My Story, Part 4

After we were engaged I faced probably the hardest thing in my life.  On one of our phone conversations Japheth asked me to go back and become a member again of the church I’d left earlier that spring.  I cried for days.  

No church is perfect . . . yet when is it right to leave a church? So I saw some inconsistencies, yet that didn’t make my response right.  Submission to ones authorities is a vital thing.  I had a long talk with my Dad.  Finding out that he thought returning to the church would be the right thing to do, meant a lot to me.  I hadn’t known he felt that way . . .  In fact, to be honest, I felt that some of the attitudes I had developed, had grown from some of his responses to the authorities there.  Yet that still did not make it right for me to feel that way and move on it.  The church I attended while teaching school in Michigan was also struggling and about to split over similar issues. I had come to think the world of the family I stayed with, and felt their support in leaving my home church.  In all this I struggled with what it meant to stand firm and be loyal.  So now I was in a MESS.  

I was not a member anywhere and that greatly concerned my husband-to-be, and the pastor (Japheth’s dad) of the church up in MN.  Would I listen to my leadership there and do what was right?  For a brief moment I considered what would happen if I did not go back, but stubbornly hold on to my decision leave there.  I quickly told myself I cannot even consider that.  God knew what it would take for me to listen and obey.  

I look back now and marvel at God’s plan.  Sometimes I think of how quickly we were engaged and wonder at the wisdom of it all.  Yet, then I reflect that this was where God needed to bring me, for me to heed this request.  If it wouldn’t have been for Japheth, I don’t know if I could’ve done it.   He so wisely counseled me over the phone . . . it was the right thing to do, yet my heart could not go along.  But in spite of that I did humble myself and ask to be taken back to as a member at McGaheysville Mennonite Church.  It was an experience I never will forget.  

I’ve regretted so often that I left in the first place.  Can God make beauty out of ashes?  I know He can. . . yet at times like this I tend to let the doubts assail my soul.  What good can come out of this great failing? I especially remember feeling the eyes of the young people on me several years younger and down.  Some of them I had taught in Sunday School.  What kind of an example was I now?

I am so glad though, that I was obedient to follow the whole thing through.  I have been blessed abundantly through it.  When I go back to visit, there isn’t a wall up like there was.  I can walk through those doors and feel welcome and clean.

There isn’t a better feeling in the world than being at peace with God and man, having all the turmoil and doubts taken care of.  We’ll have all of eternity to rejoice that we made things right!

Like the Psalm 107:15-22  says “Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children of men.  For He hath broken the gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron in sunder.  Fools, because of their transgression and because of their iniquities are afflicted. . . .  Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble and He saveth them out of their distresses.  He sent His Word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions.  . .  and declare His works with rejoicing.”