Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Marriage in the Mess

C J writes:

|| marriage ||

I’m super guilty of the, “If I could just ____, then I’d be happy” mindset. I hate that I do this, but I do.

If I could just graduate high school and move away, then I’ll be happy.

If I could just finish college and work, then I’ll be happy.

If I could just get more hours at this job so I can have more money, then I’ll be happy.

If I could just find a man, then I’ll be happy.

If I could just be engaged, then I’ll be happy.

If I could just get married, then I’ll be happy.

If I could just be a mom, then I’ll be happy.

The problem is, that’s not happiness, and that is not a way to spend your life. But I’m guilty of this, so, so, so guilty of this. But what happens when you check each of those things off? Then you’ll be happy? No, because the problem is that there’s always more to add. Always. Because if you are not content and joyful and happy where you are with what you have RIGHT NOW, you will never be. And it’s scary, to be in this mindset and knowing that you are setting yourself up to be disappointed and miserable for all of your life if you don’t snap out of it. And trust me, I’m preaching to myself more than anything.

The first 3 months of marriage were so easy, it’s funny. I remember hitting that 3 month mark and suddenly I realized that sometimes, just sometimes, my husband kinda bugged me. A lot. And things that he did bugged me. And things that he said hurt my feelings. Before marriage, I would not have called myself a sensitive person. But just like marriage does, it teaches you things about yourself that you wish weren’t true. I wish I wasn’t moody or irritable. I wish I didn’t care that I had to do the dishes for the millionth time. I wish I could communicate my feelings and thoughts better. I wish I was this, I wish I didn’t do that. It opens your eyes to everything you suck at, and I don’t like to suck at things. I don’t like to be in the wrong, or have to apologize. Am in the only one? No? Okay, good.

When you’re married, you have to apologize. You have to say that you were wrong sometimes. And honestly, for me and my marriage, my husband is probably right more than I am (don’t tell him that). Now, there are loads of times where he is in the wrong, but since I am super humble and the best wife ever, I let it slide. (Hint: sarcasm.)

Marriage got hard. It got scary. I realized things about myself that I didn’t like. I realized things about him that I didn’t like. But there we were, married for life. Some days were easy and blissful and just plain great. Other days, we were so irritated with each other that we would barely talk.

And I felt like there was something wrong with us. Because I used to look at people’s picture perfect social media marriages and get mad. I’d get mad because I didn’t think it was fair. I didn’t think it was fair because I thought, “How come their marriage is great and their husband is nice to them and mine sucks and I’m giving my husband the silent treatment because he hurt my feelings for the thousandth time?!? Why!?” (Because obviously, I was a child.)

I figured we had been through so much already that once we got to marriage, we would finally be okay. But really, we just brought all of that baggage and hurt and miscommunication into marriage with us. So what do you get when you have two broken, stubborn, prideful human beings and you add in trust issues, communication issues, job stress, school stress and life?

Well, I’ll tell you.

You get a mess.

You get a bunch of tearful nights and conversations and arguments and hurt. But you also get growth and maturity and a team. But I am telling you right now, still barely reaching the top of the pit, there cannot be growth unless you are at the bottom. Broken. Surrendered. And honestly, that is a very hard, humbling place to be.

Now, I know that sounds like a miserable mess. And it was, sometimes. But we were doing our best to love each other the best way we knew how. We learned from each other and we did grow together. We were (are) just a couple of kids. We were raised differently, had different viewpoints and thoughts and opinions. And we didn’t know how to do a lot of things very well, we both messed up a lot.

But there is forgiveness. And the ability to laugh things off. Sometimes, he frustrates me so much that I can’t stop laughing because of how annoyed I am and he thinks he’s being funny. And sometimes I am such a huge diva and a brat that I drive him absolutely insane. And that’s how you learn. No amount of marriage advice or “marriage is hard work” speeches can replace the real life moments of learning and figuring this whole thing out. He knows me better than anyone else and I know him better than anyone else ever could.

Honestly, there’s a naivety that comes with getting married young, and I understand why older, wiser people tell you that you should wait a little bit. Because, like everyone says, it is hard. It’s hard to love each other like Jesus loves. Actually it feels downright impossible most days. But there is also a beautiful grace about marriage and young love that is unexplainable. You learn together, grow together, fight together, lean on each other and on Jesus, together. When you’re married, you’re a team. Even on the days you don’t want to be a team or you feel like neither one of you is being a team player. There’s a love that is there that is safe, because you both know that no matter how crappy things get, you are going to go through it together.

