Redemptive Ramblings

Ten years ago, my husband of twenty-one years, nineteen of which were spent in ministry together, said something that changed my life. We were on an anniversary trip when he looked at me and said, “I’m done with all of this.” I was so confused. All of what? 

“This. All of it. I don’t want to be a husband anymore. I don’t really know what I believe about God, but I know I don’t want to be in church. I really just want to start over completely and have a new life.”

This started a year-long process of separation and divorce that rocked the core of my belief in God and His plan for my life. To make it worse, after nearly twenty years in ministry across three states and two continents, people all over the world were calling and texting, asking me questions and trying to make sense of what they saw happening in the lives of people they respected and cared about. It felt like such a public failure, laden with guilt and shame.

Into the mess, God sent such wonderful friends to encourage me. Friends who would weep with me as I wept, who sent messages encouraging me to be faithful to God, who helped support my kids and me as I looked for a job and got back on my feet. Many of them were far away, but still God used their words to help me.

But one day, I got a different kind of message. A friend from a ministry we had moved away from years earlier sent me a Facebook message. In it, she talked about how she had watched my Facebook posts become less about God in the year before my husband left, and more about healthy eating and working out. She blamed my divorce on my misplaced focus and told me that God was allowing it to happen because I had made fitness an idol. 

I remember reading through it again and again, numb to everything but shame. Was God really punishing me for wanting to take care of my body? I didn’t really believe she was right, but that didn’t stop the shame from spiraling through me, weighing me down like a load of bricks. 

The truth was that this woman hadn’t seen me in years. She didn’t have a conversation with me before rushing to judge me. She spoke out of her own brokenness, not mine. But it didn’t matter. Her judgment cut into my already wounded heart like a dagger. I withdrew. Over words that flew out of her fingers in less than three minutes. These words she probably never thought about again changed what I believed I could offer the Family of God. 

For nearly ten years, the wound she inflicted on me with her snap judgment stopped me from sharing my life when God wanted me to. Her careless words have rung in my ears every time God has asked me to tell my story or talk about His goodness. I stopped engaging with friends who were far away and went silent on social media. I withdrew from the online world.

I also stopped working on getting healthier, quit working out, and stopped taking care of myself. My excuse was that those things no longer fit into my schedule now that I was working and single-parenting. And while they would have been harder to do, I could have made it work. I can see in hindsight that her judgment regarding my fitness journey affected me more deeply than I realized at the time. The subtle shift that I subconsciously absorbed was that caring about my physical health was somehow spiritually unhealthy. 

James 3:6 says that the tongue is a fire. In the digital age, it’s so easy to give our tongues free rein through our fingers and hit send on messages, posts, and comments we would never say in person. Restraint in our online words seems to be a thing of the past. Or worse, online restraint in the face of disagreement is sometimes seen as capitulating to sin or even denying the Gospel. James goes on to say this: “Sometimes it praises our Lord and Father, and sometimes it curses those who have been made in the image of God. And so blessing and cursing come pouring out of the same mouth. Surely, my brothers and sisters, this is not right!” (James 3:9-10 NLT)

Posting a video about the love of God, followed by a hate-filled tirade about politics or culture, is exactly the behavior the Holy Spirit, through James, warns us about. The Church must be a beacon of grace and truth in the digital world. That means that each of us who call ourselves by His name should use restraint in our online communication and language, for the good of the Body of Christ as well as for those who don’t believe. 

The beautiful thing is that we serve a God who makes all things new. He has restored my heart regarding my calling to participate in the Body of Christ. I now teach a women’s trauma recovery class through my local church. I also love to write and speak about the redemptive power of the love of Christ. And just like the words spoken over me that hurt me, the encouraging words God gives me to speak matter. And they matter when YOU say them too. Let’s speak and type to encourage others towards a closer walk with Jesus with our words.

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