I Stayed

After the stroke, I had to accept some things I did not want to accept. That the life I thought I was building might be over. That the future I thought I had might not exist anymore. That the man I had married might now be separated from me by something broken in his brain.

And I had to decide whether I was going to stay. I stayed. Two words. And behind them are years. The full account is in my memoir, because a decision like that does not fit in a paragraph. But I want to preach about the decision itself, because I know I am not the only one who has had to make one.

You have had to make a decision you never thought you would have to make. Do I stay or do I go. Do I fight for this or do I let it go. And here is what makes that decision so cruel: there is no clean answer available. Every option costs something enormous.

And you had to make it without enough information. You did not get to know how it would turn out. That is what makes it a decision instead of a calculation. And you probably had people telling you what you should do, most of whom had never stood where you were standing and would not be living with the consequences either way.

Ruth did not know the ending. She did not know about Boaz. She did not know she would end up in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. She made that choice with no information at all, standing on a road with a bitter old woman and no prospects. She did not choose because it made sense. She chose because of who she had decided to be.

The decision was the one thing in the situation that was actually yours. In a season where almost nothing is in your hands, the choice is the piece that is. And God notices this. Hosea is an entire prophetic book built on a man being told to stay in a marriage that cost him everything, and God uses it as the picture of His own faithfulness to a people who kept leaving. God stays. It is in His nature. So when a human being chooses to stay in something hard, they are doing something that resembles Him.

Now I have to say some things plainly, because a teaching like this can be misused. I stayed. That was my decision in my situation, and I do not hand it to you as a command. If there is abuse, if there is violence, if you or your children are not safe, God is not asking you to call that a cross and carry it. Your safety is not a lack of faith.

And staying does not mean the grief is over. Some of us are staying with somebody and grieving that same person at the same time. You can be in the room with them and miss them. That is real, and it is not disloyalty.

Whatever you chose, own it. Some of you are still relitigating a decision you made years ago, every night, in your head. That is exhausting and it changes nothing. You made the best decision you could with what you had, out of the person you were determined to be. Let it be yours.

A decision like this is not made once. You choose it again on the hard mornings. You choose it again when it gets heavier than you expected. Joshua said choose you this day whom ye will serve. This day. It has a date on it.

And let God carry what the decision costs. Matthew 11:28 says come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. There is rest available inside a decision that is costing you. That choice matters. Not because it made everything work out. It matters because it was yours.