.   I spent some time alone this evening.  In my car I kept asking how God could love us both, it just doesn't make sense.  I felt like God was telling me that they are His children too.  I wouldn't stop loving one of my children if they hurt one of the others.  I tried to argue that point.  My boys wouldn't do this to each other.  But if they did, wouldn't I still love them? After a bit of driving, questioning and arguing I came home to my family, still ill at ease with a God who could love me and yet still love them, especially  him. 

 

Sadly tonight, God did use my boys to illustrate.  I left the room for a few minutes and suddenly my middle son was knocking on my door crying saying his big brother had punched him in the eye over and over again.  His eye looks it.  It is red and puffy and has the possibility of a black eye in the making.  The oldest tried to tell me it was an accident, he was stretching and his brother was behind him and got hit.  No way in heck this was unintentional. There is no way that someone simply stretching could make a mark like this.  

 

 I took care of my little boy, got him ice for his eye and comforted him.  And then I comforted the older one who was now crying "I'm the worst big brother in the entire world."  Was I mad that the older one hurt his brother? Um, YEAH!  Was I hurt for my little guy who was crying?  Absolutely, no mother could not hurt for her child when he cries in her arms.  I was hurt and angry that someone had hurt my child.  But did my love for my oldest ever lessen?  Not for a second.  I was angry with him, I was hurt for his brother but I never stopped loving him.

 

Somehow, I have to come to terms with the fact that these men are just as much God's children as I am.  Somehow I need to reconcile inside of myself that God loves them.  Even though He was hurt and angry that they hurt me, they are still His creation and His love didn't wane though His anger flared.  Somehow I am needing to absorb the knowledge that God was never ok with what happened to me and that I am not the only one that He never stopped loving. What a painful reality this is.

 

God, give me the grace to walk through this.  Minister to my heart, it is bruised and battered.