Whenever someone seriously hurts me,
or my loved ones, or makes me really
angry, the first thing I ask is “Why?” In fact, I'm more apt to
want to know why
you've done the thing you did, than I am to desire an apology.
I'm the kind of
person who needs to understand the reason behind the behavior, and
call me brainwashed, but I've been taught “all behavior has a
reason.”
I'm
often hurt when people say insensitive things about my husband. I
get very angry if you don't pull your weight in a work situation.
But if I can understand why
someone says hurtful things, or the reason they're a total slacker,
I can accept it. I can even appreciate it. I can empathize.
So I sometimes
spend hours trying to understand the “why's” of other people.
It's become an
expectation between my husband & me. If one of us messes up, we
just know that the other one wants an explanation... not an excuse,
but a map of our thought process or feelings that led us to act the
way we did.
But God doesn't
require us to give an explanation. Don't get me wrong, I think that
we all answer for our actions in one way or another. But when I go
to Him in repentance, in sincere prayer, in heartbreak over the mess
I've made, and despair over how I've let Him down, He doesn't
require me to explain why.
I
learned this driving one day, which is when I learn a lot of things.
I was talking to the Lord about something in my life that I knew He
wasn't pleased about. I was struggling to come up with why
I was acting so foolishly. I was searching my own heart for my
explanation. I was putting God in a Rachel-shaped box, assuming He
wanted the same laundry list of what was behind my sin that I want
from others.
But I was wrong.
The Holy Spirit imparted to me that it was okay that I couldn't
explain myself, that I didn't even know for myself what was behind
my actions. It was okay because I was acknowledging my mistake to
God. It was okay because I was upset about it, because I knew it was
upsetting to Him. It was okay because I wanted to move away from
that problem, I wanted to put it behind me, and refocus my love and
the labor of my life on Jesus. It was just okay. I didn't need to
explain why—or even know why –because the God who created me
already knew why. And the why just wasn't as important as I thought.