Jeremiah was a bullfrog...

A friend of mine updated her status yesterday, I think it was. It said something about having read Chapter 29 of the book of Jeremiah and loving it. Made me remember why I love Jeremiah, too. So, thought I'd share.

It was January, 2006. My divorce was final on January 4, 2006. I had gone through that icky-divorced-crazy-woman stage in those five months prior to my divorce and was pretty much over it. I was sitting on the couch, facing the silent, dark TV, upstairs at my new apartment - mom and dad's upstairs TV room. Crying. Girls are at Randy's. I'm bored. I'm lost. I'm completely and utterly at the bottom-most point in my life. There's the scene for you.

I had been journaling and reading the Bible like crazy. Grasping all the time for some sort of comfort, comfort that I had preached and promised was there in the Word, so many times in my life. I had been listening to Sara Grove's song, "Jeremiah."

Here is a link: http://saragroves.com/store/theothersideofsomething/lyrics/jeremiah/

It talks about a "fire that burns up in your bones." My kids loved this song and we played it all the time, and for the life of me, I couldn't remember a Bible story about Jeremiah's fire. So, I started reading the book of Jeremiah that day. Whoa. There's some deep, hard-hitting, stuff in that book! I mean, seriously.

"Long ago you broke off your yoke

and tore off your bonds;

you said, 'I will not serve you!'

Indeed, on every high hill

and under every spreading tree

you lay down as a prostitute.

Jeremiah 2:20

Um, ouch. Now, it's talking about Israel turning its back on God. But, I couldn't help but wonder what other applications it could hold. I had stopped going to church regularly, although still praying like crazy all the time. I was actually enjoying the freedom from the controlling fear I was living in - in my marriage. The fear of "what if's." "What if" became "what is." So, no need in worrying about that anymore. No more guilt in the constant thought in the back of my mind, Could there be somebody else out there for me? Is Randy it? Will he leave me? To be perfectly honest, I was REALLY enjoying the attention I was getting as a single woman in the corporate world. This was a FAR contrast to the stay-at-home mom who was constantly worried if she could measure up to the girls on TV, in the magazines, and well, you know.

So, I started off into Jeremiah. Long book. Lots and lots of tongue lashing towards Israel who deserved every bit of it. I felt so down-trodden (how's that for a Biblical term?). Then, one day on that couch, alone again...God spoke to me. Whenever people talk about God speaking to them, you wonder. Well, don't you? Cause, let's face it, we'd like to think He's chatting away at us all the time. You know, telling us the answers to the prayers we constantly pray - Which school should my kid go to? Should I buy this BMW? What should I serve for dinner? But, I truly think He reserves His voice for the moments we KNOW it's from Him. Whether it's big or small. I think He holds His tongue until He knows He'll get the credit and people will be changed from it. Just my opinion. This is what He told me:

¹⁰ "This is what the LORD says: 'You say about this place, "It is a desolate waste, without men or animals." Yet in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are deserted, inhabited by neither men nor animals, there will be heard once more ¹¹ the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bride and bridegroom, and the voices of those who bring thank offerings to the house of the LORD, saying,

"Give thanks to the LORD Almighty,

for the LORD is good;

his love endures forever."

For I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were before,' says the LORD.

Jeremiah 33:10-11

When those words "voices of bride and bridegroom" jumped off those pages and I realized what God was saying to me in that moment, my heart turned a flip. He was telling me that everything was going to be okay. He had someone out there waiting for me. I wouldn't live in my parents' upstairs forever, alone. I WOULD get married and grow old with someone. My body got warm and I started crying with the same fervor as when they first laid Morgan on my stomach when she was born. Uncontrollable joy! There I sat, so defeated, and yet so happy all at once. I had no idea how, but I knew without a doubt that Jesus was exactly Who I had been telling people He was for all those years. My life WAS without men, without a home, even. God assured me at that moment it was all going to be okay.

So, that next month - I met Charlie. One year and five months later we were married less than 100 feet from where I sat that day when God spoke. This was printed on my wedding invitations:

"Give thanks to the LORD Almighty,

for the LORD is good;

his love endures forever."

Jeremiah 33:11