I have cried more tears in my 2 years of married life than I had ever cried in the 20 years of single life. Some of those have been happy tears, but most of those have been extremely upset and painful tears. But I know that every day that I wake up, I get to love and serve this man that God has given me. And if I lose sight of that, that’s when things get hard and messy. I am married to a son of God, who has feelings and thoughts and deserves to be treated and loved well. That is a huge responsibility to have, but I’ve been entrusted with his heart, and if I get too carried away with the dishes and the laundry and the hurt feelings and the irritations of the day, I’m not doing what God would have me do. And I don’t know about you, but if the Creator of the Universe entrusted me with something, I better do it – and do it to the best of my abilities.

To summarize: marriage is hard.

Marriage is about serving and showing the love of Jesus to your spouse. Unconditionally. Every day. And then when you fail at that – because we are not Jesus and we will fail – there is forgiveness and love and a new day tomorrow.

I want my husband to be able to look at me and say, “I see the love of Jesus pouring out of you in everything you do.” And I want God go be able to say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant. I trusted you to nurture and care for him and his heart, and you have, and I am proud of you.”

How different we would live and act and treat one another if our goal was to hear those words, right? If our goal was really to be Jesus’ hands and feet in the world, starting with our husband and family?

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Breathing in the In-Between

C. J. writes:

If your heart is broken, you’ll find God right there; if you’re kicked in the gut, He’ll help you catch your breath.
– Psalm 34:18

“Someone has to be very close to you to be able to get near enough to kick you in the gut. Don’t be surprised when your greatest pain is caused by those you’ve loved the most. Only they have the power to truly, deeply wound you and break your heart.”
– Christine Caine

I remember the feeling of being kicked in the gut by the person I love the most. The feeling of gasping for air but the air does not come. The feeling of my heart shattering more and more with every word. I remember it like it happened just yesterday.

It was a gorgeous Saturday in October. I had spent a fun day downtown with a friend, and he had spent the day at a seminar for school. I was already home when he walked in the door. He came and sat down with me on the couch, and we talked about our days. It was calm and peaceful. It was really, really nice. I remember thinking that it had been a while since we had had the time to sit down and just to talk to each other and smile at each other.

“I need to talk to you about something.”

No one likes those words. No one ever in the history of the world likes to hear those words come out of someone’s mouth. I remember my whole body stiffened, and I weakly said, “Okay.”

“I’ve been struggling with an addiction to pornography for a while. Since high school, probably. And I’ve never told anyone. I’ve tried to stop a lot of times, but I never confessed it to anyone. I’ve wanted to tell you, but I didn’t want to make a bad day even worse or ruin a good day.”

Have you ever had the wind knocked out of you? It takes a second to catch your breath; it takes a second to figure out what happened before your body breathes again. That’s what this felt like. I didn’t say anything to him, I just stared into the eyes of the man I thought I knew. But with every word out of his mouth, I quickly realized that I had been lied to. Betrayed. Tricked. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like the room was a thousand degrees, but I pulled a blanket over my legs and hands so he couldn’t see how much I was shaking.

He talked to me for probably thirty minutes about everything. That it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with his brokenness and his sin. A “stupid habit that started when he was a dumb boy and never stopped.”

Somehow, that didn’t make it hurt any less.

When he was done talking, he asked me what I was thinking about. I said something along the lines of, “I mean, I don’t hate you. I’m not going to leave you. I shouldn’t be surprised, really. It’s so easy in this world and pretty much every guy does it.” I didn’t really know what I was saying. I didn’t really know what to say. I didn’t cry. I didn’t do much of anything. I was honestly just trying to figure out how to breathe normally.

I now realize that I was just in shock. I always thought, Not my husband. Not my man. That’s not our story. He loves Jesus. He loves me. He’s one of the good ones. And he is still all of those things. But sometimes, Satan doesn’t care if you’re a good one. Satan doesn’t care if you love Jesus and your wife. Satan can still get what he wants.

