How God Must Feel

 

I woke up an hour earlier than usual this morning.  When that happens I ask myself why. I have been accused of “over thinking” and “over analyzing” on several occasions and I have decided that I am guilty as charged.  However, my over thinking and over analyzing has served me well.  In this instance, I asked, Lord, what do you want me to do?  I thought maybe I woke up extra early so that I could read my Bible or pray and sure enough, when I started praying, I realized why I had woke up.

Let me begin by saying that almost everything I have learned in life has come from my own experiences. As a graduate student, I learn the material by relating it to something I am familiar with.  When I am working with clients, I relate to them through similar experiences I have encountered.  When I study my Bible, I understand the scripture by relating it to something that is applicable in my own life or in my environment.  The reason I say all that is because my blogs are typically about my experiences and how I see and understand God through them.  More times than not, I reveal too much personal information, yet, I believe that the truth speaks louder than a make believe scenario and the reader is intuitive enough to tell the difference.  So with that, I begin.

For any of you who know me, you probably know the struggles I have had in my marriage.  For those of you who don’t, suffice it to say that it is nothing short of a miracle that my husband and I are still married.  We have an uncanny bond that can only be explained by the fact that it is God given.  In our four years of marriage, we have tried to divorce each other 3 separate times and split up a total of 5 times, not a very good track record.   Crazy as it may sound, never once did those separations have to do with the fact that we did not love each other.  On the contrary, we love each other very much; we just both come to the table with sorted pasts that predicates our behaviors when times get hard.  I think Dale and I have both come to the conclusion individually that our marriage is about something bigger than just him and I and that has forged a commitment we had never had before.  That isn’t to say that both of us have a difficult time “staying” but when we do get to the place we want to run, we try really hard not to.

I am learning more about who God is through the relationship I have with my husband.  Here is what I mean.  Before I met Dale, I had spent three years on a Sabbatical.  That is to say that I didn’t date anyone for those three years. I spent my time somewhat in isolation.  I worked out, I went to church, I wrote in my journal and I ran my business.  I did not even spend time with friends, I was alone.  The sabbatical was induced by a break up that was really difficult, because it represented my “belief” in what I believed God was doing in my life and I really thought I would end up with the person who had just broken my heart.  After the break up, I was so broken and dismayed.  I knew there was no place to turn but to God.  I had already decided the bars and cheap thrills were not for me because they always left me empty, so God became my only option.  During those three years, God taught me what love really was.  I remember nights when I would cry like a baby from the loneliness and say to him “I wish you were flesh so that you could just hold me and make me feel safe.”  I felt so frustrated that God was a spirit and not tangible, yet there was no mistaking his tangible presence.  He was there with me and he was holding me in a way that I could not see with my eyes but I could feel in my heart and spirit.  It was during one of those times that he began to teach me the role of a husband.  He showed me that my earthly husband would be the flesh and blood that would hold me and comfort me as an extension of my spiritual husband, Jesus.  I know it must sound trite, but at that time in my life it was so important for me to create a distinction between who God was to me and who a man was to me.  Up until this time in my life, I always chose a man over my walk with God.  I found myself compromising my beliefs in order to fit into a relationship.  The guy who represented the breakup I just discussed also represented the very first time in my entire life that I chose God over the relationship, which made it all the more difficult when it ended because I knew I had done the right thing by God.  I thought for sure HE would honor that.  For me, I didn’t know how to draw a distinction between my love for God and my love for a man because I was trying to fill a void with whatever means possible. Men always took first place because they were flesh and blood and I needed that.  God was intangible and often silent.  He left me to walk in obscurity instead of certainty and I hated that because I was afraid.  Yet, when I finally surrendered to him during this three year sabbatical, I learned what my relationship with a man was supposed to represent and I learned how important the role of both husband and wife are.   In this instance, God was distinctly showing me the differences between my spiritual husband, him, and my fleshly husband I would one day have.  I knew that my fleshly husband would be an extension of the love God has for me.

Fast forward three years later, imagine my surprise when my marriage started to fail after just 2 months.  I didn’t understand. I was so confused and profoundly wounded.    My husband and I spent the first three years trying to divorce each other, yet, I went into this marriage with the belief that this was the marriage God had been preparing me for which it is.  However, it is not without its struggles.  Every single thing in our lives is being used by God to teach us about ourselves and about his love for us. There is nothing that is not purposed and there is not an end point to the lessons until we are dead.  I finally understand that there is no one place I will “arrive” at on this earth, my destination point is heaven.  I use to think that everything I have learned was leading me to my “purpose” that place where I would arrive at when everything falls into place at once and life gets better.  Coming to the realization that life is one big journey and none of us ever “arrive” took a lot of pressure of the expectations I had about myself and about my marriage.

