There are days....

There are days when I hold it together very well.  Days when I think to myself that I'm beautiful and that I won't be alone forever and that my husband was an idiot not to see what he had before him.  There are days when I walk through my life thinking, this is okay, even if this is it.  Even if this is all I ever get.  After all, I have so much more than many people ever experience.  To want more than this is just greed.  I have enough experiences, enough enrichment, enough love, enough joy, enough enough enough for a lifetime already, and I'm only 42 years in.  Those days, I believe that I am a child of the King.  I believe that I am a Princess, made in His image, beloved of the Most High.  Those days, I believe He cares, He sees me alone in so many circumstances that I DON'T WANT to face alone and He didn't make me the lonely type.  Those days, I believe it will all work out for me. And that I will find happiness someday.

Then there are days when I just can't seem to pull it together.  Painful days when the tears flow freely and my breathing is labored and I swear the Earth has run completely out of oxygen.  That I'm alone and no one will ever share my life with me.  That I'm undesirable.  Satan wins the battles in my mind and I believe, in those dark days, that what I have to offer is not nearly enough for the cost.  There are days when I feel that this will be my forever.  That what I've known wasn't enough.  That I can't bare the thought of living a lonely existence another minute, much less the rest of my life.  On those days I see myself becoming the crazy dog lady who just has a house full of dogs, whose kids never come to visit because her house is too gross, and who no one really understands.  That's when I know I'm losing it, but that's not the point here.  :)

So, the point is, what do I know for sure?  I know for SURE that at the core, I am still the girl who left the farm life with a wide eyed wonder. I know that I have had a spark that is still in there somewhere.  There is a line in a song that I have always thought described me, "a torch of a girl with a hurricane in her soul."  Yes, that's me.  Always!  I was always a torch passionate about whatever it was I was pursuing at the moment.  I always had a spark, a spunk, and a little something devious in me.  So, now, I just have this opportunity to remind myself of what I KNOW FOR SURE about myself.  I know for sure that I am made in His image, and therefore, He must have a passionate side, a side that likes to be surrounded by friends, even sometimes the wrong friends.  After all, Jesus loved a dinner party, he turned water into wine for his first miracle, for goodness sake, don't tell me He didn't know how to have a good time.  I know that for me, being made in His image, does not look like being something He didn't create me to be, that going in the opposite direction of who I was made to be just doesn't work.  It's not natural and the reason it feels all wrong is because that's not who HE intended me to be.  If you read Eat, Pray, Love, there is a point in the book where she tries to take a vow of silence and the "universe" just isn't having it.  All sorts of situations keep popping up that make it nearly impossible for her to be silent.  And she finally realizes that "God didn't make her the quiet brunette in the back of the room.  God made her the loud, talkative blonde out front."  That didn't mean that she couldn't be a BETTER loud, talkative blonde, it just meant that it was dishonoring to God and herself to try to be the person He didn't ever intend for her to be.  Sort of a "bloom where you're planted" mentality.  So, I'm going to be the best extraverted, social, caring, compassionate, enthusiastic person I can be, and stop trying to figure out how I'm ever going to survive my current state of misery.

I don't have a verse to end with today.  But instead, I have this quoted text message.  I will share this with you, sacred as it is to me, because I think it honors the kind of strong women/friends that I'm surrounded by.  And I think it's honoring and true to Emmanuel, God with us:

Me:
"... I'm so angry with God right now!  Why is this season lasting so long?  I know He could rescue me.  I know He could stop it.  Why must I continue to suffer?"
Friend:
"I hear you, what would rescue or Him stopping the suffering look like?"
Me:
"Just f'ing tell me the point already.  Whatever lesson I need to learn, write it on the wall so I can move on.  Why does everything that brings a little relief have to be taken from me?"
Friend:
"Here's my take.  I think Emmanuel with us looks a lot less like teaching us lessons... I think instead he cries in your room at night for you as you sleep alone.  I think He sees your heart as one that's been wronged, wounded, and treated terribly.  And I don't get why he's not making this pass quicker.  But I trust that in the in between, He is actually the truest friend you have.  But is also the sturdiest.  So slam the door in his face if you need to."

Oh, dear friend, YOU were Jesus with skin on for me that day.  You, said it so perfectly.