We went to Dairy Queen that night. I sat in the passenger seat and stared out the window as we drove. I was quiet. He felt better. He was in better spirits than I was. He had finally come clean from a disgusting, damaging secret. I’m sure it felt like the heaviest weight had been lifted from his shoulders. I don’t think I knew what I was feeling yet. I remember feeling sad. Sad for him, that he had been struggling. Mad at myself, for never asking and never seeing how big of a secret he was keeping from me. Sick to my stomach at the thought of how I was going to still live and be married to him. I think I barely ate my ice cream without puking it back up.

As we laid down to go to bed that night, I began to lose it. It was the first of many nights to come where I would lose it. Lose all of my grounding and just cry and cry until I finally fell asleep. He asked if he could hold me, and I said no. I can still hear the tone of his voice saying that he was sorry. Over and over again.

But I didn’t believe him. I didn’t believe anything he was saying to me anymore.

It took years to build the trust that held us together, and that trust was shattered in a split second. Actually, it had been shattered all of those years I thought it was being built. I just didn’t know about it yet.

It’s been six months since that evening in October. I have looked at what feels like every blog post, book, video on marriage and trust and betrayal, and everyone tells you what happened in their story and most of them are happy endings. A lot of them even say things like, “It’s been 10 years now and we are stronger than ever.”

But what about the years between finding out and being stronger than ever? What happened during those years?

I wish that it was a quick fix. I wish that it only took one, “I’m sorry for doing this. You can trust me now, though,” to be able to trust again.

But it doesn’t.

Six months later, and he has given me no other reason to not trust or believe him. He has done all that I’ve asked of him.

So why does my heart still ache? Why do I watch where his eyes go when we’re out in public and around other women? Why do I fight the urge to check his phone whenever he leaves it laying around?

Why can’t I respond when he says he loves me?

When I have really hard nights, the kind where I lay on the floor screaming and crying and clutching my chest, trying to make the ache in my heart go away, those are the nights where I wish I had someone to tell me that it is okay for healing to look like this. That sometimes it’s an ugly, crying mess. That this is what the “in-between” looks like. This is where God restores.

I wish that I felt that, on my darkest days. To be honest, I wish that I felt that even on better days.

Sometimes, I think that God is silent. And that’s okay. And even if this healing process doesn’t feel like much healing is happening, I will trust that, someday, I will be able to look at my husband and realize we are stronger than ever. That my heart doesn’t ache anymore. And when he says that he loves me, I will actually believe him.

I trust that my God is bigger than the both of us. And that even though the pain is unbearable, even when I feel alone and broken, He is here. In the midst of this, He is here and He is holding us both until we are strong enough to hold each other again. And what a glorious day it will be when that happens. When Satan doesn’t get to claim another marriage.

Because although he might try to get want he wants, and he might do a crap ton of damage to two people, Jesus still wins.

“Someone has to be very close to you to be able to get near enough to kick you in the gut. Don’t be surprised when your greatest pain is caused by those you’ve loved the most. Only they have the power to truly and deeply wound you and break your heart. It takes time to catch your breath when you’ve been winded. Give it time and remember God is with you, even when you can’t feel Him. One breath at a time, one step at a time and you’ll get your rhythm back. Guard your heart, don’t harden it. Just because it happened to you does not mean it was about you. God sees. God knows. God cares.”
– Christine Caine

~ C. J.

Friday, July 4, 2014

Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?

On October 25th, 2009, my church did a “cardboard testimony” thing. (Watch some on Youtube!) It’s basically a thing where people write their testimony in a few words on a piece of cardboard. One side is what you were/have been through, and the other side is how God used it, redeemed you, saved you, etc.

On one side of mine, I wrote this:
Empty
Distrusted God
HATED myself

On the other, I wrote this:
God’s plan is BEAUTIFUL

I was thinking about that the other night, wincing at my naivety. My innocence. My stupidity. (And now my offended pride.) Even after the struggles I faced – and I did struggle – I was sure that from that point on, everything would be great. The struggles of the future would pale to the struggles I’d come through.

No.

God’s plan is not always beautiful. Sometimes it hurts. Hurts like all manners of hell. (Yes, I just wrote that.)

Sometimes God’s plan takes everything you think and love and allows it to be ripped apart in an instant.

