Ramblings of a Healing Heart, Part Three: Dispelling Myths

This is the third in a series of posts taken from recordings of my thoughts.  Please understand that what follows was transcribed from a recording and not put together as a well-edited, read-only document.  Read accordingly...

Not of this world...  based on scripture by Paul… We are to be in this world, but not of this world.  So, striving to be not of this world...  I will attempt to dispel a few of the myths that the world is telling me…

Myth Number One:  Money matters. 

Sometimes I forget how poor I am.  I’m pretty poor… and it takes a lot of help from a lot of places for me to get through a month.  And sometimes I forget how poor I am.  Not because I go out and spend money I don’t have, but because my life is fine without it.  We don’t go to the movies.  We don’t go out to eat.  We don’t go to the symphony.  We don’t go to Disneyland.  We don’t do a lot of things… but we do enjoy each other.  We do have game night.  We do have movie night.  We do go to the library.  We do go to the park.  We do laugh, and have a great time.  And we run.  And we ride bikes.  And we garden in our backyard.  And…  do so much.  And most of what we do is interpersonal.  Where most of what we don’t do is… individual.  Going to the movies might be great, but once they turn off the lights you don’t talk to the person next to you.  It’s just you and the movie screen.  And, you know, buying tickets to the symphony… same thing.   And trust me, I love the symphony so I don’t say that meanly.  But what we do is a whole lot more family interactive. 

I don’t hire babysitters.  Which, you know, is a pain in the tail, because I never get any time off, but it also means that where one of us goes we all go.  So we end up supporting each other, and spending a lot more time together, and being in the car, and singing along with the radio… and doing things that wouldn't happen if people were left at home with a babysitter.  So, dispel myth number one – money matters.  It’s not about money.  How many verses are in the Bible about serving money?  And how dangerous it is…  And putting money before other priorities… and money before family.  And, you know, money… money can be an evil thing.  And very easily. 

Myth Number Two:  People are expendable.

One of the hardest things for me as a divorced mom… of five… to do… is to teach my children that God hates divorce.  That it is wrong.  That it is not necessary, except in extreme situations.  That God can renew anything.  God can rebuild anything.  God can restore any relationship.  And that one day when they get married they make a commitment for their entire life.  Through good… and through bad.  In sickness… and in health.  For, you know, richer and poorer.  It’s not you're married when it feels good and then when you think someone else feels better you run off and go be with that person.  Or you’re married until it gets hard, and somebody is sick and life isn't so fun, and you’re spending a lot of time dealing with their illness… be it physical or mental, short-term or chronic.  And you don’t just quit and walk away because you’re tired of having to help them.  And when times get tough and you have to work a little harder to pay the bills, or you can’t pay the bills, or you have so much money you can throw it in the wind… you don’t just walk away because now life is boring.. or life is hard. 

And that is one of the hardest things to teach my kids, because the example that they see is… life got hard, and the marriage ended.  And that was that.  And now, you know, Mom can look for a new husband or Dad can look for a new wife.  They can go find somebody else, or go find something new, or do something different.  And as much as I want them to learn that yes, if I am ever to be in a relationship again I will do things differently…  I’ve learned a lot about myself… and I’ve learned most of all how to better be Jesus to my spouse...  And I hope that if I do get married again , or am even in a relationship again, that that newfound knowledge follows through.  But that is one of the hardest things.  And one of the myths to dispel is that people are expendable.  People aren’t expendable.  People are people.  And even when you’re angry with them, or you don’t understand them, or they hurt you… they’re still people.  And we’re still called to pray for them… and to minister to them… and to be Jesus to them... even when it's hard.

Myth Number Three:  You have to be married – single isn’t good enough. 

