When God Says No

 

  Everyone loves a happy ending.  Especially when God swoops down and performs a miracle.  The child suddenly cured of cancer? Praise God!  The father healed from addiction?  Praise God!  I will praise Him right along with you.  Our God is mighty.  But sometimes, even when we are down on our knees begging God for a miracle, God says No.   As often as God says Yes in the bible (healing the Leper, raising Lazarus from the dead)  He just as often says No ( Job anyone?).  We don’t like the stories where God says no.  They don’t sell many books or make for a great movie.  It’s human nature to want the happy ending.

     I was reading a wonderful post today about a woman whose husband beat 10 years of addiction by giving his addiction over to God.  I love those stories.  We need those stories of perseverance and hope.  Their happy ending was the miracle I had prayed for over and over again in my own marriage.  Please God, take my husband’s addiction away.  Please heal his heart of all his pain.  Please restore our marriage and family to a healthy place.  Please, God, please.  God didn’t answer my desperate prayers how I wanted Him to, however.  Instead, God embraced me, looked lovingly at my family, and I imagine with more compassion than I will ever know, God said No.

     Ken and I started dating in high school.  We were young and madly in love.  He drank some in high school, but so did almost everyone else.  He drank more in college, but so did everyone else.  I was sure his drinking would get better once we were out of college and married.  I was naïve and I was wrong.  He was a very functional alcoholic.  He had a great career and mostly drank just on the weekends.  No one at his work ever suspected he was an alcoholic.  Our families didn’t even know.  We hid it well.  I was too embarrassed to tell anyone.  He was a weekend binge drinker- once he started he didn’t stop until he was falling down, passed out drunk.

     Every once in awhile, Ken would get in trouble with his drinking.  He would get arrested for public intoxication at a concert or picked up for a DWI.  At different times in our 15 year relationship he lost his driver’s license, paid some hefty fines and was ordered to AA meetings.  He wanted to get better.  He prayed that God would make him better.  Sometimes he would get control of his alcoholism and stay sober for 2 months, 6 months or even a year.  I loved that man sooo much.  Every time he quit drinking I rejoiced and dared to hope this would be the last time.

     The last time Ken was sober, it lasted two wonderful years.  He was vice president of his company, we were living the dream- a big house, financial security, 5 and 4 year old girls and a much hoped for 2 month old baby boy.  Then one sunny fall day, Ken left our home in Kansas to attend a Nebraska football game.  Later that night I received a phone call from the state patrol.  

He had been reported for erratic driving and his car had been found wrecked along the side of a road, empty except for a passenger seat full of beer cans.  He was missing for 5 excruciating days.  On the fifth day, I received the call- they had found his body, dead, on the edge of a nearby interstate pond.  Later, more of the story came out.  He had met up with some old college friends at the football game, they had bought him drinks to congratulate him on the birth of his new son.  He made the drunken decision, like he had several other times before, to get in the car and drive drunk.  I thank God no one else was hurt by his behavior. That may very well be one of God’s miracles in this story.

     I prayed.  I prayed day and night.  My family prayed.  My church prayed.  But God said No.  I’ll never know why God said no.  But here’s the thing people often miss when God says no.  God was still working in the story.  God was still present even when He said no.  God was there working ahead of what was to come when He sent friends into our lives that brought us back to a loving church community a year earlier.  He was there when he brought me into a bible study group of amazing women 2 months prior to Ken’s death.  He was there when my parents drove the eight hours to take care of me and my kids for months after.  He was there when my neighbors gathered in my living room and cried with me and brought me meals for months and months.  I could never even begin to list all the big and small ways God was there during the darkest time of my life.  But the way He was there the most?  His very presence. I had a history of depression and anxiety but at that darkest time, I felt a peace and even a joy in my relationship with Jesus.  That time of my life was the sweetest gift of grace I’ve ever known.  The worst thing I had feared for so long had happened and all I could do was call on God to see me through.  And He did.  Maybe those are the biggest miracles of all-the ones you can’t see but take place in your soul.

     Twenty years ago, God said no to my prayer to bring my husband safely home, but he said yes to being there every moment since.  Today, I have been happily married to a Godly man who loves my children as his own.  My oldest daughter is married and a successful college campus pastor.  My middle daughter is a caring and compassionate NICU nurse taking care of critically ill babies.  My son, who never had the chance to know his dad, is starting his Sophomore year of college.  It’s not the happy ending I envisioned, but getting to this place of deep abiding peace is truly a miracle.