Sometimes God’s plan is so petrifying that instead of trusting him, you revert back to all of those things you thought you’d escaped from.

Sometimes God’s plan to build a beautiful city starts with him razing the city you built on your own.

Sometimes his plan to create a garden starts with him ripping out the weeds and roots and altogether destroying the place. 

Sometimes you ask God to take you out upon the waters, but when he gets you to the edge of the ocean, you freak out, flop down, and refuse to take another step. So he stands there waiting for you to finish your tantrum, let go of your pride and panic, and look at him again. 

That’s where I am. That’s where I’ve been. At the edge of the water, butt in the sand, arms crossed, and jaw clenched. Refusing to look up because I don’t want to see where I am, or where I’m going.

“I am not doing this, God. No. No freaking way. You cannot make me. You do this to me, and I am done. You hear me? DONE.”

Cringe-worthy, right?

See, the thing is, even as I did that cardboard testimony, I didn’t know what to write. I didn’t feel changed; I never really have. I wrote “distrusted God,” but I couldn’t bring myself to write “trusting God” on the other side. I wanted to, but I didn’t want to lie.

So I wrote something else.

Over four years later and distrusting God, for me, is still not a thing of the past.
It is daily. Constant. Even more so now. Or, rather, this whole trial has revealed what is really in me.

These past many months, I have dissolved into fear. Not in it, but into it. It has taken over, become me.

Do I know what God is getting at? Not really, because I haven’t asked. I’ve been so angry with him, so angry with myself, so certain he’s going to screw me over that I can’t think straight. Can’t trust him enough to think I could hear him clearly. Don’t know how to not read into everything, so I read nothing. Can’t bring myself to surrender – even though I know it’s the answer – because I fear what that surrender will look like. I’ve just panicked. Clung to a groundless fear and waited it out.

Well, the waiting is out. It’s past.

I’m still alive.

But I’m also still standing on the shoreline, refusing to follow him out on the waves. The distrust in my heart hasn’t dimmed, it’s just accompanied by the condemning thoughts of, “Well, if you surrender now, it doesn’t really count. You should have done it before. Your love is sooo conditional.”

And it’s true. My love for God is conditional. Just like I believe his is toward me.

I live under shame, condemnation, regret, and fear. The worst part? I know this – and I still continue to live there. It’s not right or good, but it’s familiar. It’s not safe, but it feels safer than sticking my head out in faith. I don’t have a good track record for not getting pulverized when I do that. So, in effort to, you know, not get pulverized like that again, I stay in the darkness of myself where I’m comfortable.

It’s deadly. Suffocating. But it’s the only way I know to protect myself: withdraw, hide, bury. Rinse and repeat.

See, my biggest fears aren’t bees, or heights, or breaking my nose and having it crooked for the rest of my life. (That was supposed to be slightly funny. Though I do fear something happening to make me physically ugly.)

My biggest fear is losing control/not being in control.

This shows up so clearly, so insanely, when it comes to heights.

I’m afraid of the big swing at camp, the zip-line also at camp, and of roller coasters. I stood at the top of our clubhouse thingy the other day (the platform is maybe ten feet up) and looked down – my stomach churned and my head swam. I’m paralyzed by the thought of going out on a skywalk thing over the Grand Canyon. (Seriously, do people have a death wish or what?!?! Just – why? What are you thinking? Why would you ev–)

So I fear standing on something high-ish. Or sitting. Yet I don’t fear the thought of climbing a wall, or a tree. The thought of the high ropes course at camp? Yes please! Those three things don’t strike me with terror, but with delight. Why? Well, because I’m in control of course. I’m holding on, not strapped in by someone else. (The skywalk thing is just stupid.) It’s my strength that holds me to the little nubs on the wall, my strength that carries me through the tree. If I fall, it’s because I failed. But if I die because a roller coaster flies off the track, then I’m pretty powerless to do anything. (Granted, the ropes course and wall might not be well-constructed, but therein lies the insanity.)

This is getting off topic. Sort of.

I’m afraid to follow Jesus out upon the waters. (After all, water as a liquid is not known as something you can easily walk on. Few people have done it. Fewer have done it well.) I’m afraid of him leaving me there and of drowning. I’m afraid because there isn’t anything to cling to in the middle of the ocean. Waves can be pretty big. I just watched this documentary, and it talked about rogue waves? Yeah.

