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.

Back Where I Come From

Y'all have heard me talk about home before.  About how I grew up with a Daddy who was larger than life to me, I loved Loretta Lynn, my Mama and Granma took a casserole, desert or pimento cheese to every Baptist who ever had a baby or any elderly shut-in that ever existed within a 15 mile radius.  My grandparents had gardens, big ones, and canned and shucked and shelled every summer.  No matter how far I've fallen, I was raised up right.  No matter how far I've traveled from home (and Honolulu is a LONG way from Fulton), that country girl, raised in a small town, was in there all the time.

I think, for me anyway, when things go wrong in my life, I always think about returning to ground zero (not the one in NYC, but the my ground zero.)  It's sort of like going back to the last place I knew everything was right.  If life goes haywire for me, in my mind, the last time I KNEW what I wanted and where I was going was when I was home.  Of course, when I was there, the place I knew I was going was "anywhere but here."  But still, there's this nostalgia about home, my hometown, and the life there that isn't realistic, I'm sure, but that in my mind, is safety.  In my mind, I know that if everything goes wrong in the world, if I lose the roof over my head and the food on my table, there's a safe place to land. And that's home.

In the end, I could say that my parents are a roaring success.  If, at the mid-point in their lives, my kids could say that home is their safe place to land, that they know when ALL else fails them, no matter who's right or who's wrong, no matter their part in the mistakes or whether or not the whole mess is their fault, they know that they have a safe landing near me, then I'll be pleased with the job I've done as a mom.  That's all I really want for my kids, in the end, if they take nothing else.  And I hope that they take 1,000,000 other things too.  I hope I prepare them for ANY path they choose in life, whether it be ditch digger or brain surgeon, I hope I give them confidence and humility both enough to embrace their lives and know that they are accepted, any way they are.  That's what my parents gave me, above all else.  I know that no matter what, I can go home.  I could always go home.  I would always have a roof over my head.  I would always "figure it out" and "make it work" if I had to.  And that is something I do not take for granted.  I don't think everyone could say that in this world.  I don't think everyone has that kind of safety net.

Believe me, I'm not saying that is anywhere close to optimal.  My kids need to be raised here, or close to here, where they have their own support network.  There are psychiatrists and experts to help Liam.  There are "city" activities that interest Jack.  There are all sorts of enrichment opportunities for the kids that aren't offered in my hometown.  I would never uproot them again unless I had no choice at all.  But in the end, when I find it hard to breathe because I am unsure about the future, I know the option is there and if nothing else, I'll have food and shelter and people who will welcome me.

Today as I was praying, I just felt a renewed sense of strength come over me.  I have felt that everyone thought I was this strong person, but that in reality, I was so weak and I was broken and I really didn't know what in the world I was going to do to survive.  I didn't see any happiness in my future.  I didn't see anything around me that looked like the life I wanted.  I didn't have any dreams or any hopes other than survival and my kids being okay.  I know it seems ridiculous to think that my life is over at 42 and that my only hope was that I didn't screw my kids up too badly, but that's where I was (and am dangerously teetering on that edge throughout the day at times.)  But just for today, I heard God say, "I've got this. I've got you!  I'm big enough to take all this, child.  Give Me your sorrow.  Give Me your fear.  Give Me your children.  I've got this!"  And I literally envisioned Him reaching His hands out and taking my worries and my fears from me.  It was such an amazing feeling.  Just to let it go.  Just to open my hands and just offer it up and just for today, I haven't really worried at all.  The fears and thoughts have not been overwhelming.  The doubt has not shaded everything else.  I have felt strong.  I haven't had the catastrophic thinking that this was it, no one would ever love me again, I would never feel secure or known, that I would be lonely forever.  P-lease! I'm so morose sometimes!  I know that God knows every single thought, every desire, every yearning, every fear, and I know that He wants what's best for me.  He has something for us to do, somewhere for us to go, and we can't get there with me holding on to these things that are not of Him.  I found a quote on Pinterest that I think is so appropriate and I hope I can remember it moving forward:

So, I don't know if what I've been through really qualifies as a chapter.  I think it's more like, you can't watch the sequel if you keep re-running the original.  It's more like an installment of a saga than a chapter, but I digress.  You get the point.  

