The quotes are from the bridge of the song Bless God by Cody Carnes
He is the God of the raging seas and the quiet clearing of forests. He is the God who stands beside me in battle and the God who sits with me in the still listlessness of the aftermath. “Is there anything good that can come out of me” I cried out in my darkest hour. Worship.
“Bless God in the darkest valley”
It was May of 2014 and I had just disappointed my family in a way I never thought I would. Perhaps also in a way they never thought I would. They dreamed of a wedding in three weeks and I could not shake the feeling of an impending divorce , so I ended it. It was the thing that sent shockwaves through my family all the way to India. How could I, the one who never put a toe out of line when it came to tradition, do the thing that most Indian women aren’t brave(or stupid) enough to do. I called off the wedding to my fiancee who I knew for a little more than two months. I had only seen him in person twice, and one of those two times was because I lied to get him to come to Wichita. The contrived desperation with which I spoke with him, convinced him that he needed to come to Wichita to sign documents that were required for the wedding. I’m not proud that I did what I did but I have never regretted it either.
“Bless God when the weapon’s forming
Bless God when the walls are falling
Bless God ’cause He goes before me“
The moment I met him, I knew he was not the one for me. He did not love the God I worshiped, vowing with every conversation, that he would remove me from my friends, my family, my church and the thing I loved doing most, writing. “If it does not bring good money” he said “then you are not allowed to write once we are married”. It seemed like a silly thing to say but I did not have the luxury of time to reason with him about the prison he was building for me. He gave me dead flowers on our engagement day and said it was the cheapest thing he could find. I was grateful. No one had ever given me flowers before, dead or alive. Coincidentally(or miraculously, I’ll never know), the wedding invitations had to be sent back for spelling errors three times and still hadn’t been sent out. I finally wrote that dreaded email, including his family and mine, telling them that the wedding was not going to happen. He threatened suicide, then threatened violence, then responded to my email telling the world, in the most callous way, that he no longer wanted to marry me. I didn’t care about the email. I was free.
My parents were shattered. My dad chose to express his grief with quiet tear filled moments, retreating into himself and my mom chose to express hers with rage. I had resigned from my job in anticipation of a move to Ohio after the wedding and suddenly found I had twenty four hours to spend in the little blue walled room of my parent’s house, with barely enough space for a desk, a chair and a mirror. I learned that if I left my room, at least one of my parents would be just outside, expressing their grief in their own way so the blue walled room became my safe haven. Nearly every day my mom would bring another suitcase filled with my things and place it in the room, asking me to leave the house. I couldn’t. I had no where to go and no way to get own place since I didn’t have a job. The room was soon comically full of suitcases that jumping over them was the only way to reach the restroom. His relatives, and mine would call my parents, call me names and ask my mother what they could do so their children don’t end up like me. They didn’t know they were on speaker phone and that the walls of our house are paper thin. “Don’t send them to America” my mother would tell them, blaming the country for the egregious creature I had become. If I wasn’t in America, I would have had to live out my nightmare until this day.
“Bless God when my hands are empty
Bless God with a praise that costs me“
My mother soon discovered that there wasn’t an outlet for her anger since I had chosen to avoid her at all costs so she barged into the a space I thought, until then, was mine. The little blue walled room. Every day she would poke her head through the door and say things to me that no child should ever hear from a parent. I endured it until I couldn’t, so I cried out to a God I knew so little about. One thing I did know is that I was his and he was mine.
“Bless God for He holds the vict’ry
Bless God for He’s always with me
Bless God for He’s always worthy“
Relief appeared in the shape of a 100 pound, red Golden Retriever called Sandy. He was my sister’s who seldom exercised him. Taking him out for a long walk was my excuse to stay outdoors, wandering around the neighborhood until I knew my mother would be asleep and it worked on most days. It was then that God showed me how to worship. I discovered an album from my favorite Christian artist and played it on repeat as I walked around the neighborhood for hours with the poor, overweight dog who wasn’t used to being exercised that much. The music spoke of a God who was sovereign and loving at the same time. A God who was greater than anything I could imagine. It made me proverbially gaze at his wonder which made everything else seem mundane. How could something so contradictory give me such solace. I christened my walks Worship walks. I hadn’t realized that He had pointed my heart towards Him with every song that played through my antiquated headphones. I was in the presence of the King of Kings and that, in itself, strangely gave me a hope for what, I did not yet know, but it was a hope I had never known.
Isn’t his love so profound? Isn’t his rescue of those of us who do not know him and yet call upon him so revealing of his character? The dark, quiet labyrinth of streets of this Wichita neighborhood had become my hiding place, my alter, where he call me away so I would know him. It wasn’t until months later that He would take me away to Colorado, 420 miles away and give me a home that was mine. He planted lilacs when the house was built, that wouldn’t bloom until that day I asked Him for flowers(specifically lilacs), not knowing I had three lilac bushes in my backyard. He is mine and I am His beloved.
“Bless God in the sanctuary
Bless God in the fields of plenty“