LAND OF THE LIVING MAGAZINE - Magazine - Page 31
SONG STORY
It was 21 days after our failed adoption.
I was in Virginia Beach, where we had driven
15 hours to be awaiting the arrival of our twin
baby boy and girl, all to find out that the
babies were born and the birth mother had
changed her mind. We had made plans to be
in the hospital room when the babies were to
be delivered but found out that she had
already given birth… and we had no idea.
I felt robbed of my dreams. It was a gut punch
to all the promises I felt God had made to us.
I was driving alone in the car and I said to
God, “I just wanted to hear two words. Two
words that I’m never gonna hear– “I’m sorry.”
He replied with those two words, ‘I’m sorry.’”
In my mind I thought, “God, You are perfect!
You didn’t do anything wrong in this situation.
How can you be uttering those two words?
And He literally sang His response through my
lips and I started singing these words out loud
in my car…
“I’m sorry, it was never meant to be this way,
I’m sorry, love was never meant to
lead to pain,
I’m sorry, freewill was never meant
to make you bleed,
I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Tears filled my eyes and it was a moment I will
never forget. It marked me. I went home and
sat at the piano and wrote the chorus and
bridge.
The tendency in pain is that we want to find
someone to blame. We want to blame the
person who hurt us, ourselves, the enemy or
even God. The truth of it is…we will never be
truly free from pain, until we find someone to
forgive. God took all blame on the cross for
every bit of suffering we will ever walk through
and any pain we will ever experience. He
swallowed blame on the cross. The only thing
left to do is forgive.
Sometimes we’re not given those two words.
We’re not given the privilege of hearing what
we so long to hear because if those words are
said then it can aim an arrow at someone to
blame rather than finding someone to hold
you till you’re healed.
But with two outstretched arms, Jesus did and
His beckoning on the cross was, “Father,
forgive them for they know not what they are
doing.”
I didn’t need an apology. I needed God.
I needed Him to look me in the eye and tell me
that everything may not be okay, but He was
with me and for me, every step of the way.
Because everyone was doing what they
thought was right in the situation and we were
all finding God in the process of our pain. If it
had gone our way, would we have seen Him so
clearly, so powerfully, so wonderfully?
Absolutely not. For that I will thank Him every
day for each day it didn’t go my way, so I
could see Him make a way where there
was no way.
And at the end of the day… (or more like 7
weeks), He made it up to me and we got a call
from the Birth Mother to come pick
up the twins!
This song is special because it’s God singing
to us from His perspective. The church has
done really well writing songs to sing to Jesus,
but it’s rare that we allow Him to sing back to
us. This one is giving the mic to His voice to
say something when we think He is most
silent…in our suffering.
When He crafted creation… pain, sickness,
and suffering weren’t a part of the original
design for humanity. We pulled all of that into
our timeline of life, when we pulled on the
forbidden fruit from the Tree of Good AND
EVIL. But even in our suffering, there is a tree
that offers life and life abundantly. When we
lean into the tree that Christ hung Himself on,
and we pull on the fruit from that tree, we can
find the joy set before us even in suffering.
And all of the ways that the enemy put you
through hell, God will allow you to experience
heaven.
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