I was married… for almost twenty years… and I loved it.  I loved my husband.  I loved my family.  I loved, okay not every aspect of my life… but I loved the dreams we had, and the future we had planned, and all of the potential that was in front of us.  So, if things were hard, and we were going through deployment number three or four… or, you know, I was working full time with kid number three or four on it’s way...  It was okay.  It was worth it.  Because the trade-off was the future that was coming.  The potential.  So, I get… I get that the world says, “You need to be married.  You need to be part of a couple.”  The message that you need to be in a relationship.  You need this or that.  You can’t be on your own.  God intends people to be with people.  And that might be true, but I will also tell you that I am single… and I am whole. 

Honestly, I’m probably more whole now than I was when I was married.  Because when you’re single, you don’t have anybody to clean up after you.  To clean up your emotional mess…  To carry you through… And as hard as that is, it’s also a real growth experience because you learn… to do it yourself… to face the music.  You learn to do the hard stuff, to step up, to take care of yourself, to stop waiting for someone to rescue you, to stop counting on someone else to do it, to stop feeling sorry for yourself because nobody is.  Because it’s you.  It’s your responsibility, and it’s your place.  And, yes, you need help.  And, yes, people will step in.  But ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s you and God.  And you’ve got to throw it at His feet and say, “I’m here, and I don’t know what I’m doing, and I am by myself, and I can’t do this by myself, and I need You, Lord, more than ever in my entire life because I can’t do this by myself.”  And that is one of the most freeing things about being single. 

I don’t have someone else to rely on.  I don’t have someone in the back of mind that keeps me saying, “Gosh, I wish he would do this,” or “I wish he would do that,” or “if he would only do this,” or “if we could only do that.”  It’s just me and God.  And there’s nothing I have to bring to God to help Him. 

When you’re married it’s a trade-off...  You bring things to the relationship to help complete your spouse, and your spouse brings things to the relationship that help to complete you.  But God is complete.  He doesn't need me to bring anything.  And as messed up as I am, and as needy as I am, and as incomplete as I am, and as desperate as I am for Him to fill in the holes and repair the cracks, and renew me and refresh me…  I bring Him nothing. 

He needs nothing from me.  And He still has His arms open wide saying, “Come.  Come be with Me!  Come!”  And it’s not because He wants anything.  It’s not a human relationship where we say, “Come, be with me… I love the feel of your arm around me…I love the comfort of holding your hand…I love waking up in the morning and seeing your smiling face…or your messed up hair,” whatever the case may be.  You know, we are in relationships that no matter how unselfish they be, they are still fulfilling for us. 

God doesn’t need us.  He is complete without us.  And yet He longs for us to be with Him.  And that is a whole different kind of worth than being in a human relationship.  We can want somebody to long to be with us.  We can want that late night phone call.  We can want that romantic dinner.  We can want that note left on the mirror in the bathroom.  We can want all those things… to feel needed… to feel loved…  And God gives it to us all…  He longs for us to come and be with Him.  He doesn’t need us…  He doesn’t need us to help Him feel good.  He doesn’t need us to help Him feel complete.  He doesn’t need us to make Him feel special.  And yet, He wants us anyway. 

So, the myth is – you have to be in a relationship to be whole.  You have to have somebody else.  The truth is, you don’t need another human being to be whole.  It’s you and Christ.  And He can fill any hole… far better than any human being can.  Because humans give… but they also take.  It’s a trade-off.  And with God, the trade-off is:  He already gave.  He gave it all.  He gave His son… so that we can come… and give nothing in return.  Myth number three – dispelled.  You don’t need to be in a relationship with someone to be whole.  Christ wants you in a relationship... with Him... wholly.  

Ramblings of a Healing Heart, Part Two: The Amputee

This is the second in a series of posts taken from recordings of my thoughts.  Please understand that what follows was transcribed from a recording and not put together as a well-edited, read-only document.  Read accordingly...

You hurt me.  You hurt me like… you hurt me the same as if you had unexpectedly amputated a portion of my body.  The pain was excruciating.  The shock overwhelming...  And the feeling of defeat… just… completely pervasive. 