But I kind of wonder if maybe I am more afraid that I will not drown/be abandoned, but that I will be able to stand. Because that territory right there is utterly unknown – and will lead to only more unknown things/places.  

I long for the great unknown.
I fear it with every fiber of my being.

No, God’s plan is not always beautiful.

But someday I will finally understand that HE is beautiful.
He is everything beautiful, everything my heart loves.

And he makes everything beautiful in its time.

That was the verse that came to mind as tears welled in my eyes the other night (Ecclesiastes 3:11). No, his plan is not always beautiful. The roads it travels are paved with pain, blood, sweat, and burning anguish.

Sometimes the path to life looks a lot like dying.

But he makes things beautiful.
He makes all things new.
He raises what is dead, resuscitates hearts frozen in blackness.

The theme of my life lately? The theme I keep seeing on facebook, hearing on the radio?

“Forgive. Let go. It’s in the past. God is doing a new thing.”

And mostly, “Press on.”

Monday, December 9, 2013

The harder I try

I never know how to start this. I guess I’ve come to feel like I have to write something philosophical and inspiring every time, and/or I have to spend hours writing it. That is what has kept me from blogging in the past – mostly the thought of, “I don’t have time to spend three hours writing a post that two people are going to read.”

It gets discouraging.

But largely only because I am already discouraged.

And I know, I know, the whole thing about not giving up, not losing heart; I’ll reap a harvest at the proper time if I don’t give up.

Frankly, that is really hard.

I am tired.
I am weary.
My heart hurts.
My stomach hurts.
My hope feels so far removed from me that I don’t know how to get it back.

God feels removed.

And again, I know – “If you feel far away from God, guess who moved?”

That’s cute – until you are in the midst of darkness and are pretty convinced that God left.

I read in a book once that on the whole, a woman’s worst fear is abandonment. At the time, I didn’t really feel that it applied to me.

Heh.

And, yet again, I know – God does not forsake us, does not abandon us.

Yeah, well, what do you do when you FEEL that way? When you feel dropped, left alone to face an onslaught? How do you retrain your mind to view the world in a way that is opposite of how everything looks and feels sometimes? How do I convince myself that God has not left when my heart feels so very abandoned by him? When it truly looks like he got tired of me and just flung me off like poop on his hands that he just realized was poop? (Like that mental picture?)

I am so, so tired of feeling like I have to CONVINCE myself of everything.

I am so tired of manipulating it all. Or feeling like I have to, or else it won’t happen.

Can I just be honest? Raw?

I am a mess. An utter, complete, indecipherable mess. The more I try to figure out my mind, the more I try to determine what I believe (and the elusive why), the more lost I feel.

And I don’t say that looking for someone to be like, “Aw, no, you’re not that bad. You’re not a mess! You’re great!”

Or for someone to be like, “Yeah, I am too! We can be messes together!”

No. I don’t mean it in a trite way, in a mocking way, or in an, “I’m a Christian and I should feel like I am a worm, but I really think I am awesome; I just want someone to reinforce my awesomeness, so I’ll talk about how bad I am!” way.

I am serious.

I. Am. Completely. Screwed. Up.

It is kind of like that line from that David Crowder song: “I want to be holy like you are – but the harder I try, the more clearly can I see the depth of our fall.”

Yeah. Little bit.

The harder I try to be good, the harder I try to do the right things, the harder I try to fix myself, the more clearly can I see the depth of my fall, the hopelessness of my situation, the ravages of sin.

There are literally like fifty things that I feel God might be trying to address in me. Or, rather, I feel like he IS trying to address them – all of them, at once. I am overwhelmed. I am in an ocean of fear, of pain, and the waves just keep coming. I can’t stand up, can’t find solid ground; the sand keeps sucking away from my feet, and the tide keeps drawing me into deeper water.

I want, with all my heart, to climb upon the waves and follow Jesus into the unknown.

I am paralyzed with fear of doing that.

I listen to these songs, and they are all about doing that very thing – trusting God, being still, walking out upon the waters.

There is no fear in me about following Jesus into the unknown – provided that once I’m there, he won’t be like, “Well…see ya!”

