I am Gomer

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I feel like a whore.

Yes, I know that’s the kind of statement that make people do a double take. My heart has been hard for a long while and it’s just gotten worse over time. I got angry with God a few years ago about not having what I wanted in my life—at one point I would have said it was because I didn’t have a man in my life. But the bare and brutal truth is that I went out and found me a man…and then I got angry with God because he didn’t turn out to be the man he should have been. And that’s when I started to dismiss God and decided (even consciously at times) I didn’t care what HIS will for me was, because He didn’t give me what I wanted. More so, what I longed for with the deepest part of my being. “To hell with Him.” I thought that at times. It wasn’t the first time I’ve thought that about God. As a child, when things were awful at home, I said the same thing—directly to Him. “If you are the kind of God who will let this happen, then I want nothing to do with you.”

I didn’t dismiss Him or my faith entirely—but I have been angry with Him and unwilling to listen. Or believe His will is good … for me. I went my own way, I guess, doing what I wanted, trying to meet those deepest longings any way that I wanted. Thankfully, He didn’t let me commit any kind of sin that would have lasting, unbearable consequences. In fact most people, if they only saw the outside of my life, probably didn’t see the defiance lurking under the surface.

But it didn’t make me happy. And my life has gotten more complex and filled with challenges in these last months. Every day (it seems) junk happens and my emotions are dominated by anger, frustration, irritability, impatience, self righteousness, pride, depression, unhappiness, suspicion, mistrust… Not emotions I enjoy or WANT to be the foremost emotions in my heart. And because I wasn’t happy, I would do whatever I wanted to try and feel better. A vicious cycle.

And then I started going back to Sunday School to hear Jeff teach on Romans. What I’ve been hearing has brought me to tears so many times the last few weeks. Not a few small tears leaking out of the corner of my eyes, either. Why? Because I have not been abandoned. I am loved so much by God, He was willing to give up what was most precious to Him. Because I have not been abandoned to myself.

I was reading in Hosea this morning when I realized I felt like a whore restored to her husband.

She said, “I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.”

Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them.

Then she will say, “I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.”

She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her silver and gold which they used for Baal…. Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There will I give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Trouble a door of hope. There she will respond as in the days of her youth…

“In that day”, declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master’…. I will betroth you to me with righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness and you will acknowledge the Lord.”

I have not been abandoned to myself.