Year of the Locust

"I will restore to you the years

that the swarming locust has eaten,

the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter,

my great army, which I sent among you.

You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied,

and praise the name of the Lord your God,

who has dealt wondrously with you.

And my people shall never again be put to shame."

~Joel 2:25-26~

The second chapter of Joel (one of those oft forgot minor prophets) is a rather stirring read, though most people, if they recognize it at all, are far more familiar with the section that says 'your young men will see visions (or dream dreams)…the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood…'  But for some reason it is the rather obscure section above that has suddenly caught my fancy.  Even my pastor husband looked at me a little funny when I mentioned something about the 'year that the locust has eaten,' not recognizing it from scripture (and I had to do a search to find the exact reference, but I was pretty sure it was in there, somewhere).

And now I am about to make a bunch of theologists (and probably even my poor husband) roll their eyes, if not totally angry at me for taking this reference completely out of context (and yes, I have access to various Bible commentaries, should I wish to look deeper into the subject, which I really don't).  Enough people have misquoted or misinterpreted scripture unintentionally over the years (which really annoys me) that I am going to give you a full fledged warning up front that I am totally doing this intentionally: you have been warned.  I know this was written specifically to the people of Israel, urging them to come back to God after their continued idolatry, that they could still find grace and blessing, would they but come back to Him.  However, I am going to take this personally.

Quit squawking in indignation, we do it often enough with verses like Jeremiah 29:11 and Joshua 24:15, so why not a more obscure passage, especially with so rich a metaphor?  I am not predicting the Second Coming here, merely finding a very poetical bit of scripture that perfectly mirrors my circumstances, and no, this is not going to turn into one of those articles on how every bit of suffering and hardship and grief has a purpose and means something, because it doesn't, that is just life is in this broken world, which is not to say God can't work through such circumstances, use them to bless us or others in unforeseen ways, or use them to draw us closer to Him (see the oft personalized Jeremiah reference above), but in general, life is messy, sad, and ugly, and sooner or later everyone is going to go through something awful; that's just how the world is right now.

What I want to focus on, is that no matter how awful your past (or present), if you belong to God, He has promised to restore, nay replace far more abundantly, those things you have lost for His sake (Matthew 19:20, Mark 10:29), but I also believe this applies to those things which the world's general brokenness or the sins of others have blighted.  This is not to say that things lost through our own disobedience will suddenly be restored or that we will get exactly what we want, when we want it, rather those things which we thought so important at the time will pale in comparison to the blessings in store for those that love Him, perhaps in this life, but certainly in that which is to come:

But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,

nor the heart of man imagined,

what God has prepared for those who love him”—

~I Corinthians 2:9~

Will it be that our hearts finally desire Him above all else, no longer distracted by earthly pleasures?  Certainly yes, but it also means that you can still find Joy in this life, regardless of your past, if you will but trust Him with your future.  I am emerging from 35 years of denial, even my closest friends and family have aided and abetted the lie, unwittingly of course, but it was still a lie.  I suddenly look back on what I thought was a normal life and realize that just because something is 'normal' to you, does not make it right.  I thought I was just the product of a broken family, a single mother working hard to support her three kids with a distant, abusive father, that my social isolation and emotional upheaval were the result of my own odd personality, my father's manipulations, or the divorce.  That all those celebrations of life: birthdays, graduations, holidays, weddings, baby showers, were over rated and those partaking in them were sentimental fools.  I knew better, there was nothing particularly special about any accomplishment or family event, but rather I was the fool, a blind, deluded fool.

My whole life, I now realize, is one that the locust has eaten.  This particular locust was my mother.  I have known my father to be abusive for some years, but only now can I admit the same of my mother, though such is socially taboo, especially when it is not a physical or sexual abuse, but though the scars cannot be physically seen, they are just as deep and painful.  Every minute of every day was about her, even my wedding and baby shower were about her, though I wasn't cognizant enough to notice at the time, and if she was not the center of attention, she did all within her power to ruin the occasion for me.  I thought I was having trouble going to baby showers lately because of my own struggles with building a family, which is certainly part of it, but I have the added delight of watching doting relatives and friends rejoicing with the mother-to-be while my own mother sulked through the entire shower for her as yet only grandchild (and no, she never bothered to even show an interest in helping with anything so frivolous as a bridal or wedding shower or my wedding, let alone offering her congratulations at any such event).  I actually have been going through the mourning process this past year, crying, grieving, over the mother I never had, over my blighted childhood wherein I felt I deserved to be publicly shamed and humiliated, to have any bit of pleasure or happiness instantly squelched, and knew no one liked me because I was an awful, disgusting person though I couldn't really say why, even Hitler likely had friends (or cronies and minions at least), but how, as a child of 8, I could be more repulsive than Hitler, I couldn't comprehend, but I trusted my mother upon the matter.

How do you explain to anyone that you are grieving over someone who is not yet dead?  Especially when I likely won't shed a tear at her funeral, save in pity at her own small-souled, miserable existence. How do you explain that you can't go to their baby shower because you'll just fall to pieces because your mother deigned to show up at yours but made it abundantly clear to everyone that she was thoroughly displeased with the whole affair in general and her disgraceful daughter in particular (I had 2 separate individuals, complete strangers to me and one another, comment on her behavior afterwards!).  But I cannot spend my life looking back, though grieve I will and must, for He will restore the years the locust has eaten.

First, I have to take steps to protect myself and my family, especially my kids, from her predations.  I will not cut off contact, unless she forces me to, but all visits will be under supervision and in a public setting.  Second, I have to make a conscious decision that life is worth celebrating, admit that I am not the horrible, awful person she always told me I was, but was actually created in the very image of God and loved so much that He was willing not only to take on mortality for my sake, but to taste the bitterness of death for the evils I had wrought.  Third, I can also look back with awe at His hand throughout the whole grim tale, even when no one else loved me, He did, and He sent His people to show me that in truth.  Fourth, I refuse to make the same mistakes with my kids that was my growing up; we celebrate everything, we laugh and have fun, we do stuff we enjoy simply because we enjoy it, and we rejoice in this day because God hath made it!

I won't get my childhood back.  I'll never have a loving mother, one who celebrates with me or to whom I can talk about my problems, hopes, and joys.  But I now have a family and life of my own, one untainted by her shadow, save those residual hurts and sorrows that will likely haunt my steps until the day I die.  I look back over those years: wasted, twisted, and grey, but I would not change them, or live them differently if I could, for the cost might be too dear.  Would I have come to know God, would I be the person I am today, had things been as they ought to have been?  Yet neither would I have willingly chosen that to be my life, but thankfully that is not my call to make.  But it is my decision how to live out the rest of my days, and I think I will take God up on His offer to redeem that which the locust has destroyed.  I will be a Ruth, following her mother-in-law out of a familiar land of bitterness and loss into a foreign country, trusting a God we mortals can barely know to bless us in a way we cannot even imagine.  And He has not let me down, then or now or ever.  For alone of all men and gods:

He was despised and rejected by men;

a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;

and as one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his wounds we are healed.

~Isaiah 53:3-5~

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and by his wounds we are healed (is anybody else humming Handel's Messiah here?)?  He understands.