I remember that afternoon so clearly. It was one of my favorite parts of the day. The kids were both napping, and I had time to sit in my backyard under my willow tree where I would often read the Bible and pray. It was 2010, and life was new. My husband and I were both born again and navigating life fresh out of Adventism.
Reading the Bible was more than just a routine practice; everything I knew and understood about reality had changed, and the Bible was the only thing that could explain to me what had happened to us and what was happening in us. It was the only thing that could tell me who this amazing God was and what He wanted for and from us. Each afternoon I chose a gospel or letter to read and pored over it, eagerly anticipating all the new things I’d see. Often I read it out loud, prayerfully aware that my Father was listening.
Each time I read, a new brick in the wall of my old world view came tumbling to the ground, and I sometimes found myself grieving and repenting all over again. Whether it was a false idea about God and how He engages with humanity or a wrong understanding of sin, obedience, or even of love, there was always something coming up in my time in the Word that was renewing, convicting, or challenging me.
During these times I often found myself at a point of decision, knowing I had to choose obedience to God (in a new part of my life) over my love for those who would surely resent that obedience. I was learning how God wanted me to live, and it was often in stark contrast with what had been normative for me in my previous life. Some of the ways I learned to love inside Adventism were now being exposed to me as complacent, complicit, and spiritually compromising. I was beginning to see that true love lives in truth.
I prayed for the strength to be faithful to God even as I knew my decision to act on my new convictions would create yet another landslide widening the chasm between me and the ones I loved who wanted the “old me” back. Yet, like the refrain of a song stuck in the mind, the call to honor Jesus often came to me through these verses:
“He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matt. 10:37-39).
One of the hardest truths to encounter during my reading was seeing the eternal destiny of those who do not truly believe. This particular afternoon that reality, combined with the brokenness I felt in relationships, compounded my feelings of grief. I cried out in prayer to God for those who had not yet trusted Him, and I joined the ranks of believers whose hearts break for the lost.
I had never known that kind of grief before. In Adventism I believed that God was more “reasonable” than that. I thought He would judge people based on their best understanding and intentions, no matter what religion or cult they embraced. Yet, when Scripture becomes one’s only source of authority, that false concept of God cannot coexist with the testimony of His Word.
Soon a cascade of sorrow flooded my prayers, and all the fractured and broken pieces of my heart were laid bare before the Lord. The overwhelm of the call to obey at any cost left me fearful; the reality of hell left me feeling hopeless as I surveyed the number of those I knew who refused to listen. The reality of the relationships with those who resented our new Christian faith—which were going from bad to worse—all left me weeping in prayer.
Something new
As I sat there in this condition, I heard the sound of little bare feet scraping through the grass. I looked up to see my three-year-old son approaching me with his tousled bed head and wrinkled clothes. I wiped my face and greeted him, inviting him to sit with me. He climbed up on my lap and laid his head on my shoulder as he worked to wake up from his sleepiness. We sat together in silence for a long while under the tree, listening to the birds chirp and feeling the breeze brush over us. Suddenly he sat up, and looking up at me while playing with my face in his chubby little hands he said, “Momma, why are you sad?”.
“I’m okay, sweetie. Mommy feels a little broken-hearted, but I’m talking to Jesus, and it will be okay,” I replied.
He pondered my answer for only a moment before saying, “If I had a broken heart, I’d give all the pieces to God so that He could do something new with them, Mommy.”
To little Joshua that was the most logical thing in the world. After all, when his train tracks or legos came apart, he went and found his daddy to fix them for him. Perhaps he thought my giving my broken heart to God was the obvious solution, or maybe he just understood that God can heal. Whatever motivated him, he knew the answer was in God’s creative hands.
He finished speaking and placed his head back on my shoulder, and I felt convicted by the words of a babe.
I had been sitting under that tree holding all the broken pieces of my heart in my hands, examining them, grieving over them, feeling helpless to fix anything, and telling my Lord all about them. It was an important part of knowing reality, and lamenting is Biblical. Yet I was completely missing the simple next step in this moment. I had to take these broken pieces of my heart and give them back to the One who revealed them to me through His word and work in my life. I had to trust Him, not to put them back together how I wanted them, but to create something altogether new for my good and His glory.
Submitting the broken pieces
Leaving Adventism is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life. The fallout from that decision has been more profound than I ever could have imagined. Further, knowing God has opened my eyes to far more reality than merely the errors of Adventism. He has shown me who He is, and He continues to show me who I am, a little at a time, as I can stand it, so that I can submit more of my life over to Him. I still long for certain things in my life to look different or be healed, but I know that God’s plans are bigger than my own, and my next steps are always to obey Him and trust Him with the fallout.
It is only because I know who God is that I have been able to trust Him with all these broken pieces of my heart—far more broken pieces than I knew I had under that tree on that indelible afternoon.
God testifies who He is to us over and over in the pages of Scripture. It is by meditating on these texts that I have had the courage to walk in faith to the places He has called me to go, always knowing that it is this God of Scripture towards whom I walk.
“The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin…” (Ex. 34:6).
“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you” (1 Pet. 5:10).
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too” (2 Cor. 1: 3-5).
“ Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, Who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (Ps. 103:2-5).
“I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory” (Ps. 73:22-24).
Our God is a God who binds up the brokenhearted. He is merciful, gracious, patient, faithful, forgiving, and comforting. He Himself restores, confirms, strengthens, and establishes His children. He is the healer of souls who redeems our lives from the pit and satisfies us with good! Even in our grieving and lamenting, even when those painful moments bring us to false conclusions about His ways, nevertheless, He doesn’t leave us there. He counsels us, He doesn’t leave us in darkness, and through the work of the Lord Jesus we have the assurance of being with Him one day in glory.
Our God is the Great Shepherd who sees and knows His sheep, He knows when we cry and knows better than we do the root of our own heartbreaks. We can trust Him to know how to make the broken pieces fit into a mosaic that will glorify Him and make beauty from sorrow.
I don’t know where you may be in your walk out of Adventism, but please know that grieving is normal, and while God shows you what is real about Him and about you and your life, you can trust Him with all the broken pieces you may find along the way. Our God is a good God! Good in all He does and is!
Be patient in affliction and constant in prayer, and never stop looking at Who Scripture says our God is. It’s in knowing Him that you will know comfort and hope and rest. One of my favorite music groups is CityAlight and I’d like to share their song, “The goodness of Jesus” with you as it beckons us to bring our brokenness to Jesus and set our mind on who He is.
CityAlight: “The Goodness of Jesus” (YouTube)
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