I’ve had a lingering thought floating around in my spirit for awhile now, and I want to share it with you.

Sometimes I feel… God leaves the room.

When I was younger, I certainly thought God wasn’t in my room (in the incorrect way). I dealt with a lot of issues stemming from narcissism from people that were close to me, and it wrecked me in many ways.

That is all I feel should be mentioned here, for the sake of brevity and respect to others.

Anyway, I don’t know if I became codependent because of it. I will say though that my emotions certainly were warped from the experience.

For a long time in part from these people, I felt I had to please people at the expense of my own well-being. I literally didn’t feel happy unless I felt that someone was satisfied with what I did. It was a hell in its own right.

I wouldn’t wish it on my worse enemy, for even when I was happy that someone was delighted in what I did — I would always doubt seconds later what was going on in their heads. Security based on the opinion of other people is no security at all. It is a fast way to lose sanity, and peace.

Anyway, for their sake (or so I thought) I tried to please their every whim to make them happy. Not for my own sake, but because if they weren’t happy they would get volatile FAST.

Even if my reasons were for trying to maintain peace with these people, and prevent fights, it never worked. I later came to learn that people with issues like that had to stir things up because it is the only way they trust to get attention, because who is going to question the state of mind of a “victim”?

Sad honestly, so for years this went on, and I forgot my original reasons for trying so hard to make people happy.

Eventually, I hoped all of my effort was for some purpose. I believed myself one moment, and I doubted the next.

I was confused. My heart would say something one moment, and dive bomb into a rage of doubt the next. My emotions crashed about like a hurricane and all of its fury.

Fast forward to 2014. My mom passed away.

I was in my car when she was in the hospital weeping to the right of the middle seat. It was in an old Plymouth Voyager. I said to God, “I tried everything, I did everything you said! I can lose her, but I can’t lose you!”

Why I thought it was my fault in some way isn’t important. Some thoughts should stay in the graves of their own out of consideration for our present, and better selves.

All of a sudden I stopped crying. I had an epiphany. God was still there, and I didn’t fail in anyway.

It took a long time to deal with the anger and understand what really happened. Hopefully I can help others with what I have found, and with the experience.

That’s the backstory to what I want to talk about. It is a concept that has been in the back of my mind for a long time. Now… it is time for it to be told.

We are told in the scriptures that God will never leave us or forsake us. Jesus said that too. For years, I thought that it meant that he was ALWAYS there in our midst acting for our sake. That he always was working with his own hands in some way for our good (I still believe this, albeit differently).

I took that to mean that Jesus ALWAYS went out of his way to interact with us, reaching out for our attention. Going the distance to have us hear him, and be accepted into our lives.

I used that thinking to justify how I used to do things for people, and to keep trying to please them, even when I woke up to how they really were acting. Yet, what is often not mentioned is even God sometimes lets us fall to our own devices, should it serve the purpose of waking us up. My old way of thinking didn’t account for this at all.

It makes no sense to me now that someone would be nice one moment to get a favor from you, and the next (because they feel a need to reciprocate love or kindness back, hating the feelings of vulnerability it brings in their hearts) gas-lighting you into thinking you did something wrong. I’ve seen people do this many times, all the while thinking no one would be wise enough to see what what they are doing.

In doing these things they fail themselves, and they fail to be good. They make love to the pool that their vanity is reflected in.

I feel that they failed to accept the Goodness of God, and share it generously with others. All of the grace shown to them by their friends, and family over the years they spit upon by their actions. Slowly but surely… I noticed that they chased a lot of the people in their lives right out the door full steam ahead.

These punishments; rather, the consequences of a life poorly lived, come full circle upon they who are blind enough to be drunk on the pride of their emptiness.

In reaching out for the love and accolades of others, all while not being sincere with the love they give in turn, turning to tools of pity to get what they want as a shield from honest questioning, and to use the guilt that comes from questioning their “series of unfortunate events” in the end….

They meet the reality that the wise man pondered.

“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”

Ecclesiastes 1:2, WEB

I’ve certainly dealt with my share of frustration from people that are stubborn in this way. Selfish and calloused to the hearts of others.

No matter what is said it seems… they remain fixated to their narcissism, and shame.

Now imagine God… the lover of our souls. How passionate he is for us, though long suffering… he DOES GET FRUSTRATED.

Out of that frustration I know that God holds his face in his hands and weeps, even wails in the very heavens he made towards how damn stubborn we are, for no matter how many times he has warned us, and no matter how many times a servant of his warns a loved one not to mess with drugs, for example — for the sweet present moment clouds the bitter end that it brings — they still don’t listen.

God cries over this, not only in tears, but in blood hemorrhaged down from a cross. The Father’s closest servant of all, his own Son did too.

My people! My people! Who kill the prophets, and stone those whom I send to you! How often I would have gathered your children together under my wings, even as a hen does with her chicks, and yet you do not listen!

Matthew 23:37, paraphrased.

All of this stubbornness coming to the ultimate point of Christ not being able to cry on the cross due to being dehydrated, while his blood soaked into dirt and rocks that revered their maker more than the people that looked upon him.

Christ yet saying, “Father forgive them! For they are in the dark to what they are doing!”

He lifted his soul up into the hands of his Father.

And the Father “delivered” they whom were hard-hearted to the hands of their blindness.

