Surprised by God

Ok, so at the risk of sounding like a wacko right from the start, I have to tell you a story.

The first thing you need to know is that God has been working on my relationship with food as of late. I have some significant weight to lose and have known for some time that food is an idol in my life. This spring God is helping me to realize my true freedom in Christ and through obedience to Him, I'm learning to approach food in a healthier way.

The second thing you need to know is that a few weeks ago I damaged one of my husband's most prized and valuable possessions and didn't tell him. Now, this is not something I habitually do--in fact, I don't remember ever keeping something even relatively minor like this from him for any period of time. But...he was extremely stressed with end-of-semester grading and committee work at the time and I knew the particular circumstances surrounding the damage would probably send him over the edge. So, I didn't tell him.

My husband is a scientist and definitely the most observant (read: anal) person I've ever met. For the first 24 hours after the incident I literally held my breath every time he walked past the object in question. To my utter amazement, he didn't notice anything wrong. I felt horrid --guilty, deceitful, and afraid--but I convinced myself that it was for his sake that I wasn't telling him -- it was just such terrible timing. As hours turned into days and days turned into weeks, and still he hadn't noticed anything, I began to convince myself that perhaps it wasn't that big of deal after all. And eventually, to be honest, I pretty much forgot all about it.

Meanwhile, I've really been working on this whole eating thing (basically just eating when I'm hungry and stopping when I'm full -- duh, right?). But even as I felt much freer from that desire to overeat, and knew I was eating significantly less food, I hadn't lost any weight (after an intial loss of 6 pounds in just a couple of weeks). I was trying to be patient and trust that the weight loss would come if I just focused on obedience in this area, but part of me knew that I was holding something back.

So anyway, last night during my devotions several things (my bible reading, some stuff going on in our community, my own reflections about this whole food issue) converged to bring me to a point of deep repentance before God. For the first time in a long time I really felt the pain of choosing to put my trust in other things before God and got truly repentant--I put it all on the table. As I was praying and talking to God, he reminded me of the incident and the fact that I had yet to be honest with my husband. And then he revealed to me, clear as anything, that I had stopped losing weight right around the same time I had started witholding the truth from Brad. Even though I thought this revelation was from God, I didn't know if I really believed there was a correlation between the two things. I even had the gall to argue with God that at this point it might just be better not to tell Brad about it at all. Finally, I asked God to show me a sign: if this really was the deal, and if he was asking me to now be honest with my husband, when I got on the scale in the morning I would have lost weight. (Remember, I had not lost even a fraction of a pound in almost a month.) As soon as I made the request, I regretted it. It seemed like such a ridiculous thing to do. I knew deep down I needed to be honest with Brad, I didn't need a sign to tell me that, right? Besides, now that I'd asked for the sign, if God didn't respond, I'd probably think I was off the hook. And, if he did, well--I think I didn't really believe that would happen, but if it did, then I really would have to obey and tell Brad--and I wasn't thrilled about that, either.

Oh me of little faith! This morning I nervously got on the scale and wouldn't you know, I had lost more than a pound since just the day before. Why does it surprise me when God proves He is listening and active in my life? I say that I believe to my core that this is true, but then, when he shows it so tangibly I'm almost always surprised. Anyway, now I had to follow through and talk to Brad. As I showered and got ready for a work day, I prayed that God would give me the courage to tell him the truth and that He would prepare Brad to be merciful and understanding.

Thinking I would wait until after work (my parents were watching the boys and I didn't want a scene if he got upset) I headed out to the garage to get in my car, but found myself stopping to study the damaged object before I drove off. My husband, who for almost a month had seemed completely blind to this damage, suddenly saw me from the kitchen window and said, "Hey, what's wrong?" I had to just laugh. God was not going to let me procrastinate until after work! I called Brad out to the garage right then and told him the whole story. He smiled, gave me a hug and said, "Oh, I can fix that."

God's ways are indeed higher than ours.