Beautiful Battle {Guest Post by Alicia Munro}

Dec 22, 2012Find joy today

I’m grateful to have Alicia Munro here on Live Uncaged. She’s got a great heart and writes heart-stirring words. You can follow her on Twitter @AliBMunro. She blogs here.

I am stuck at home with a sick 7-yr old, delving into Beautiful Battle, by Mary DeMuth for the very first time. Again I am struck by the common thread of painful threads in our lives. There is this horrifically common thread that ties us all together in this broken world. The enemy is insidious in his desire to consume and destroy us. He finds as a vulnerable children and crushes the life out of the soft clay that God so gently shaped into being. The resounding attack on the most innocent should cause us to despair. Fortunately in this darkness there is a great hope, and the very fact that then enemy is not all that creative in his tactics should galvanize us into engaging him at the first whispered lie.

I especially loved the line “Satan devours us from the inside out…” (on page 14) it is so true. In the midst of my very dysfunctional marriage, I found emotional comfort in an email, virtual relationship with a man who listened to my heart in ways that my husband never did. It started so innocently with friendship and understanding. I was so numb to the trap of toxicity in my marriage, had so given up on seeing God move in my husband that I didn’t see the trap before me.

When my church was confronted with the shock of me falling from grace, deciding alone to end my marriage AND refusing to end a friendship with dude… I was given an ultimatum, abandon the new relationship or seek fellowship elsewhere. I stepped out of my broken marriage into a world covered in shades of grey, losing the support of my church family because all they could see was the smoke and mirrors of the new relationship and not the wages of the war that was there.

Clinging to the one thing I knew, that my marriage was toxic and I was right to leave, despite the shady circumstances, I began a terrifying journey through the darkness in a completely foreign landscape. Shifting, and barren, I followed God through the scorched earth of my pain. I did not walk alone. He cleared the path. I sought Him, my heart crying out in bitter, burning tears… Psalm 69 so resonated with my heart.

1 Save me, O God,for the floodwaters
are up to my neck.
2 Deeper and deeper I sink into the mire;
I can’t find a foothold.
I am in deep water,
and the floods overwhelm me.
3 I am exhausted from crying for help;
my throat is parched.
My eyes are swollen with weeping,
waiting for my God to help me.

The enemy found me vulnerable in the tattered mess of my marriage. He didn’t even have to push. There was the whisper. The validation. The relief. God had failed me. My husband didn’t love God. He didn’t even LIKE me. That wound, that betrayal… the wide open crack. The enemy moved in on an exhale. I was free of the marriage, but not the pain. There was the lie… you are free.

There is still a hook in my heart tied to the lies of my marriage. A lie that tugs every time I am loved. It echoes around in my heart when I hear anyone praise anything about me. With the flutter of joy of TRULY being loved, comes the shadow of you are too much, you are not enough, you are too loud, you over-share too much… The insidious voice of the enemy speaking to my broken heart. He has a foothold, he doesn’t have the key to my soul, but by golly… he’s not giving up on that broken-hearted me yet. Jerk.

My value to God is not in my pride, not in my ability to keep it together, and certainly not in my ability to carry another’s secrets or sins in my heart. In the weeds that the enemy is so desperately trying to preserve, God is standing in his way. For every lie the enemy plants, God is replacing it with His truth. No longer do the weeds rule in the cracks of my heart. And through these cracks that I no longer need to fill, God just shines through.

In all my brokenness, God pulled me through into a bright shiny future. After a period of deep spiritual drought, my feet are walking on a solid path of righteousness. Deeper into the kingdom than I have ever been before. Surrounded by a dynamic, life-giving church family. No longer alone. I am learning to let go of my fear of change. I trust Him implicitly in ALL things… the easy stuff, my redemption, to the hard stuff, my finances; it is ALL His. And I am ALL in with God.

 

0 Comments