Even God, rich in all love and mercy, reaches the place where the one thing he can do is let us suffer the consequences of our silliness. Even God “gives” up.

In a sense, even God knows when to quit using his hands directly on someones life to try to help them.

It’s like him saying, “Do as you will, for I have no place in the choices you are making, and the consequences of them.”

Sometimes, only being a confused prodigal son or daughter of God on the street, and the searing cold of the night can pierce through their thick pride.

Even then, as a needle is stuck in the arm of an unconscious loved one that left home just to chase a high, maybe to escape pain — he or she remains in pride.

No matter how many times they are brought back.

How much worse punishment do you think he will be judged worthy of who has trodden under foot the Son of God, and has counted the blood of the covenant with which he was sanctified an unholy thing, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?

Heb. 10:29, WEB

The saddest thing God can do is leave the room. I don’t know how much, or to what degree he does this here, but in the place beyond this one….

Where he is the only light, the only sun, and the only warmth. What would the cold of that room be like for the one who remains indifferent to the kindness of his Children? The Children, the people who love out of their good-will, even when things are scarce, to show the kindness of God to the confused, and self-adsorbed?

When God leaves the room?

What will be of our ignorance then? Bliss?

No.

Ignorance eventually brings about a haunting void. A void that has condemned more souls to pain than anything else on earth I feel.

A void caused by the vacuum of a space forsaken by the light of the Ever-Living God in comparison? Who can fathom?

“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Matt. 27:46, KJV

What happens when there is nothing more to say “no” too? What happens when one says “no”, just to express vain power, strengthened by their self-righteousness, and as a result they lose the right before God to enjoy his pleasures? Well… one can only disgrace grace for so long in his Kingdom.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will tell me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, in your name cast out demons, and in your name do many mighty works?’ Then I will tell them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity.’”

Matt 7:21-23, WEB

They didn’t open their souls to the one that always meant to give the gifts of his Goodness freely (libre and gratis), and never wanted us to earn them. They desired, instead, the pleasurable void that came from a life enamored with the power of their disobedience, and saying no to the most wonderful gifts of heaven.

For the few this hard-hearted, for the few who want to live with a soul that forsakes the light… they will receive their full wish.

Yet…

In the room of the heart, and of space, time… everything. Where the cold of an “eternity” without the maker is realized, where a moment feels as if it is forever….

God did leave the room, yet… he never left the relationship.

He took a moment.

Instead of burning with anger and frustration, he remembered love. He remembered the smiles he shared with his lost sheep. When things were better. He never forgot that the child in time-out on the bed is now missing him as well, and he being who he is would NEVER allow a story where even ONE child is lost, where one is forsaken forever.

“God is not anger though He can be angry, God is not vengeance though He does avenge. These are attributes, love is essence. Therefore, God is unchanging love. Therefore, in judgment He is love, in wrath He is love, in vengeance He is love-” love first, and last, and midst, and without end.”

Thomas Allin, Christ Triumphant: Or Universalism Attested

He left the room to return to it on better terms, to us on better terms — even though he did NOTHING wrong. He leaves the room sometimes so that the wayward, narcissistic, foolish hearts of humanity will welcome him back with open arms, after they face the sure void of him being gone.

The most serious move God can make I feel — in the next life for sure — is to show what a great vacuum results when he himself steps out of the realm of the heart. Somewhat like a tombstone sealing one in the grave of their emptiness for a short time.

Christ illustrated what this is like, and yet he also wonderfully showed the happy ending.

“Because you will not leave my soul in Hades, neither will you allow your Holy One to see decay.”

Acts 2:27, WEB

The strangest thing for a God of love is to leave one in the void of her heart for a time, for since he is love he desires to share with all. AND I MEAN ALL PEEPS!

So even when it seems like God loses a battle for a heart… he ALWAYS wins the war.

I’ve used this quote before, but it is so fitting.

I believe that justice and mercy are simply one and the same thing; without justice to the full there can be no mercy, and without mercy to the full there can be no justice; that such is the mercy of God that he will hold his children in the consuming fire of his distance until they pay the uttermost farthing, until they drop the purse of selfishness with all the dross that is in it, and rush home to the Father and the Son, and the many brethren–rush inside the center of the life giving fire whose outer circles burn. I believe that no hell will be lacking which would help the just mercy of God to redeem his children.

George MacDonald, Justice

How great is the Justice of God, where an act of seeming defeat results in total victory!

How wonderful is the end where for the Deity one lost for a moment is found again!

How precious is the eternal lesson learned that in the humble acceptance of his Grace, Mercy, and Good-Will there need never be that stinging void ever again!

Metaphorically, where the bride returns to the groom, and sees the folly of her ways.

No wonder why Jerusalem is spoken of in such terms very often in the scriptures, as are humanity and God.

I’ll end with a little quip, and I pray whenever you grieve over one lost in their foolishness, and you are frustrated to no end — you have the God who IS love on your side, and even when the moment seems hopeless for someone… he is in your corner. He is there for them and for you.

Though he may “take a break” — it is to break their pride, so whether you see them healed in this life or the next. Remember… He and we can leave the room, but we never leave the relationship. Love always wins, here… now… and eventually forever.

Here it is….

We are his bride.
He is the Groom.
Where there was a space once empty,
Love returned to the room.

Thank you for reading.

Blessings!