Romans 5:8

"I loved you at your darkest."  

Time

I was thinking today about the adage "Time heals all wounds" and I was actually arguing in my head that I don't believe it.  First of all, on April 4, 2010, I told myself, "I can't wait for April 4, 2011.  Surely things will be so much better by then.  We will have gone through our first of every single thing in the new light of our story."  See, when my sister was killed, I found out that the first time you experience every milestone without that person, it's the hardest.  You have the first birthday without them, the first holiday, the first first day of school, etc. etc.  But once you've been through that pain, it doesn't go away, it's just that it's not as sharp anymore.  So, I thought experiencing the first of everything in my new reality would surely make things so much better and after the year had passed, I'd be well on my way to accepting the new normal of my life.

Then April 4, 2011 rolled around.  Honolulu, HI.  Dinner out.  I was so naive.  Ridiculous really, when I think back on it.  But very indicative of how I handled the entire situation. I thought if I could somehow commemorate the event, acknowledge it, try not to avoid it but just straight up admit that it was the day the earth shook and the sky went black for me, then I could somehow get control of it, take it in my hands and make it bend to my will.  DUMB DUMB DUMB!!!!!  The night was a total disaster.  I walked halfway home, threw my favorite pair of heels at a homeless encampment (someone in Hono, HI is walking around in a really nice pair of Madden's now) and in general lost my mind.  That day is a really bad day in my life history, that April 4.... I don't like that April 4.  From that moment forward, I had this frantic urge to get the heck off the island.  I felt like I was in jail, I felt trapped there.  I felt so completely caged.  I remember feeling like a tiger at the zoo, pacing back and forth in the cage, this primal urge to DO something and nothing to DO but pace.  So, I did what I ALWAYS do, I ran.  I ran and ran and ran.  All over Honolulu and Waikiki, I just ran.  I ran and BEGGED God to change things.  I begged Him to make things better.  I begged Him to change my story and not ask my kids to live the life of divorced parents.  I begged and begged.  I screamed on the black rocks under Diamond Head.  I cried my eyes out, drowned out by the crashing waves, only God and the bright purple eel that lived there could possibly hear me, but my groans were spiritual, they were deep, they were primal, and they were painful.  I have journal entry after journal entry, typed on the phone while sitting on those rocks.  And the cries are not that different from the cries I have today.

Here's the difference though, in what I know today that I didn't know that day, or any of the days leading up to this week, but I know now.  I have an enormous heart for the hurting and wounded of the world.  Anytime I see someone behaving badly, being mean, or being sad, I only see an individual who is in deep pain.  That's why when my friend got so mad at me last week, others were angry with her for her reaction to me, but all I could do was apologize over and over to her because I knew that there was alot of pain coming out in the wrong way.  It's the same thing that happened in my marriage.  I never told anyone what was going on because I felt sure I could handle the crushing blows on my own.  Heap it on me, I can take it.  I can handle your pain because I see that it's not personal to me, it's your pain and you aren't meaning to hurt me, you're hurting inside and I'm an accidental victim.  My therapist pointed out this week that I am willing to take just about any amount of "abuse" (don't read that wrong, I was not an abused spouse) as long as it doesn't affect people I love.  I rarely draw a line for myself that says, "I won't take more than x."  I only stand up and put my foot down when people's pain starts to hurt innocent bystanders that I love and care about.  While that might sound noble on the front end, I encourage you not to congratulate me on my huge heart or caring ways.  Contrary, I've created a mess of a person, a weary soul, and a situation I've got to dig my way out of because I didn't feel WORTHY of having a standard for myself.  I don't know why.  It's not because I wasn't loved as a child, etc. etc.  I was.  I don't blame it on my raising, I don't know where the hell I learned this.  But somewhere along the way, I started to believe that as long as someone would love me, I could or should take whatever else came along with that too.  I just want to be loved so badly that I am willing to be treated in ways that I shouldn't.

