Sometimes You Get What You Need

For the first week or so after finding that my wife wanted a divorce, I was pretty much an emotional and spiritual wreck. I knew we had problems but didn't think that divorce was the solution, and I was praying pretty much continually for the restoration of our marriage. Now while my spiritual life does tend to wax and wane from time to time, I felt that I've had a pretty good relationship with God for the last few years and had often found comfort in prayer and meditation. However, for that first week I didn't feel that God was even going to respond to me at all, much less answer that particular prayer. I had never felt so bitter in my entire life as I did during that week.

Then one evening I was out mowing some property we have outside the city (on a cantankerous 1946-ish International Harvester tractor borrowed from my dad, which will no doubt be the subject of a future post or two). This is what we call The Land: ten acres of unimproved farmland that I hope to hang on to after the divorce. Once you get started, mowing a big lot on a tractor can pretty much be done on autopilot and I was mowing and praying for a couple of hours (some people meditate while driving their car; Southern Man prays on a tractor). As before, I found no comfort.

Then I changed my prayer; rather than begging the Lord to give me back my marriage, I prayed for the strength and wisdom to deal with the situation and respond to my wife and children as a Godly man should. The wave of peace that washed over me at that moment was like nothing I had ever experienced before in prayer. The bitterness in my heart was swept away in an instant and was replaced by confidence and calm and purpose, and I knew from that moment on that no matter what happened, God would give me not what I wanted, but what I needed.

It looks like Mick and Keith were right all along.