Being Asked to Leave

by Ruth Eshbaugh

My youngest son opened the front door this week to face a constable delivering an eviction notice. We were being asked to leave the house we had know as home for over a year in the most unpleasant way I can imagine. It isn’t a sight I have seen often in the suburb where I live, making the picture all the more humiliating; belongings scattered in piles all over the front lawn. I am very unhappy about the situation I am facing because I have paid my rent faithfully and taken care of the house as if it where my own. The landlord lost the house in the mortgage crisis. I am not looking for anyone to blame, I have two conflicting stories. I just know I am being asked to leave.

That is the bad news. The good news is God prepared me before hand and I had it in my mind to move and purchase a new home as a means of controlling costs a week before this all began. It is cheaper for me to own. As a single mother with college students still living at home, I needed to do something. I want to help pay for school not someone else’s mortgage plus investment earnings. So what happened is this, buying a home just got sped up. I didn’t want to move in the middle of the semester. I am a student too, enrolled in a painting class. My extra time is at a minimum and purchasing a home in three weeks is a feat I would have never attempted except that it was forced on me. Hmmm, a new home or my clothes and belongings piled out on the curb by the street? See how well the Lord watches over His own, especially in the midst of a trial.

It is never pleasant to be asked to leave. Over the last two years I have been asked to leave a Christmas Eve service, a wedding, a Good Friday service and finally the church itself after 14 years of faithful service. I have been asked to leave a job I loved and to end ministries I started, loved and nurtured. I have been told I could not serve in an inner city mission project, do church visitation, pray for VBS, host a Bible study in my home, receive church correspondence or go on a mission trip. I was told to sit in the back of the church and make myself scarce. Friendships ended and my reputation has been called into question. All the while believing they would work with me towards restoration and reconciliation because they said they would. I even offered to pay for a Christian mediation team to come in and help us with the reconciliation process and was told no. That is the bad news.

The good news is that even if my mother and father would reject me my God will receive me. I am moving into a new home and the people in my new church have stepped forward to help with the move. I am back into a ministry group where I am able to use my gifts and talents. I am making new friends and treasuring the old ones I still have. They are pure gold in my eyes. I see my relationship with God as unshakable. I see his faithfulness shine as a rare and beautiful treasure when those around me rummage through the trash seeking to find fault with me. His strength had carried me when I felt as if the whole world had rejected me. I am comforted by the Man of Sorrows whom knew rejection like I will never know. Even at one point the Father turn from the Son and Jesus cried out “my God , My God why have you forsaken me?” I have not suffered nor cried out to the point of sweating blood. But I have shared in the sufferings of Christ.

When I watched the movie The Passion of Christ with my former church family I had the strangest reaction to it. While those around me cried because they were confronted in real way with the cost Christ paid, almost like it had never occurred to them, I was over whelmed by the feeling of walking with Jesus. It seemed that every move he made was familiar. I knew him in his suffering, each step he took. And I prayed that in each step that he would have the strength to do what I could never do. I needed him to make it to the cross and finish the work, because I could not. Like Simon I could carry the cross for awhile and walk along side him, but I needed him to go on to the end.

I have studied the 22nd Psalm and meditated on the suffering of Christ and I know it is beyond our understanding. The scriptures say that he endured with his mind set on the goal of presenting the church, his bride one day before the Father. He endured the cross even for those who have sinned against me, for those who have asked me to leave, for those who find fault with me and have rejected me, causing me shame.

That puts me in a unique position. The situation begs of me to either become like Christ when he was rejected, accused and abused and entrust myself to the one who judges righteously or to become deeply embittered. Hmmmm…

 

Ruth Eshbaugh is a graphic artist by trade. She is the webmaster for http://www.goodnewsnow.com and a writer for Lifted Magazine www.liftedmagazine.com. She has two grown sons; Sean and Scott who are grist for the mill when she writes. Ruth attends the University of Texas at Dallas where she is studying Fine Arts. She Attends Willow Bend Church in Plano Texas. Her Motto is: I am an artist who teaches, a teacher who writes. To comment on this article feel free to contact writers@blessedlady.com.

Words of Wisdom