Word #2

[From Dave's message at Mom's service.]

Ann's second word of wisdom is: “Own your Sin. Repent.”

There is no greater way to grease the bearings of a relationship than to take responsibility for your own mistakes, foolishness, meanness and sin.

Ann spent a great deal of time ruminating, meditating and thinking about God’s truth. She measured it out to see how it fit her life. She would try it on. She would obey. She also knew how short the gap was between obedience to God’s way and asserting her way.

I would say that Mom struggled with God—in a good way. Some people fight God. And lose. Ann struggled with God. She was fond of saying, “Ego dies hard.” She also wanted to ruminate on something until she had it figured out. Here is how God taught her in regard to her marriage. Butterflies struggle or they do not live. Ann was the same way in her transformation.

One day at Pie in the Sky over lunch, we were talking about our reading in the One Year Bible. Mom read through the Bible over the course of a year these last couple of years. She said, “I don’t think it is fair that Moses could not enter the Promised Land. Why didn’t God let him?” I replied that Moses had disobeyed God and that was God’s decision. Moses would lead the people. Moses would see the Promised Land and then he would die and be buried.

I told her that Moses did what Adam did in the Garden. He participated in the hypocrisy of blame. Adam sinned. When God asked, “Why?” Adam pointed to Eve and said, “The woman that YOU gave me, caused me to sin.” Double blame. In our reading that day, Moses (Dt 3) blamed the Israelites for causing him to be angry and disobey God. He did not own his own sin.

Those principles from Scriptures stayed with Ann. She often talked about it. She was saying, “If you sin, own it. Repent. Accept God’s grace. Grow through it.” 

I believe it influenced her thought. When reading John Eldridge’s, “Waking of the Dead” in fall of 2010, she noticed a poem by one of her favorite authors, George MacDonald. This became her life poem from his “Diary of an Old Soul.” This poem is like a morning prayer in which the speaker seeks God’s grace to sustain her through the day without giving in to temptation. MacDonald wrote:

With every morn my life afresh must break
The crust of self, gathered about me fresh;
That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shake
The darkness out of me, and rend the mesh
The spider-devils spin out of the flesh —
Eager to net the soul before it wake,
That it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake.
~ George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul

Ann felt like too many marriages exist on the absurdity of blame. She saw in her own life how she blamed her own poor attitude or behavior on Bill when, in reality, she was at fault. How could Bill make things right for her perceived injustices blamed on him? He could not. That is the absurdity of blame.

I think it is incredible how Ann continued to grow and learn and recognize God’s truth for her life from Scripture. Her second Whispered Word to us is: “Own your sin. Repent!”

[...more to follow.]