And you left me… in that state… to tend to my son… who was already fighting his way back from so much trauma, and so much upheaval, and so much fear, and doubt, and frustration, and change...  And I was handicapped...  Unable to help.  Unable to do what I was called to do.  What he needed me to do.  Unable to be there for the girls… 

They needed strength.  They needed security.  They needed confidence.  And what they had was a wounded… a wounded mother.  A wounded… unexpectedly, wounded parent.  As disabled as an amputee would be in the hospital. 

But just like an amputee, whether the amputation is expected and planned for some medical purpose or, more likely, unexpected…  Catastrophic…  I had a choice to make.  To be the victim.  To feel pity.  To give up.  To believe that life was no longer worth living.  That I would never be the same so it didn’t matter.  That the pain was just too much, and would never subside, and the best way to get through was to escape.  Or to fight.  To fight for recovery.  To fight for life.  To fight for the things that were important to me.  To choose to win.  To choose to survive.  To choose to not let an amputation defeat my entire being.  And I made mistakes...  And I screwed up…. But every decision I’ve made has been with the intent of living through it.  Of growing stronger.  Of using it for God’s glory.  For not letting Satan have the final say. 

I live with the same type of phantom pain that might accompany an amputee.  That piece of me is gone.   I’ll never get it back.  I’ll never see it again.  And yet, there are times I feel it as if it’s there.  Life was good.  Love was good… Divorce rips people apart.  It’s not the ending of a relationship, it’s the separation of a union.  Two people become one.  And when you split those two, they don’t just unstick.  They’re glued together.  Like paper.  When you glue two pieces of paper together you can’t just suddenly decide twenty years later to rip them apart and expect them to come right back to the way they were.  Little pieces of each will remain on each side.  Little holes and tears will show up on each piece.  There are scars that will follow me the rest of my life.  Just as if I had lost a limb.  The limb won’t grow back…  The scars will remain…  But life doesn’t have to end. 

There are plenty of amputees doing far more amazing things than they ever dreamed they would do before they lost whatever limb of their body.  Or limbs.   I have done things in the last two years, the last two-and-a-half years, that I never in my wildest dreams would have thought to do.  I ran a marathon!  A complete marathon!  26.2 miles.  Okay, I walked and ran a marathon… but I… I… the thought that I even signed up for it… The fact that I even dreamed of doing it…  Thought I could accomplish it.  Set the goal.  Did the training.  Put in the hours.  Put in the work.  I never in my life would have dreamed that I would ever accomplish a marathon.  And now I think, “Hey, that was fun! Let’s do another one.” 

I’m a changed person.  I’m the same person.  The same with scars.  The same and changed.  I’m not better, not worse - just changed.  Like an amputee who has lost a leg, or lost an arm, or maybe lost more than one...  They are not better or worse.  They are the same person… they are just changed.  And each day they decide what to do with that change.  Do they let the change… do they let the injury… do they let the missing piece define them?  Or do they let the pieces that survived be what makes them new each day? 

God makes all things new.  His mercies are new every single day.  And He renews what’s been beaten, what’s been bruised, what’s been tossed aside.  He is there for the hurt.  He is there for the sorrowful.  He is there when we make bad decisions that result in terrible consequences.  And He is there when other people make decisions that cause us pain.  But the fact of the matter is He’s there. 

Yesterday. 

Today. 

Tomorrow. 

And as a marriage amputee, I choose to follow that.  To stay with Him.  With my missing parts.  With the phantom pain.  With the memories of what was.  But with a hope… for tomorrow.  A hope of all things new.  A hope of beauty from ashes.  A hope that the changes that have been made in me will glorify Him, and that I will use all that He has given me – including the affliction and the pain – to worship Him.  And to help others follow Him as well.

