Song 2:10-12
My lover spoke and said to me,
“Rise up, my darling,
my beautiful one, and come with me.
For lo! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come.”
I feel like too often I post stories of hardship and not of hope. Towards the end of the year I made my youth group girls collect and share stories of answered prayers. Here are a few of my own.
1. The week we returned home, Christina and I lived alone. Our lives were simple, and mostly involved job hunting and cleaning the house during the day (mowing the neglected yard took four hours one morning). The event of the day was dinner, which we planned out days in advance. (Ok, so we were bored. We were living alone in a town where we don’t know anyone! Furthermore, it was Rock Hill…not exactly a bustling metropolis.) I was also trying to rest and recover from the intense school year.
Each evening, as Christina sat down to eat our elaborate meals (like I said, we were really bored!), we prayed for four things: 1, that we would find jobs, 2, that a certain young man would receive the go-ahead to marry a certain young woman, 3, that another friend would find a job, 4, that two of our close friends would be able to work out their relationship. After a week of being home, I had a job interview. The interview was fantastic, and I climbed into the car and put my head down on the steering wheel and prayed, “God, I’m so afraid to ask you for this…but this is the first thing I’ve been excited about in ages. Please let me get this job.”
A few hours later, I received a phone call and I had landed the job. For the first time in months, I felt real joy and anticipation for the days ahead. That evening, a few more phone calls informed me that the young man in #2 was cleared to propose and the couple in #4 were now dating. I was floored. After months and months of prayers that went unanswered, it was overwhelming to have so many answered in one day. I couldn’t believe it. Ever so gently, God was reminding me that he still loved me.
2. This summer has just been fun. Our family decided to invite the college kids from our church over for dinner. I’d also been looking for opportunities to lead worship. The two just happened to coincide on the Sunday before father’s day, and we had a rollicking good time; first leading worship and laughing and enjoying the praise team, and then playing games and hanging out with the college guys until 1 am. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed like that. My Dad won the trip to Israel he had always dreamed of having. I went to my cousin’s wedding and enjoyed the close company of family. Five friends called throughout the month to tell me they were engaged. All of these were simple joys, but simple joys have been few and far between in the midst of depression. One day on my way home from work, I blared praise music and just thanked God for something I used to take for granted: joy.
3. I invited a friend to come visit. I hadn’t seen him in over a year, and he was going to be in Atlanta…a three hour drive, but much closer than he usually is. A few days after inviting him, but still uncertain whether he was coming, I drove to music practice and prayed, “Lord, I don’t want to be pushy about leading worship. But I’d love to lead the Sunday he comes. Would you please have them ask me?” Later that evening, the worship leader and his wife told me they were going to be out of town and asked if I would fill in for the following week. Such an obvious answer to prayer! I wondered if that meant my friend David would come.
Later that week, David called me back and told me that it wasn’t going to work out like planned—he was flying through Detroit, not Atlanta. I tried not to sound too disappointed. Clearly, our sovereign God had chosen to say no to my hopes. I was okay with that. After all, God had been saying yes an awful lot lately. It was uncharacteristic of him…a no had to be in there somewhere.
That Saturday, whilst innocently sitting in my kitchen, minding my own business and trusting that God knew best, a knock at the door revealed my friend David, live and in the flesh. He and my mom had schemed together to surprise me, and he had cancelled his flight and come to visit. I was completely shocked. I was so used to God denying even my smallest hopes, yet here was one standing before me. I kept waiting to wake up and find it was just a dream. Yet for an entire fun-and-adventure filled week, I woke up and he was still there. I couldn’t believe it. This was not the way I had come to anticipate God working. I felt like God was finally jumping out from behind the clouds and calling out the long-awaited “surprise!”
4. Finally, last weekend my dearest RA buddy Caroline spontaneously drove up to Rock Hill and spent the weekend. It was just in time for us to write our first freshmen letters together and talk through the journey our hearts have been following. We went for a romantic walk around Winthrop (somehow, Caroline and I always end up together in romantic situations…) and talked about our dreams. It was a renewing and affirming time as we shared our hopes for next year and encouraged each other to keep dreaming. Compared to the devastating loneliness of the summer before, the continual stream of encouraging friends, in person, in letters and in phone calls, has been wonderful. I felt like God abandoned me last year, but instead he has surrounded me with his unfailing love in the form of his people.
It hasn’t all been completely happy. Today it has been one year since my classmate Ben Entwistle died. Last week I got an email from my hallmate Chris telling me a friend of hers had just died. Several other friends have told me that they are still in the midst of the storm that, for me, ended in May. Yet it has all been hopeful. Chris wrote to me in her email, But even in Curtis’ death, Jesus taught me some things. I remember sitting here at home thinking, Lord, that’s ridiculous. How could such a gentle spirit be killed so terribly? The way he went out is an oxymoron to the way he lived his life! Of Curtis it was true the saying, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. How? HOW could this have happened to HIM? And then I realized…if this was true of Curtis, how much more so was it true of Jesus?! WOW! Like a lamb before his shearers is silent….Hmm.
I kind of have been feeling (for the first time, I haven’t really ever felt it with any other death) that feeling of, oh, I’ll wake up and it will have just been a dream. But alas, I woke up yesterday morning and he really was dead. And the same feeling happened this morning when I woke up. But the really cool thing was that this morning (haha, ok. So I have my clock alarm radio set to Moody Radio because I usually hate what they’re saying…I’m like AHHH THIS LEGALISM, SHUT UP I CAN’T HANDLE IT! Which FORCES me to get up outta bed and turn off my alarm. 
That’s how I force myself to get up in the mornings. Yup.) I woke up to Chris Tomlin’s song about being raised with Jesus at the end of the world. It was so comforting. I don’t even know what that song is called, but it goes “I will rise when he calls my name….no more sorrow no more pain” y’know? based off of (partly) 1 Thessalonians 4? Anyway, I just laid there listening and thinking…WOW. Curtis. This is true of Curtis. No more pain for him. He doesn’t have to live with the injustice that was done to him. And soon we’ll see him again with thousands upon thousands of angels and ten thousand times ten thousand singing around the throne. And with Ben Entwistle and Rod Jackson and your siblings and with so many other people that we love so dearly! AH! It is going to be great, Katie Klukow, just GREAT!
I cried. I long for that day. But until then, I find strength in her closing: Let’s pray for revival. Let’s come out fighting and after having done everything, let’s STILL stand. Woot! Can’t wait to meet you in the trenches in the fall! What a testimony of courage she is.
Near the end of the school year, fellow RA Jess wrote me a note that contained these verses from Isaiah 40: “Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her sad days are gone and that her sins are pardoned. Yes, the LORD has punished her in full for all her sins.” I think that time has come. The time of tearing is over, the time of rebuilding has begun. The voice that whispered to me “do you love me more than these?” now whispers to me his promises. The one who seemed to desert me now holds me every night. The sovereignty that seemed like brutality last year is now tenderness and compassion. After a year in the trenches, this summer has been a much-needed relief. Praise God for seasons of singing to follow the winters of suffering.