And so we come to that. That fear of abandonment. That fear that whispers, oh so subtly, “You can’t really trust God to come through for you. In the moment of your greatest need, he will leave you to face it alone.”

Basically, what I am saying is this: I cannot think right now. I can’t think straight. My mind is flying a million miles an hour, and the more I try to rein it in, the harder it streaks away from me.

I am losing control of myself.

And I have always sought to be so in control.

I have never been in control.

My greatest enemy is not Satan, as much as he’d like to think that. He’s a worm and can go die.

No. My greatest enemy is myself. My own sin. My own pride.

My ungrounded, manipulative, controlling, paralyzing, insidious, ridiculous, scenario-making, self-steeling FEAR.

Dear God, who will rescue me from this body of death?

I have only ever wanted to be rescued. As desperately as I want to fight evil, bear enough weapons to do lots of damage, I want just as desperately to be the princess who is rescued from the tower by her true love.

I am so tired of feeling like the princess who looks out the window day after day and finally sighs, “Well, I guess no one’s coming. Figures. Now how do I get out of here?”

No, God is not slow in keeping his promises. His timing is perfect. Etc., etc. I know all the answers, I’ve rehearsed all the lines; I know the Scriptures, so well. Well enough to twist them. Please kill me. Ugh.

I know the letter. Not the Spirit.

I am a Pharisee – but a failing one. Yay.

I want God to sweep in and save me, fix me. Make me not this way. Rescue me from the things that threaten to completely topple everything about me that I once thought was unshakeable.

And I know, he did save me – 2,000+ years ago when Jesus died and rose again.

I want to say, “That’s not good enough” – but I don’t mean it that way. Ultimately, yes, that’s all I need; it was more than enough. But it feels…not. And I know that is an issue in me. But again, I don’t want to keep trying to fix it. I am TIRED of trying to renew my mind in my own strength.

What I am asking for, aching for, is something new. Fresh. Something that happens in this moment. I am tired of trying to cling to the past. “Yes, God speaks to me. He spoke to me six years ago, and it was great. What? Oh, no, he doesn’t really do that anymore. I actually haven’t seen him move in a while now. But he did six years ago! I cling to THAT.”

I want to cling to HIM.

Instead, out of fear, I cling to lies. To illusions of control. To smoke and mirrors and ashes and fog and sins that seem to keep me safe.

Everything in me aches to live, to burst forth and just explode for him, be light to everyone I come in contact with.

Everything in me just wants to weep.
I can’t even say why. Sometimes I know; sometimes I don’t.

I. Am. Just. So. Tired.

And I am tired of feeling like I need to apologize for that. I am tired of the voice that instantly says, “YOU’RE tired? Pfft, you’ve been through NOTHING in your life, ya big wimp. What about the kids in Africa who have to shoot their parents, and then submit to Kony? What about girls who are trafficked? What about people who have seen every loved one around them succumb to AIDS in the last four months? GET OVER YOURSELF AND YOUR PETTY LITTLE PROBLEMS.”

I’m also tired of the voice that says, “You’re allowed to be tired. I mean, you’ve been fighting on your own for like all of your life. Dang. You are so strong, to have lasted this long. You deserve to feel how you feel. You should be tired.” (In case I’m not capturing that one well, it leads toward pride and only pride. And I hate pride. And I feel prideful for hating it so much; surely only a great person would be so opposed to being prideful.)

I just want to BE.

No more apologizing. No more shame. No more downcast eyes for feeling how I feel.

I am angry. I am hurt. I am frustrated. I am discouraged. I do not see hope. I see only blackness. Light at the end of the tunnel – what light? I am exhausted. I am sick of this battle. I am terrified. I am angry at God. I am angry at myself. I am unforgiving. I don’t want to show grace or mercy. I want to kill people. I want to break things and tear things apart to show how deeply I feel. I want to scream f-words (oh yes, that f-word) at the top of my lungs without giving a single thought to who might hear. I want to give up. I want to keep fighting. I want to feel like people won’t look down on God because I have a nervous breakdown. I want to sob and never stop. I want to go back and never have life take this path. I am beyond terrified – I am utterly paralyzed.

I want to stop feeling so pathetically STUPID.

