“He made me this way. Why would He make me this way and then say it’s wrong to want what I want?”
That was Karlo’s major faith struggle. He walked away because he couldn’t understand why a ‘loving’ God would let anyone’s life be so miserable. The first time he realized that he liked men, he was mortified. He didn’t want it. He was a teenager at a new school, living in a different country, away from the rest of his family. He wanted to be ‘cool’, to have friends, to fit in, and he thought that being gay would lead to complications that he wasn’t ready to deal with.
Any sort of answer, even hypothetical ones, always led to dead ends. I gave up trying to find answers for him; it was really a conversation between him and God. He knew that because I openly said so. I told him that I wasn’t there to tell him what was right or wrong, that I didn’t have the answers to all the why’s, and that I didn’t have solutions to all his troubles. I was just there to walk with him through that turbulent road, just so that he wouldn’t be alone.
We used to have objective conversations from time to time when we talked as friends, not as husband and wife, and it felt so rewarding to get him to talk to me like he doesn’t have to tiptoe around fragile glass. In one of these conversations, I remember telling him that it seemed like he was living out of boxes, kind of like someone who moves houses so frequently that they don’t even bother unpacking anymore. My heart ached for him. I wanted him to have a home, to have a place where he felt and knew he belonged. During these dialogues, I felt like he unpacked a little bit more – the good, the bad, the ugly. And over time, I learned that I was able to accept him more, even when we didn’t always agree with each other.
I’m not some superhuman angelic being with a high tolerance for everything. I have always been bull-headed and temperamental, or at least I was, before I sincerely pursued my walk of faith with Jesus. With my relationship with Karlo, the one thing that held me together was grace.
I spent some time last night reading about grace before going to bed. It sounds like a plain enough word, like something you say before meals or another term to describe elegant movement. So I Googled it, searching specifically for its use in the context of Christianity. Simply defined, grace is “the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God.” I wrote down other memorable quotes on grace in my (resurrected) journal:
“Grace is love that cares and stoops and rescues.”
“Grace is unconditional love toward a person who does not deserve it.”
“Grace is mercy, not merit.”
“Grace is the opposite of karma, which is getting what you deserve.”
And the source of this grace is God Himself, as shown in the life of Jesus. After witnessing all the crimes and depravity that humans are capable of, Jesus did not recoil in revulsion or distance Himself from the “unclean” ones. Instead, he sat with them, shared meals with them, let them feel that there was Someone who loved them still, and ultimately died on the cross so that we can all have a shot at going to Heaven when we die. That is pure grace, and that was what I wanted to extend to Karlo, who has been avoiding God and faith and anything spiritual in the past 2 years or so.
I remember praying about it one time, asking God to MAKE him listen, to MAKE him turn his life back around but His answer in my heart was, “He is running away from Me, but he still listens to you.” Seriously, that wasn’t the answer that I was hoping for. I knew it was going to be an intensely challenging and emotionally draining task. It was going to be tough, but I made it my mission of sorts to keep the line of grace open in Karlo’s life.
My obedience to God’s will at that time forced me to grow – I had to reexamine my motives in all my interactions with Karlo and be mindful of my thoughts and words. I had to keep going back to the Bible (mostly 1 Corinthians 13:4-7) to measure my love against the only acceptable standard for me. Not pop culture, not relationship or self-help books, none of those things…I wanted my love for Karlo to replicate God’s love for me, so I knew which standard to choose.
I wanted nothing less than pure, untainted grace. I wanted Karlo to remember what it felt like to have God’s grace carry him through the deepest valleys and how that same grace can help him soar through triumphs once again. And in order to do that, I had to draw from my own personal experiences of God’s saving grace. I am stubborn by nature, and I’d like to believe that God used my stubbornness as a starting point. Like a potter (Jeremiah 18:1-6) or a silver smith (Malachi 3:2-4), He built on it, reshaped and refined it until it turned into grit.
My grit comes from grace, nothing more, nothing less.
And I will continue to draw from that same grace to fuel my grit — this time, for my daughters and for myself.
I am just a secretary 