Launch
Author: Andrew Comiskey
January 18, 2021
‘Why complain when you can
act?’
Elizabeth Lesoeur
Annette agreed to teach
‘Offering the Gift’ alongside me at Living Waters last week—no small ‘yes’
after a full day with grandkids. We both experienced unusual spiritual warfare
surrounding the event and struggled to understand why.
We prepped by revisiting
the subject of our marital launch 40 years ago and the countless offerings to
each other since, in sun and storm. Exhilarating. The battle became obvious.
God freed us sufficiently from our demons to behold in the other a human answer
to our cry for connection. While we can tend to major on aspects of our
brokenness (addiction, abuse, disordered desires), we must never lose sight of
the goal: to offer ourselves to another as to dignify and enhance his or her
life. Our familiar ‘spirits’ may trip us still but have no authority to hinder
love. Annette and I fall in love’s direction, grateful for reliance upon the
other.
The enemy hates the
self-giving that saves our lives from isolation and despair. He bristles when
we tell our stories of how Jesus makes us fruitful in love.
Annette and I shared about
how I ‘Christianized’ her and she humanized me. Both products of CA’s sexual
revolution, we diverged as I subjected myself to sexy idols and Annette
defended herself from early sexual trauma and scary experiences with an older
brother whose ‘gay’-identified life unraveled before her eyes. Still, her
beauty won me. I loved Jesus with all my heart but I did not know how to offer
my heart to another. Not really. My restless wanderings took a toll yet God
provided my antidote in her feminine virtue. I resolved to launch and keep
launching into her life.
I was awkward and
uncalibrated. I feared I launched like a loser. Unskilled as I was, she
received me. And even benefited! She witnessed of how I drew her out of her
walls. While still protecting her, I summoned Annette to open to God and others
in ways that healed her. We laughed at our head-butting and my sanctimony—I
recounted a dismal effort to love her the way Jesus loves the Church. I invited
her to pray with me, after which she expressed some tender needs. I was so
inattentive that when asked, I could not recount one word she just said.
I was exposed as a divided
man in need of this Bridegroom who gave Himself wholly to make me holy (Eph. 5:
25, 26), or at least a little less divided so I can hear and attend to her. He invites
this flawed gift into His healing flood. His mercy frees me to launch out
again—to give the gift once more, maybe better tuned and timed this time. Time
after time. Loving someone requires probing the depths of His mercy and discovering
that shame and doubt do not have the last word. Jesus does, and our freedom
hinges upon offering our freshly washed gift, again.
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