Joy, Trust, and the Ram in the Thicket

In 2019, I chose joy as my theme word for the year. Ironically, it ended up being the worst year of my life. By the end of January, I would need that word- joy– more desperately than I ever could have assumed. 

Our world was turned upside down when my daughter’s dad, who abandoned her in infancy due to his addictions, chose to file for joint custody and visitations. She was seven, almost eight, at the time; he had never paid child support, and she did not even know what he looked like. The healthy, safe, comfortable, moral, and beautiful life I had, God willing, built for her, was at stake. I was more than distraught for her and what would become of her emotionally, mentally, physically, and even spiritually. 

Turns out, my daughter and I would need to know joy on an infinitely deep level. We would need to learn how to be joyful in the midst of spiritual warfare, deep suffering, and the unknown.

Fear, once a stranger to me, now made itself fully known to both my mind and heart. There were days it consumed every part of me- fear of the future, fear for my daughter, fear for her safety, fear of the trauma this was causing her and would cause her.

Though emotionally, mentally, and spiritually I honed in on this one thing, the world I was a part of kept spinning. Work, responsibilities, day to day tasks that needed attending, relationships to maintain; it all seemed to pass by in slow motion. I did not feel joyful, but I had a choice to at least attempt to graze it with an outstretched finger tip. Oh, joy: the word I had aimed for my spirit to feed up upon, how could I know it now? 

It was chosen before I ever knew a custody battle would come; God knew. I took comfort in the fact he was not surprised like I was. Each day, sometimes each hour, I made a decision to go to war, spiritually speaking. 

I battled demonic realms with prayer,  a newfound prayer language (tongues), hours worth of worship each day,  posters of truth all hung in my bedroom, scripture memorization, Freedom groups, church, the laying on of hands, and with a network of believers interceding for Lenox and I. I dove in the mulch, flailed through the foliage, clawed at the dirt, and my tears watered the roots of joy. 

Verses like Romans 5:3-5 and James 1:2-4 were promises to believe in. 

I had responded to the custody and visitation petition with my own petition to terminate parental rights. God had given me so many signs, including prophecies from others and my own prophetic dreams, that everything was going to turn out in my favor. The guardian ad litem had gone on record during our trial and requested that the judge terminate parental rights for my daughter’s safety and wellbeing. We won, I convinced myself in the days following the trial, as I waited for the judge’s final order.

But we did not win. I was enraged, mystified, and appalled. I remember feeling utter devastation and desperation, total fury. 

A wise friend told me that God was not afraid of my anger. She encouraged me to give him all of those dark emotions. I did. I shouted, I ridiculed, I mourned. He had told me this would end in our favor. He had given signs and wonders. I felt betrayed. For two weeks He received the brunt of my wrath. And with his unfailing love, He took it. 

When I got all that ugly out, I did not feel joy, but I was no longer angry with God. I knew he was for me and for Lenox and that my previous feelings had not told the truth about him. So again, I did the only thing I knew to do: I continued plowing through spiritual warfare with the only sword and shield I knew: Jesus and his Word. 

That daily fight for faith, for God himself, for the Holy Spirit’s presence- the only thing that could blot out the fear and pain, led me to true joy. Somehow and somewhere, in the midst of my own hell, I learned what it meant to have joy in the Lord, to adore his presence in suffering, to just want him above all else. And that hard pressed lesson on joy led me to 2022 and a new word for that year: trust. 

Trust: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.

Countless times I had heard and read the story of Abraham surrendering his son Isaac, ready to kill him on the altar in obedience to God (Genesis 22:1-19). But in 2020, I read it differently. 

For the first time, it gut punched me that after Abraham heard an angel of the Lord from the heavens, he lifted his eyes. It was not until he looked up, towards God, not at that altar before him, not at his own son, but up towards the heavens, that the solution- a ram in the thicket behind him- was provided. 

When he looked upward, when he trusted what was being said from above, when he trusted who was  over him, when he quit focusing on the agonizing circumstances in front of him, all became well. A solution he physically never saw coming, came. 

Together, obedience and trust had led to breakthrough. 

It was not until that scripture came alive for me that I finally trusted God enough to give him my Lenox. I stopped looking at her- the idol I had made of her, and looked upward. I stopped seeing the battle in front of me and started seeing the magnitude of my God above me. Take her Lord, she is yours. My hands are open. I trust you now. 

And on August 26, 2020, her birth father, by a means I never could have seen coming, became my ram. The prayer Lenox and I had prayed together every night for over a year and a half, came true. God, soften his heart and change his mind. Give him the heart of a father to do what is best for her. He filed a motion to dismiss his case. 

Though unspeakable at the time, in hindsight, what deep joy the hardest times of my life gave me in teaching me to trust. 

LOOSE THREADS: Lenox I still look back on our custody battle and marvel at our miracle working heavenly father. To this day, I am ever so grateful to her birth dad for surrendering his own desires in order to do what she needed him to, at a great cost to himself. What selflessness, courage, and strength that took.