His Grace Reaches Me

I've been struggling lately with the grand ideas of reconciliation, condemnation, forgiveness, repentance, and holiness. Sounds like fun, right?

After a hiatus of several years, I started back to Bible Study Fellowship last week, and this session, we're studying Matthew. It's one of those books that I've read over and over again, but something hit me this week that I hadn't noticed before: Salmon. I understand that it's odd that the genealogy in Matthew 1 includes women, and so when I've read that passage before, I've always focused on the women in the line. I never noticed before that Rahab's husband was named. Salmon.

I wondered about his story. According to this wonderful study of Rahab from Bible Gateway, Salmon was one of the spies sent into Jericho. That appears to be a Jewish tradition thing and I don't know whether I'd put much stock in it. Regardless of that, though, at some point, this fairly prominent Jew purposefully took a former prostitute and a former foreigner as his wife.

What hit me was that Rahab was not defined by her past, nor was she seen as a foreigner once she sided with the Jews. She was adopted into the tribe, and she was a part of them. That is huge, but the thing that overwhelmed me was just that it's one thing to have a group of people invite you into become a part of their family, but it's a whole other thing to have a single person pledge the rest of his life to you, regardless of where you've been.

When I was reading the text notes from BSF today, I cried all the way through the explanations of the five women included in the genealogy. Like Tamar, I have struggled with waiting for God to fulfill his promises; I have taken matters into my own hands, and used "sinful methods" (as the notes described Tamar's actions in deceiving her father-in-law) as a means to an end I still believe in. Like Rahab, I have heard of God's doings and have desperately wanted to be a part, even if I wasn't sure how to do it. Like "the former wife of Uriah," I have been married before. I have made sinful choices, and I have also been the subject of a LOT of calculated character defamation. I always wonder about Bathsheba: How much of a choice did she have? When the King of Israel calls for you, do you have the option of declining? Maybe she was flattered, or even attracted... But maybe she felt like the path of least resistance was the only option. Who knows. I guess we'll never know for sure, just like no one but a select few will ever know my whole story... but, dang, if people don't make opinions and label me, anyway. And, yes, I realize that a lot of this is my own fault. Hence the struggles...

For instance, I am convicted that I owe my ex-husband some apologies. And I wrestle with when and how that is appropriate. I like to think that I hold nothing against him, having forgiven him and wishing he'd forgive me, but any time I imagine an apology, it sounds an awful lot like blaming him for the wrongs I foisted upon him. So, clearly, I'm not ready for that yet.

I also live with the tension of knowing that there are people with whom I can never make amends. I can't fix things that happened, things that I did, mistakes I made, and hurts that were incurred as a part of that. I am a closure person. I like for things to be tidy and to make sense. And sometimes they don't. That whole "In as much as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone" verse? Sometimes, the only way to peace is to break fellowship, and that's the worst thing ever. It's one reason I take very personally "unfriending" on Facebook. If there's a problem, let's talk it over and fix it! Some things can't be fixed, and that's a difficult reality.

Adding to all of that is an outer condemnation. In the past, I was asked to do things to try to make circumstances right that I knew, because of my own involvement in my life, were not going to work. I know that, to others, I appeared to be rebellious, callous, cold, and stubborn. The truth is that I *am* stubborn and often rebellious. If I end a relationship, though, it is always after much trying and anxiety and attempts to reconcile, and then there is a point where I see that there is not any headway being made, and the only fix is out. When that happens, especially if you care a lot about a person, you kind of have to harden your own heart in order to separate from them. I've done that a few times in the past few years, and inevitably, I later soften... but I know that it was the right thing. Still, I wrestle with knowing that people think I'm a bad person, or a bad Christian. I know my heart, and God knows it, and we have worked through a lot of garbage in the past three years.

It was only after separating from everything and moving away that I was able to admit (at my first week of small group in Austin, no less, to a bunch of practical strangers) that I sometimes wish I'd just died when my testimony was awesome: Destroyed first marriage redeemed by later faithfulness and rich ministry through the arts. Second marriage past the point of no return turned around and enriched by God. Praise Him! He can work miracles!

And he can. And he does. But then... more happened. There were no closing credits, and things got bad... And I never doubted God's faithfulness. I certainly doubted my own. I certainly dealt with other people's guidance that I know was based on love for me and for the Scriptures but that was given without insight into the whole situation. I certainly disappointed a lot of people, and myself, and likely God...

But then this genealogy. It stands as a reminder that God takes messes and rebuilds lives into something of beauty. He's done it in my life over and over again. Standing at the end and looking back, that's the fun part. The slogging through the low times is not. It's excruciating. Especially when much of it is your own fault, and you have no one to blame but yourself.

The bloodlines of Mary and Joseph in Matthew and Luke stand as a reminder that God is in the business of doing his own will, and he uses who he wills. There might even still be a place in there for me.