So, back to where all this started.  I woke up an hour early wondering why I was awake so I started to pray and inquire of the lord if there was something he wanted to tell me.  As I lay there in bed praying, my feet where touching my husbands.  I felt him move in bed to a position away from me.  Since I am an over thinker and being the girl that I am, I wondered to myself if he was moving so he didn’t have to touch me.  I felt hurt and I ask God in that moment if my husband would ever be able to give me the love that I needed as his wife.  I asked God if my husband would ever really trust that I was on his side in life and if he could ever trust the fact that I truly love him with all my heart.  Immediately God begin to show me in my thoughts how often we move away from him.  He showed me all the times I had chose to not trust him and walked away from him.  He reminded me that all the while, he was there, loving me and waiting for me to come back to him.  It hit home with me so completely that I was inspired to get out of bed and put my thoughts on paper.

The issues that my husband and I have in our marriage are exactly identical.  We both question if the other is committed.  We both question if the other really truly loves us.  We both question whether or not we can trust one another with our hearts.  We both react identically the same when faced with hurt, judgment and rejection.  Dale and I could not me more alike.  We were made for each other and both of us have said to one another that there is probably no one else on this earth that could live with me and no one on the earth that could live with him.  We are difficult people.  This morning I asked God, will my husband every trust that I am on his side?  It breaks my heart when he treats me like his enemy.  Don’t get me wrong, I do treat him the same at times, but in that moment this morning when I was praying, the lord said to me, that is exactly how I feel when people don’t trust me.  I just started crying because I understood just how vast Gods love for us is because I know how deep my love for my husband is and God’s love for us is indescribably more infinite.  I fail daily at unconditional love.  I do not give my husband the love he needs and deserves because in doing that, I risk rejection and pain.  Yet, that is exactly what God does for us.  He shows up time and time again to love us, even though we don’t trust him, even though we question him and even though we turn our back on him and try to do life our way.  Then when we get to the end of ourselves yet again, he is there waiting.

I know God is asking me to give the same love to my husband.  A task I fear I will fail because of my own fear of being unloved in return.  But, when I have ears to hear the lord, he reminds me that my marriage is in his hands and this is the man in which he has joined me to.  There is no doubt that Dale is exactly the person I needed in this life if for no other reason that I grow in God because of him.  I believe all the struggles I have had in my marriage are present to grow me in God and to grow me as a wife.  I believe Dale is everything I want and need, just like Jesus is everything I want and need.  But life is a journey, here a little and there a little.  One of my favorite scriptures is found in Isaiah 28:10 “For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little”  this scripture helps me to remember that things do not happen overnight.  The happen by putting one foot in front of the other.  Walking one block at a time until eventually you can run a marathon.

Someday, my husband and I will grow into a strong unified relationship and I will eventually have the love I always imagined.  But until then, I am learning how to love and how to give and how to be, hopefully, a godly wife and woman.  Until I arrive at that destination point, I am so thankful for the struggles, because those struggles are giving me deep roots and a stronger bond in both my marriage and with God.

God IS good all the time, we are just afraid to trust that!

Busyness

I posted on my Facebook page this morning “inspiration comes when you take the time to be still and listen to the still small voice.” This weekend marks the first of which I have had the luxury of sleeping in and laying around the house with nothing in particular to do.  I have recently transitioned into a different job and as a result, I made the decision not to work on Saturdays.  It has been years since my job has allowed me the ability to have weekends off and words cannot properly articulate the pleasure and peace I have felt all weekend as a result.  To have the whole weekend to myself was a treat and I felt so thankful to be in a position where I did not have to be “busy” but was able to be still.  It has been a while since I have been still with myself and with God.

Saturday was a wash.  I did absolutely nothing and I caught up on my sleep. The older I get the more I appreciate how nice it is to sleep.  Anyway, since I was all rested up from Saturday, Today, I have had a chance to reflect, pray and give consideration to the way in which I am currently spending my time.  I am frequently reminded of the parable in Matthew Chapter 13.  In this parable Jesus talked about the sower:

And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;

And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up:

Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:

And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.

And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:

But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

Hear ye therefore the parable of the sower.

When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.

But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it;

Yet hath he not root in himself, but endureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended.

He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.

But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

What comes to my mind over and over again is verse 7 and verse 22 when the bible speaks of the seed that fell among the thorns and thorns sprung up and choked the seed.  The bible says that this means the seed fell on ground but died when it was choked out by the cares of this world.  I often contemplate that passage, “the cares of this world” and what that actually means.

I have been troubled by the busyness of my own life and the lack of time and energy I have had to “live my days intentionally” the life I desire to live.  The life I know God is calling me to live. I believe there is a way to structure my day that will bring more wholeness to my life and my walk with God.  I have just not weeded out the “stuff” yet and this parable is a reminder of that.   Let me explain.  God promised to give us “abundantly above all we can think or even imagine” but we have a part to play in receiving what he has destined for us to have.  I have to position myself in a place to receive what he gives.  For example, most everyone passes out candy and treats on Halloween.  But you cannot collect the candy unless you first knock on the door and hold out your bag to receive the candy that is predestined to be given to those who come to the door.  I feel God calling me to a place of intentional living and I don’t think I am the only one he is calling.  