I am not the same.  You have wounded me.  But I was not left for dead.  I was not left alone.  I was not tossed aside and kicked under a bag of trash and forgotten by the world.  My Heavenly Father never left me.  He sat by my bedside.  He directed the doctors.  He provided me wise counsel.  And He’s nursed me back to health. 

The phantom pain will follow me… but it’s not a daily thing anymore.  My future overshadows it.  And if there is one thing I would tell anyone in any sort of similar situation… it hurts…  the pain is real… the trauma excruciating.  But you have to decide from the beginning what will define you.  Will it be the pain?  Will it be someone else’s choice?  Or will it be the Father? 

Choose the Father. 

Let Him make all things new. 

Give Him time.  Give Him space.  And wait… as He works on you.  The light on the other side is brighter than you can imagine.  And you’ll never be the same…  but you can be changed and survive.  You can be changed and thrive.

Ramblings of a Healing Heart, Part One: This is My Time

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything on here.  I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but today I am back (again, not sure if that’s a good thing or bad) and I’m trying something a bit new. 

One of the reasons I don’t post here much anymore is simply because I don’t have the time at my computer to do so, but I recently found a possible solution to that issue.  Now that I have turned the corner of technology and have a “smart” phone, I have started talking to myself in the car.  Okay, I’ve always talked to myself aloud just a bit, but now I can actually record my musings and not have to retain anything of consequence in my head for later transcription from memory.  I can actually record things (cool!) and then transcribe them later when I have time.  Of course, I still haven’t done that either – something about that time at my computer thing – but today I’m going to try. 

Over the past couple months I have recorded several such monologues and as I finally reviewed them this morning, I find that they are an amazing record of the amazing work God has been doing in my life, and that is worth sharing.  So, that is what I am going to do.  Piece by piece.  One recorded musing at a time.   This is the first one, there are a few more coming.  They may seem a bit odd, as I simply am transcribing them from stream of consciousness recordings rather than writing a well-edited read-only document, but I’m going to try it.  Hopefully you’ll catch something meaningful in them.  Hopefully God will use them to His glory.  And hopefully you won’t think I’ve completely gone off the deep end.

All that said, here goes… 

Part One – This is My Time

This is my time. 

My time to be single.  My time to learn to love God better.  To learn to love myself.  To learn to take care of myself.  To be free.  To have fun.  To enjoy life.  Like I did when I was in college… when I would say that I was, you know, “High on life”.  And it’s been a long time since I’ve been high on life. 

This is my time - I’m getting a redo, a second chance.  I could spend all my time feeling sorry for myself, that I’m alone, and that I lost my marriage, and my husband...  But that’s all looking backward.  This is my time to look forward.  I don’t know how long this time will last…  It could end tomorrow.  It could end in five minutes when I walk into Costco…  I could run into the man of my dreams and fall madly in love and run off to be missionaries together and praise God and use all of our talents and desires to live for Him.  And be perfectly happy, and in love with God still… but it wouldn’t be the same. 

This is my time to be me.  This is my time to enjoy Him fully.  To have Him to myself.  To be selfish.  And to just… be me.  Everything happens for a reason, and God uses everything.  This is my time.  My beauty from ashes.  And there will be more beauty.  And there will be more ashes.  But right now this is my time to enjoy the beauty from ashes.  And I plan to live it.  I worked hard to get here, and it’s not that I deserve anything…  I worked hard to get here… and I’m happy to be here.  And I don’t want to waste it. 

What good is it to be here if I let it go by and not enjoy it and let God show me.  I’ve been looking for Him for so long.  Trying to find Him… find what He wants.  And I would be stupid to spend all that time and then ignore the chance I have to see it all.  This is my time. 

This is my time to be me. 

This is my time to love Him. 

This is my time to let Him dote on me, to let Him be my husband, to let Him show me what real love is.  To let Him romance me, and talk me into crazy things, and just put a smile on my face for the little things.  Just the little thoughts.  All those things we want an earthly husband to do.  All those things that you read about in romance books, or see in chick flicks, or, you know, dream about when you’re daydreaming or watching some other cute couple walk by.  This is my time… to let God love me.  To love on me. 

