Equal Yoking

Well, I've been around the blog world since what seems like before 'Nam.  Things and people have come and gone in my life.  And boy have things changed!  And I've taken break after break, tried to start new blogs, and what not, but in the end, I think in blog posts and I have a commitment to this particular blog, a loyalty, if you will, that won't let me quit this specific chronicle, so here I am again!  Whew!

What have I learned in two years of hard living and hard lessons?  Wow, SO much!  But one thing I've learned that has come to me in the past few days is this.  When God talks about being equally yoked with someone, He wasn't (Granma forgive me) talking necessarily about Christianity and your belief system.  I have come to believe that He was talking about being with someone who was, well, I don't really have a better way to say it... equally yoked.  When I got married at age 27, I thought I had won the marriage lottery.  Everything was perfect!  But I was a country girl,  he was a city boy.  I was a (for lack of a better term) "tractor pull" and he was a "wine taster."  I was raised in a small town (if you want to know more about that, consult John Mellencamp.)  He was raised in the city.  Farm and country life were in my blood.  He had spent a little time on his grandparents "farm" (acreage in Mississippi with a big garden), but it was always more of a novelty.  I think he didn't really "get" what it meant to me that my great grandfather had gotten my family home through the homestead act.  I know of about 6 addresses he had occupied as a child.  I grew up in ONE house from the time I was almost two until I moved to college.  I grew up with a Daddy who I thought could do anything and a Mama... not a "mom" like city-folk have, but a "Mama!"  Not Mommy like rich kids.  Mama!  What people from small Southern towns have.  Mama and Granma knew how to set a formal table.  We never EVER served ourselves from the stove on Sunday.  We never EVER sat down without a real cloth napkin at our plate.  So... all that to say that neither of us grew up "wrong", but miles and worlds apart. 

I was reading back through some old journals of mine and I found entries where I was wondering, even back in 1996, if I would ever get to move back to a place where I felt at "home."  I'll say, since that time, I've moved to a smaller community and I'm known by alot of people and I now (since being single) have started banking at a small bank where they know my name.  There's just a difference in the way we do things that, neither right or wrong, is just fundamentally different.  I don't think any of these things are deal breakers, by any stretch of the imagination.  I was sailing along quite happily and contently the way things were.  Please don't hear me criticizing or complaining because, by no means is that what I'm doing.  I loved my ex-husband's family.  I loved being in that life.  But now that I've been out of that world long enough to take a real look at it, I can see that there were some quintessential differences that were not "equal yoking."  I have many fears and worries as a single mom.  And I'm not "playing the single mom card", don't feel sorry for me, I have a wonderful life!  But I do worry about some things being alone that I didn't worry about before.  I lock all my windows now before I go to bed.  I miss the luxury of being able to sleep with the windows open.  And that's just one small example.  But on the flip side, there are alot of aspects of my life that I have "reclaimed" (to steal a phrase from my months of counseling.)  There are some things that I feel far more at home with now than I did before.  I don't like many of the aspects of single life at this juncture (the world is made for couples at 43.)  But there are some things that just fit better now... the little rebel girl who went barefoot and wore John Lennon sunglasses and always marched to the beat of her own drum has now regained her voice in many ways.  She was always in there, but she felt that she needed to be a "respectable adult" for many years.  So... I needed a place to lay this down and this felt like the safest place to do it.  My faithful friends who followed this journey have earned the right to hear some of the good things that have come from the very bad things that brought them. 

Love y'all!