It is Well-Because He Asked!-Marriage Restoration

It is Well-Because He Asked!

Anyone who has been following along with me long enough knows about my relationship with the song, “It is well” by Kirsten DiMarco, Knows my love/hate relationship with the deep meaning of this song. But for those of you who don’t. Here it is, again.

I was in the last years of my storm when God brought this song into my life. At first, it was just a beautiful song that I decided to play again when it came across my YouTube. Then I chose to bring it into my worship sessions where I would spend time letting songs minister to me. Where I focused on the words and let them bring healing and focus on the Lord. That was when the words struck me hard. “It is well”……um NO. 

I started to reject the song in the flesh. Nothing about what I was going through made me want to say it was well in my soul. Because my soul was in agony. Literally being torn in two over the rebellion and selfishness of my spouse. But I could not stop playing the song because the Holy Spirit locked in on it as an assignment. He wanted to teach me something and He’d be darned if I was going to say no to Him. 

So began the struggle. The beautiful, powerful, heart wrenching struggle that ultimately led to my demise. The dying to my pride, my rebellion, my control…………and I entered an even deeper, more trusting, and intimate place with God. One that I didn’t even realize I wanted UNTIL I got there. Yes, THIS song did that for me. 

How?

The message of the song went against everything in my flesh. I was very willing to be ok, thank God, give Him praise and worship Him, as long as things were moderately good in my life. But they were NOT even close. We had 3 young children, one of them just a year old, and my husband was ‘living’ at home while openly having an affair. He was gone most nights and weekends and bragged about how much fun he was having going places with her. While I was left at home with 3 small children and a house in foreclosure. Nothing about this was well in my soul and I was very vocal about this to God when I felt Him trying to get me to yield and submit to His promptings.

“Oh I know what You want me to say God. While this is all wrong, I am going to make a choice to say it’s well. Well I CAN’T. I just CAN’T and I am not happy that you are asking me to do this impossible thing.”  Oh but He did. For WEEKS I played that song. Sometimes I looped it and played it for hours and hours straight as I paced my home praying, crying, rebelling. Sometimes I got close to yielding to what God was asking of me, but that rebellion and pain was strong. “I just don’t want to say it is well, God …….anything else? I will say anything but this. Please”

I knew what God wanted. He wanted me to say I was OK IN the storm. But I wanted God to remove the storm so I could be well. I had so much fear that this would NEVER end and the words my husband spoke would be forever true. “I am always going to have her in my life, we will always be friends and you can’t make me give her up.” I was terrified that God was asking me to be ok with this, for it to be well in my soul that my husband was going to keep this woman as a ‘friend’ and I would always be living in this insecure agony. But that was my fears twisting everything that God was asking of me. He could have just told me that was not what He was asking, but He didn’t. He wanted me to yield without knowing that for sure.

Finally, after being so weary from fighting Him, I asked Him to help me be ok with saying it. Hey, it was a step toward the right direction, right? Just like the many times I didn’t want to forgive but was able to ask Him to get me to that point of being able to. 

As I opened myself up to the possibilities of surrendering, instead of being adamant that I would never be well in my soul as long as things were not going the way I wanted. Something started to stir in me. Instead of being desperate for the storm to end, so I could start to live my life normally again, without fear, without immense pain…………I started to see the possibility of living in the storm without the storm destroying me. I started to understand that being well in my soul IN the storm meant just that. I could be well. I could be in a place where all hell was breaking loose around me, but be sheltered by Him because I made the choice to let Him be that shelter. 

I started to understand what He was asking, and what He was not asking me. He wanted to shelter and protect me and chose to believe that even though things were not well, I was well in my soul. That what my husband was doing, was not destroying me, he didn’t have that much power as long as I gave that power to God!

That song took on a whole new meaning for me. Now I played it with a new understanding that I was taking back my life and giving it to the Lord in a way that I knew would protect me from destruction and harm. I knew that by saying “It is well” I was also saying that what the enemy meant for harm, God was going to use for good. That I was being pressed but not crushed. That I was a tree planted deep and while there was drought, I was still being watered because I chose to say “It is well” and trust in the Lord. 

7 The man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence indeed is the LORD, is blessed. 8 He will be like a tree planted by water: it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn’t fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit. Jeremiah 17:7-8

Instead of the song trying to force me into conceding that I was ok with my situation, I conceded that I was ok IN my situation because I was IN GOD. My soul was ok, my soul was WELL, opposed to unwell, bitter, destroyed because I chose to let God make me Ok. It was a very freeing time to yield that control over. But it was not a one-time decision. I had to do this daily, this dying to self, several times a day because the flesh won’t stay dead! It keeps rising up and wanting to walk in what it knows, being a victim, blaming and wanting the one responsible to pay dearly. Our flesh has been taught to be secure until fear or pain comes. It has not learned how to be secure in the place that brings the fear and pain because we have full trust and confidence in Him.

Times are changing rapidly around us. We are going to be asked over and over to trust Him during these unsure times because waiting to be ok only IF things get better doesn’t look like an option. He wants us to be OK while things are falling apart around us. We are not ok with what we see, with evil and destruction, with lawlessness and rebellion. No, He is not asking us to be ok with that……….but He is asking that we let our souls not become destroyed by it, that we stay safe within Him, sheltered so that we can love from the right heart. Those that can’t, will find their love has grown cold and bitterness and hate will rule their hearts. 

So ask Him to help you make this choice, ask Him to help you say “It is well because He asked.” It is God’s will for you to come through this storm so much better, WELL, not bitter, not destroyed.

Standing with you,
Sheila Hollinger