He loves me all the time.  He wants to love on me all the time.  But when life picks up it’s like Paul said, the married are distracted by the things of this world and the unmarried can really focus on Christ.  And I think I missed that when I was young.  I mean, I loved God, and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t.  And I was in high school when I committed to wanting to use my life to serve Him, but I missed all that Paul stuff.  The focus on Him.  The not being distracted.  Now being distracted by a family is not a bad thing…  God wants us to be happy.  He wants us to love each other.  He wants us to find love.  He wants us to….  He established marriage. He created the idea.  Obviously it’s not a bad thing, it’s something that He desires for us to have.  But He also desires us to desire Him.  And to be focused on Him.  And earthly distractions are just that.  And this is my time. 

This is my time to be wholly His.  To be holy.  To be set apart.  To relish in whatever He puts before me.  I heard a saying a long time ago, that “you’ll be ready to remarry when you don’t need to.”  And I know that’s true.  And now, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to...  I want to.  I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life, I want a partner.  I want a partner in crime… I want a partner in worship… I want a partner in parenting.  I want a partner in bike riding, and running, and being silly, and staying up late… eating too many cookies, and saying silly things, and sending silly text messages.  Oh, a partner in everything.  A partner to wake up to in the morning, a partner to snuggle up with at night…  I want it all. 

I desire it all. 

But not right now. 

If I walk into Costco and fall in love with the man of my dreams, and that’s the appointed time and place that God has chosen to direct my path… Great.  I am not going to run screaming from the building saying, “Sorry!  I’m having too much fun by myself!”  But from here… to the curb… I’m going to enjoy it. 

I don’t know how long I have this time to be alone.  I don’t know how long I have this time to live in this place.  And life will be great when I’m out of this place.  And life was great before.  Yes… the last couple years have been a little bit worse than the rest, but I have been blessed beyond measure.  I had a wonderful husband, and a loving marriage, and beautiful children, and dreams, and successes and failures and hand-holding, and arguments… and snuggling, and separations…  You know, gosh, I’ve lived a FULL life and I’m not even that old.  I mean, my kids will tell you that I’m old, but… 

I’ve been the army wife.  I’ve been the stay-at-home mom.  I’ve been the working mom.  I’ve been the married with no kids.  I’ve been through deployment.  I’ve been through buying a house, selling a house… adoption, birth… moving.  Bouncing checks… having money to blow.  I’ve had… I’ve had it all.  And this is right now.  And right now is good.  And I’m okay.  And I’m happy.  And I’m content. 

I’ve often talked about content – the difference between happy and content, but I am truly content.  I have learned so much in the last couple of years.  I have drawn so much closer to God, and I have such a better relationship with Christ than I ever had - that I ever understood that I could have.  Talk about beauty from ashes…  I mean, that is the most beautiful thing in the world.  And that’s where I am. 

I am ready to enjoy the beauty.  The ashes are there…  There’s kind of a layer of them all around the place… on the shelves, on the couch, on the flower petals.  But the beauty is there.  And this is my time.  This is my time.  To be romanced by the King of kings.  To be treated like a queen.  Like a princess.  Like royalty.  To be treated the way I never dreamt, never imagined that it would be.  I’m not alone.  I am loved, and I am pursued, and this is my time. 

My time to be. 

My time to enjoy. 

And my time to go to Costco… 

So, for at least the next twenty-five steps I will enjoy it.  And… if I get inside and Mr. Right is waiting for me, Mr. Wonderful… I’ll be well.  But Mr. Wonderful is already with me.  He goes everywhere with me.  And that’s okay, because this is my time.  And I plan to enjoy it.

May the peace that passes all understanding lead us, and our hearts and our minds to Christ Jesus, who is and who was and who is to come.  Amen.