So, therein lies the REAL difficulty for me in this whole marriage situation.  First of all, I want my children to learn that there are limits to what they should accept from others in order to be loved.  Yes, love can be unconditional, love can be tolerant, but the key is, if you are being asked to tolerate things that are not loving, then it's not love you're receiving.  I want them to know that they are SO WORTHY of being loved unconditionally, not for what they do, not for how they look, how they perform, whether they get it right or wrong, but just by the mere fact that they ARE... they are children of God, they are precious, wanted individuals who deserve to be cherished, protected, and valued by me, their daddy, and everyone else in their life, regardless of any other thing in the world.  Without doing a thing, they deserve that.  How do I demonstrate that to them though, if I can't expect it for myself?

But then also, I wonder, will they ever understand what drove me to drastic measures?  Will they ever forgive me for drawing a line for myself?  Will they ever not blame me that I couldn't figure out how to put this thing back together? I know that this is painful for them, I know that there will be times for the rest of their lives when it will be painful, and then eventually just plain inconvenient.  And I'm damned if I can figure out a way to avoid that for them.  Which makes me feel selfish for not just sucking it up and figuring it out.  But then I think of all the things that have occurred in the past year and a half and oh the ache for my own inner child... the ache for why I wouldn't/couldn't protect HER from some of these things... I should have shielded her the way I shielded everyone else.  I'm trying.  I'm learning what that looks like.  I'm trying to keep my eyes forward focused when others question me and plant shameful thoughts.  I'm trying to remember that I have to heal myself first if I am ever ever going to experience what it is I was wanting so desperately.  And I'm SO hopeful that when I DO heal, and when I DO experience that, then my children will naturally flourish in the light of that.  They are truly my only concern in this.  Because if I come out of this alive, I've survived it.  If I come out of this as happy personally as I've ever been, but my children wither, I will be a shell forever.  If I come out of this alone and lonely, but my children thrive, then I will have lived well and I won't count the cost.

Matthew 28:20
"And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

It's a new day....

It's hard to get up in the mornings.  My alarm goes off and I want to pull the covers back over my head.  But, today I have a few appointments and a reason to get dressed, so that's a very good thing.  I'm trying to be intentional about how I fill my days, not over-booking, but certainly trying to keep busy.

When the rough patches hit, I confess that I want to lay down and just give up.  I just want someone else to come and tell me what to do and where I'm going to land. I want someone else to have the conversations about the tough things.  My heart is weary of all the pain.  I don't know how people go through a divorce when it's truly just "I'm no longer happy."  I could find a way to be happy if there weren't these huge transgressions.  And even then I could probably figure it out to avoid all this if all this hadn't occurred on top of it all.  I'm exhausted.  Have I said that?  Did I mention that I'm just freakin' TIRED!?  I'm tired of the fight, tired of being intentional for my kiddos, tired of trying to prop them up every day when I'm barely standing myself, tired of worrying about where the money for unexpected things is going to come from, tired of worrying about how in the heck I'm going to take care of this huge yard and four kids and a 25 year old house all by myself without my parents close by.  I'm weary of all things.  I want to have some joy, some fun, some rest, some relief from the strain of it.  I'm so tired of the guilt I feel over the legacy my children will now carry.  I swear I'd do it differently if I could stomach it.  My heart hurts at the thought of what my kids will endure for the rest of their lives.  Oh how I ache for them.  I can't stay for them, I've been told 100 times by counselors and psychiatrists that it is no more healthy for them to live in a home where there is discord than it is to live in a single parent home where there is peace.  But so far, no one has peace.  People tell me it will come.  My friends remind me of what my August and September were like and they say it's better now.  I guess it is.  But it doesn't feel better.  It feels the same.  I do know that there was a brief reprieve.  Maybe  why this feels worse.  There was a two or three week period of time where I thought things weren't too bad.  But then that seems to have only made the contrast of how I feel now more acute.

Psalm 147:3-5
"³ He heals the brokenhearted 
   and binds up their wounds. 
⁴ He determines the number of the stars 
   and calls them each by name. 
⁵ Great is our Lord and mighty in power; 
   his understanding has no limit."

Thank you, Lindsay, for reminding me of this verse.  I LOVE the thought of him literally wrapping bindings around my wound.  I think of the way I tenderly "doctor" my children's scrapes and cuts, how I make a big deal over the smallest of things and I rush to alleviate the pain of true hurts.  I can imagine our Lord doing this for me, rushing to my side when I am alone and hurting, wrapping my heart in bindings and holding them tight until the pain has eased.  