But instead, I keep it all in. Swallow every negative feeling, every lie; I drink poison, knowing it is poison. Try to figure out how this will all work for my good – a good I cannot begin to see, and believe even less.

jalkrjgaelkrgjale;krgjaelkrgjalkdfjalkdf

I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO STOP.

My mind creates. That is what it does. CONSTANTLY. I am constantly thinking; but not just thinking – WEAVING. I do not do it on purpose; it just happens. I make up scenarios, weave things together. Things happen, and I immediately think, “Ooh, that could connect to this. And then this would happen, which fits with this right here. I had forgotten about that, but that works so well! And that goes with this too! And if this happens on this date, then that means it is exactly four years after this, and that is a cool connection. And that –”

I don’t.
Know how.
To stop.

And once I think of something, I also think, “No, God won’t do it that way, because I thought of it. So it has to be something else. That won’t happen now. STOP THINKING. Just stop. But that goes with this. And that is the anniversary of this. And so that must be what God is doing – NO. STOP. None of this is going to happen. If you think it up, then God can’t use it anymore. He won’t do what you think. STOP. Today is the four-year anniversary of that, so that must be what he is getting at, bringing all of this stuff up to heal it on the anni–”

Good. Freaking. Grief.

I just realized how long this is. And there is no resolution to it; sorry. I don’t know what is going on in me, orI just don’t know.

Ultimately, my heart is God’s. That was won years ago. Satan cannot fully pull me away; he cannot have me.

But he can immobilize me, kind of like he’s done. Like I’ve allowed him to do. Like God has allowed him to do.

And therein is part of the struggle; I want God to come flying in and rescue me. I want him to break open the skies like I thought he was promising me. And he hasn’t. And I’m not sure it works that way. Does God actually come through hugely like that? Or is that just wishful thinking? Why does it feel like he does that for anyone and everyone else, but when it comes to me – nope, R has to do it all on her own, with only hints of input from God because that is just her lot in life. To always struggle. To never really be free. To never really SEE God move – not like he moves for the drug addict, or the person about to commit suicide. What am I? Not worth fighting THAT much for? Because that is certainly how it feels. And looks. Maybe I am just blind. Maybe I am crazy.

And people will be like, “Just believe! God has already saved you! Fight from victory, not for it! Change how you think! Think positive for once, sheesh, ya Negative Nelly!”

But I need to SEE SOMETHING. FEEL SOMETHING. Be able to truly KNOW something – without me having to manipulate it. Or feeling like I could possibly manipulate it.

Don’t you see? If I am changing how I think, if I am the one fighting, then it’s just all me. Still.

No, God does not “have” to do anything.

But can’t I just be blindsided? Can’t I just be rescued? Just once, can’t God move so clearly, so powerfully, that I cannot begin to tell myself that it was him – I’ll just know that I know that I know that I know that I know?

Why do I feel like I have to get myself out of the tower? Why do I feel like I have to save myself before God will step in to do anything?

I feel like I’ll struggle and get myself out of the tower; and when I land on the ground, I’ll look up and see God standing there clapping. And he’ll be like, “Yay, I knew you could do it!”

And at that thought, my heart whispers back: “Well, yeah, I had to. You didn’t exactly do anything to help, you just stood there and watched and told me NOTHING, and made me figure it out on my own. I think I’ll go this way, by myself, thanks – since I can’t exactly rely on you to have my back.”

And people will say, “But God wants to make you a warrior! He wants you to learn how to stand!”

Can’t I just be a rescued one first? A daughter first?

Can’t I just have a moment where I cry out to him and he delivers me – instead of me crying out and being met with silence until I finally figure out that I have to fight for myself?

My biggest lie is that I will have to fight for myself because no one else will. How exactly does God NOT fighting for me – but making me fight for myself – counter that?

And they’ll say, “But you HAVE been rescued! Walk in the new life!”

But I don’t feel rescued. I don’t feel his presence. I have never felt his love.

And yet again, that is what it comes back to – knowing God loves me.

Oh, I “know” he loves me. He loves everyone. Yay yippee yay.

But my “knowing” – honestly, it is only head knowledge.

My heart still needs to know. Still yearns to see. Still stares out the window, waiting, waiting

Waiting.

I don’t think I can wait much longer.