Seeking sorrows

I was reading an article in Relevent magazine today, and that article it reference this verse.

 The first line really stuck a cord with me. The sorrows of those who chase after gods will increase. 

I am a very "woe is me" person. I often feel like I'm stuck in this horrible pit instead of seeing the blessings that are around me. But in reading this passage it goes on to say that God has assigned us a part-our portion our cup. And that we don't need to search and go after these big things, instead we to find the thing that the Lord has given us.

I have a sister-in-law who has had a really rough life and it has gotten increasing tougher recently with poor decisions she is making. She decided to file for divorce, to start dating this guy who was trouble before her divorce was finalized. Her boyfriend got banned from the property she lives at, and she broke up with him at the request of my parents after he was found making meth in the back storage room attached to her house. He then, tried to attempt suicide, since she broke up with him. 

After this whole mess, she realized her bad decisions, didn't want to raise her kids in a broken home and tried to redeem her relationship with her husband 2 weeks before their divorce becomes official. (He is done and doesn't want to reconcile the relationship) Her facebook feed becomes all of these posts talking about how hard her life is, how she needs her friends to support her, how God is at her side. 

I wrestled with that statement "God is at your side" how does that work? She is messing up her life, she is making decisions that are clearly not what He wants, by all appearances she is not submitting to His will. Yet, she accepted God as her savior, she has aimed to follow him with her whole life in the past. But is God at her side right now? I have been thinking about this for almost a week right now. And my conclusion is "no, He is not, not until you fully surrender all the crap that is going on in your life to Him and began to fully do it His way."

Her story doesn't end there, on Thanksgiving, her ex-boyfriends calls her. he has made a full recovery from his attempted suicide and wants to hang out. Everyone in her life tells her to stay away from him, he is trouble, but she goes anyway.  About 16 hours later my mom gets a phone call. My sister-in-law is now in jail- arrested for robbery, possion of drugs and concealing a pistol in her car. 

She asked my mom what to do. My mom said "pray pray pray! I have never been in your situation, I have no idea what you should outside of praying" 

The story of my sister-in-law keeps reminding me of the story prostitute in the bible who keeps running away from her husband and he keeps taking her back, sometimes even when she didn't want to go. I hope that is how her story goes. I hope she sees how her actions are disobedience and seeks the Lord to redeem her. I hope I do the same with the little things in my life and that I will be able to stay away from such giant steps of disobedience and painful consequences for that disobedience.