VOICES: Danny's 45th Birthday Tribute...A Crechendo of Pain And A Crechendo of Purpose

There is a voice inside each of us...it acknowledges our potential as well as our fears. It is easy to listen to the voice that speaks the loudest. I have been in the life of a man...who for the first decade of our relationship (5 years dating and almost 5 years of marriage) easily heard the voice of potential. In fact, if he ever forgot it was screaming at him, all he needed to do was to watch our wedding video where the videographer asked me the question as I was going in to the wedding chapel, what is was about him that I was most attracted to? My response? "His potential!"

Potential drives us. It ignites our passion. It speaks to our soul. It trusts in our call...especially when it is a mandate from God. What it cannot do is unwind the wounds which are nothing more than ways we have coped, lies we have believed, and roadblocks to our destiny.

As I sit and think about those voices in my own head and compare them to my husband's, I realize that Danny is anointed. While that term used to intimidate me, I now realize that what God selects for each of our surrendered hearts is perfectly equipped in every way to fulfill its destiny. For Danny, his anointing focuses on the call. Nothing detracts from his focus except enormous and painful distractions that hold his heart hostage, like birth pains in labor. Because he is fallible the process of learning to surrender to the dance is the greatest challenge. It supersedes every wound. I often remind myself that while each blow to his body, soul and spirit have wounded him, they have been wounds that are being healed by God Himself and they were allowed for a much larger purpose than what we can understand with our limited ability to conceive of God's ways.
1 Corinthians 2:9 comes to mind: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him." We are not able to know exactly what that means in our trials, but God knows that in our finite ability to understand the pain we endure during this life, His promises give us hope.

The second half of our marriage...the next 10 years, has shown the other voice's determined whispers and clanging for the purpose of creating fear. Fear of the unknown.

The knowledge he gained through his sickness has taken him on a journey into places of understanding of the workings of the body that he otherwise never would have visited. God Himself allowed the once virile man to fall captive to the law of diminishing returns. I can remember the places and spaces along the way that anticipated a healthy body again one day...and expectantly on this side of Heaven. The statement Danny would make was this..."if I could just regain my health...." (concluding that all else would be insignificant by comparison)...every challenge with our constitutionally corrected family, disappointing business ventures, rises and falls of various kinds, have all merged to a place where there is nowhere to turn except to the only voice that matters...His voice.

My husband is now well!! Physically. The process God took him through to teach him what he needed to learn to teach others has served its purpose. And now there is another challenge we walk through for another dimension of healing. It threatens aspects of our life that additionally challenges our family and it is perhaps even more painful than the physical aspect because it criticizes our efforts to restore our family to wholeness from the emotional as well as the physical wounds of that befell each of us. Once again, there is a journey that we are forced to travel with variables that aren't based on science. The battle for relationship has even more dimensions than the physical path of restoration. I have learned that both types of suffering have their roots in lies. The goal my husband has in his teaching reveals where and how those lies began. It takes the body's ability to heal back to the cellular level...where life begins and ends. In our emotional healing, we also must go back to the place our healing begins and ends...with our Creator who desires a relationship that is built on trust, freedom of choice, and evidence of love and desire for blessing those who choose His direction regardless of the consequences or uncertainties.

I sat down to write this as a way to honor my husband on his birthday, and realized that this is a message every one of us that trusts in God with all of our heart needs to dissect. Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us to "Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take." We often stop there in our quoting, but verse 7-8 bring it all together: "Don't be impressed with your own wisdom. Instead, fear the Lord and turn away from evil. Then you will have healing for your body and strength for your bones."

The understanding that my husband sought was not just for his own benefit or healing. It is a message that the world needs to hear in a time when our understanding of imperative issues involving our health is absolutely coming apart at its core. The institutions that are supposed to have this understanding locked down have failed us. Our leaders are profiting from their self-imposed and self-righteous agendas. Why is it so challenging for logic to retain its place? I still wrestle with my frustrations that I believe have that exact perspective creating turmoil within me. And as the challenges become greater, the more I realize there is another agenda that desires to undermine the effort that this anointing was given for.

I know God will intervene at exactly the right time and with every lesson learned and with each blow that frustrates our effort, a greater determination arises within that swells our spirit to persevere. The lesson we are learning is that while we have this mission to carry out, we cannot do it in our own strength. "...This is what the Lord says: Do not be afraid! Don't be discouraged by this mighty army, for the battle is not yours, but God's...you will not even need to fight. Take your positions, then stand still and watch the Lord's victory. He is with you...Do not be afraid or discouraged. Go out against them tomorrow, for the Lord is with you!" 2 Chronicles 20:15-17.

We are AS ONE in our posture to take the message to the masses. We have an amazing group of people that also have inflated hearts for this mission and who see far beyond the distractions of our foes. What we are now learning is only going to be found in our surrendered posture and learning to dance with Him in the lead as there is no where to turn. There are no words to be spoken; the position is already taken and now we wait for Him to set the captives free. The captives are not only people, but burdens for freedom. They are stolen dreams, unmet expectations and frustrated efforts. There is much at stake: Freedom from bondage.

What God desires for His people can only be found in the greatest of measure when we cannot do anything but wait. Coming to the end of our own efforts is a foreign concept that we could not even comprehend until we ran out of our own natural resources: whether physical strength, finances or ideas. We are now understanding what total surrender means and while we didn't abandon our inclinations to fight, God allowed our circumstances to force our surrender. His mission is not our own. And because it belongs to Him, and we are merely his messengers, as in any battle of biblical proportion, we must allow Him to fight it for us. And as we surrender in the battle, we learn it is really a dance. He is in the lead and we move according to His direction. If we really desire to trust in our Lord, He will not have it any other way to mature us in our faith and our character than to allow nothing but His grace to lead our dance.