Tokens of His Love

God knows a woman's needs:
Gentle caresses and fervent hugs,
Bouquets of flowers and pretty beads;
With these, my heartstrings He sweetly tugs.

No manly arms surround me,
So I turn to the Husband of the widow.
His wondrous love astounds me,
And solves for me a riddle.

Who can ease the ache deep within my heart?
The only One I really need.
When I'm downtrodden, He takes my part.
Yehoshua, my Champion, the Woman's Seed!

My Sweetheart gives me flowers,
Inner ones that no one else can see.
He courts me in my lonely hours,
His Word, I suckle like a honeybee.

I drink deeply from each delicious verse,
Savouring their ambrosia one by one.
Each tender bloom, within my heart I nurse,
Meditating on the wisdom of the Son.

He tells me, "Rejoice in the Lord always."
And again He says, "Rejoice!"
"My joy will strengthen you all your days,
My love can be your choice."

He says, "Cast away your widow's weeds;
Adorn yourself with my Word.
I am here to meet your needs;
Come out of your cage, little bird."

Yehoshua has taken every tear and sigh,
Each fear and fury and disappointed hope,
All complaint, perplexity, and anguished cry,
Giving me His grace to cope.

Against sorrow, the Lord has been my buffer,
And I can thank Him for all my suffering,
For He has removed the "uffer",
Giving me a new song to sing.

His royal daughters will stand tall and regal,
When they finally die to Self.
Wait on Him and soar like an eagle;
Be filled with Heaven's wealth.

Countless women who have been cast off by their husbands have found comfort in Isaiah 54 , particularly in verse 6, "For the LORD has called you as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when you were refused, says your God." I had a nervous breakdown after my husband left me. Initially, I had set the ultimatum that he had to go to AA or leave, but I expected that he would go to AA. I was shocked when he said he was going to leave. Not that I expected to him to stay on my account; his heart had left me years ago, but I wanted us to stay together for our children.

I used to be proud that my husband loved me. When he was offered Playboy magazines to read, he would reply that he didn't need them because he had his own centrefold at home. It was joy to me that my husband kept his mind pure from adultery, or so I thought. When I was bragging on him one day to his best friend's wife about what a wonderful man he was in this regard, she looked very uncomfortable. Then she informed me regretfully that our husbands went to strip bars.

I was devastated. I felt shamed as a woman. I was deeply disappointed to discover that there wasn't anything special about my husband after all. He was just the same as most other men – faithless. Even if he wasn't actually committing adultery, his heart was headed in that direction. Eventually I discovered that he was committing adultery, or at least attempting to. Several years after my divorce, a friend told me about how he tried to put some moves on her. I was surprised to discover that he had been running around on me a lot longer than I had supposed.

There are few things more devastating to a woman than to discover that a man to whom she has given her heart, particularly when at one time he genuinely had tender feelings for her, has let his heart grow cold towards her. When the man is a Christian, the disappointment is even deeper because he knows better than most men how evil it is to behave that way, and he has more power to keep him pure because he has access to God through the Anointed Lord Yehoshua. When he chooses to not access that power so that he can remain faithful to his wife, it's a stab in the heart.

God is the only One who can heal a pain that deep. I read Isaiah 54 a lot when I went through that nervous breakdown. Verse 11 described my feelings, "O you afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted," The next part gave me hope: "behold, I will lay your stones with fair colours, and lay your foundations with sapphires. And I will make your windows of agates, and your gates of carbuncles, and all your borders of pleasant stones." The Lord gives beauty for ashes. He can take a woman who feels unlovely because she is no longer beautiful in her husband's eyes, and reassure her that in His eyes, she is beautiful because of what is in her heart towards Him.

I am sure that Isaiah 54 can be just as significant for men who have been cast off and are broken–hearted from rejection. He that is the Husband of the widow and the Father of the fatherless can be anything we need Him to be. He can fill every corner of our longing heart.

Sometimes I have borrowed a page from a woman whose husband treated her disrespectfully. She said that God told her to imagine Him at her side, being the husband that she needed. I have found that when people who should have honoured me treated me disrespectfully, it helped me maintain my dignity to imagine Yehoshua standing next to me, and treating me like I wanted to be treated.

It also helped me to imagine Yehoshua with me the first time I had to find my way around Vancouver without my husband at my side to give me directions. I put Yehoshua in the seat next to me. Then the thought came to me, "Now calm down, Lanny. The people who designed this city didn't do in such a way as to make it confusing. There is an order to it." No longer in a panic, I thought about how the streets were laid out and didn't have any trouble after that finding my way home. Yehoshua can meet our needs in small and practical ways, just as He can help us handle all the big stuff, too. He cares about everything that concerns us.

I am not always all that I wish to be when the going is rough, but any peace and calmness that I have in difficult circumstances is all due to Yehoshua holding wide His arms to me and saying, "Come under my feathers, little chick," and finding comfort and safety beneath His wings. When our heart is secure in the Father's love, it is easier to see that when others let us down, it's not personal. It's just their sinful flesh getting the better of them.

Return to HOME