Just Breathe

I think I've quoted this before, but there is a line in a Jars of Clay song.  The song is called Work.  The line says, "I have no fear of drowning, it's the breathing that's taking all this work."  That is SO accurate for my life right now.  I have ridden this wave of emotions since April of 2010.  Days when I would wake up thinking that life was possibly resuming something that looked like normal.  Thinking, "Okay, I can do this... not exactly what I thought I wanted, but okay God, we'll go with it."  Then out of nowhere I slam hard into a space that has no oxygen, there's no normal in sight, there's only lonely and scared because how in the world am I going to do all this?  How am I going to take care of this house and four kids all by myself?  Really?!  I look around and all I see is work work work and no one to help help help.  So, I don't fear drowning.  Drowning would probably actually be better.  I'm drowning for sure.  Actually going down would mean I could stop fighting the water and the waves and just let go.  But I can't do that.  Number one, I have my kids to fight for.  I have to keep swimming (like Dory in Little Nemo, I've said to myself 1000 times and more, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming....") Plus, I honestly and truly don't know HOW to stop swimming.  I've been swimming all my life.  I've been striving toward something that felt invisibly pulling me along, a feeling of unrest before, now a feeling of life or death, but still, that same feeling with new intensity that I have keep going.  I just hate waking up in the morning wondering what I'm going to do for 14 hours until I can go back to bed and forget the world for a while.  I dread the new day and what pain it might bring.  I have always sort of hated New Years Eve because alot of people get excited for what a new year might hold, but since my sister was killed, I've thought of it as "what if this is the year your sister dies, or what if this is the year your husband leaves you, or what if this is the year it REALLY gets bad."  I hate when people say, "It can't get any worse, because it can ALWAYS get worse."

So, I know it's nice and depressing to read my words on a Monday morning.  I know that it's not the ridiculous antics people usually come here to hear about.  There are still alot of funny things that happen in my day, but I see them through a painful fog right now.  Last week, I was almost cheerful, I said to a friend, "This is the first time in a long time I haven't dreaded the new day, I think I'm coming through the other side."  WHAM! Thanksgiving and reality and fear and I didn't see it coming. I truly got clotheslined by it and am sort of experiencing a shocked feeling of once again trying to get up off the floor.  God, how many times must I pick myself up?  Lord, how many times must I hit a low, think it's the bottom, only to realize there's further to fall?  How much must you allow me to hurt before it's done? I look around and see that You have gently put people and words in my path to encourage me.  You have been with me, I know You haven't left my side, and I have physically felt that God Himself has suffered with me all this time.  I'm just calling out today that my praying friends would intervene for me, I need something encouraging, something hopeful, something new....

"The Lord hears his people when they call to Him, He rescues them from all their troubles.  The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, He rescues those whose spirits are crushed." 

Anyone know what verse this is?  I found the quote, but couldn't find the Scripture location.

Time, Obedience, and Trust

Today's sermon was about prosperity.  That God's intention is for us to prosper and ENJOY the gifts He has given us.  It's sort of a foreign concept to me because my religious upbringing left me believing that God loved me, but that He was ready to thump me on the head anytime I did wrong, which in my life was alot because I'm a rebel at heart, natural challenger of authority, tell me I can't and I will die trying, etc.  It took 41 years, but I think God has finally thumped it out of me!  I'm broken of spirit.  This week, Thanksgiving, put me over the edge.  I think I came undone.  It was lonely.  I missed my kiddos, who were with their dad and my in-laws, who are my family too.  I met them all for the first time 18 Thanksgiving's ago.  It was so hard.  The hardest week of my life.  In the process of my grief, I also carelessly hurt a friend.  So, here I sat today, in church, listening to how God wants to give me these great things and how He has planned things for my life that are beyond my imagination right now and I just want it to be true SO badly.  I want to skip through all this difficulty, all this first holiday as a broken family.  I want someone to wake me up when the pain is over and tell me I can start to look for more than one day at a time now.  I want to take a breath without it hurting.  I want to look forward to the day, and the night, and tomorrow without dread.  I want the loneliness to end and the healing to begin.  I am so tired of hurting and so tired of fighting for rest.  I'm just tired.  Scared and tired... mostly I'm just tired.