  

Today, I am aware that the decision I made to quit working on Saturdays has directly impacted the time I have had this weekend to be alone with myself and with God.  It has allowed me to just listen to whatever it is I am suppose to hear.  I love having time to write.  To think.  To be grateful.  To spend time with my mom and dad. Time to spend with my husband.  To spend time on the phone with my son.  To pray and to ponder the coming week.  It makes me realize that I often miss these little blessings by being too busy.  

I do not have the formula for being a Christian.  I do have the Bible, but those of us who read and study it will tell you that reading it and walking it out in daily life are two very different things. It is not easy and it will challenge everything about you. But living according to God’s principles has been the only thing that has changed my life.  It has transformed my marriage and has given me a peace that no one can possibly understand except for those of us who experience it.  I have a desire to live wholly; body, soul and mind, aligned together in unity to live intentional.  There have been times in my life when I have lived whole, but there are more times in my life where I have not.

I am writing this blog as a reminder to myself of the life I want to live.  I also hope to inspire someone to re-evaluate their own life and see if there is a way to free yourself from the busyness of the day so you too can be alone with your thoughts to hear the still small voice of God.  What was it that Socrates said?  “an unexamined life is a life not worth living.” I happen to agree and I am certain that if you take some time out of your day to be still, you too will agree.

Allow the Process

I am struck by the enormity of God.  Even as I say that, I realize how cliché that sounds yet I am living the revelation of his perfectness in all things related to my life.

Nothing is a mistake.  Nothing is in vain. Nothing is chance.  Everything has a perfect time in which events and circumstances take place, even bad events.  Even difficult circumstances.  Everything about my life is and has always been serving a purpose.  “But he knows the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold”  Job 23:10

I have been ruminating over the death of Whitney Houston.  Like the rest of the world, I was saddened by her abrupt departure.  Her death has affected me in a huge way.  Mainly because of her upbringing and her faith in God.  Her consequent struggle that so many of us Jesus lovers go through when trying to balancing our love for him and our presence in this world.  It is perhaps the most difficult of all struggles, living in the world but hungering and desiring to serve God with all our heart.  In the end, Whitney succumbed to the weariness of the struggle.  Something that many of us who have struggled understand all too well.   

The temptation to give up is astronomical and the courage it takes to stay in the “race” another day doesn’t feel like courage at all.  Rather it feels like mere survival. We know in that moment that we are on the edge of a cliff and one false move will cause us to go over.  We know that if we quit we will die, in one form or another.  That is why her death has been so difficult and humbling to accept.  Any of us, at any time, could succumb to the weariness.  There is a reason the Bible says, “the race is not given to the fastest or the strongest, but to he who endures until the end.”

I watched in stunned amazement as Whitney told Oprah her feelings about Bobby Brown in Oprah’s “Remembering Whitney Houston.”  Her words hit me in the face like a ton of bricks because I was coming out of the same exact emotional place and I could relate in every way.  Oprah asked Whitney if she was addicted to the drugs or addicted to Bobby Brown and Whitney replied, “he was my drug.”  She followed Bobby Brown down his path of addiction and spiritual darkness.  All because he was her “man.”  She went on to say that her voice and her success didn’t seem like a big deal to her.  It was a former life, one that she no longer lived and yet it was her voice and her music that the world thought of when her name was spoken.  How blinded we become when we forget what our purpose is.

If you have never been a slave to hope or a slave to love, you cannot possibly comprehend the ramifications of her words nor her struggle, but for those of us who have, it is easy to identify with and understand just how desperate and how hopeless she and many of us feel when our hopes and dreams become shattered.  Hopelessness is the number one reason people fall victim to suicide.

Here is the thing that I think many people miss in her story and in our own lives and the lives of the people we love.  It is our faith in God that keeps us in dysfunctional, destructive and helpless relationships and situations.  It is erroneous but it is done in faith.  

Now, I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking that my statement sounds like a HUGE contradiction.  But stay with me for a minute, I will explain. 

 

You see, for those of us who grew up in church, we were taught that God can do anything and that nothing is too hard for him.  We believe that, to the core of our soul and  because we have experienced his love and faithfulness to us, we trust him to be in control of our lives.  So when we are fall into or walk willingly into a unfavorable position, or when we find ourselves in situations that we want God to change, our faith tells us that HE will change our situation.  Our faith tells us he will deliver us.  Our faith tells us “if God before us, who can be against us.”  Our faith gives us grace to stay in situations we should not stay in.  BUT…..we do not realize this as a fallacy when we are in the midst of it.  We  are exercising our faith and we are still trusting God !

On December 18, 2011 I was given this revelation.  I too was in a similar situation as Whitney.  I am not by any means comparing our lives, but I am drawing upon the similarities of our faith, and the subsequent obstacles.  After all, we are pursuing the same God. 

I was in a marriage that I totally believed was appropriated by God.  For the first time I was at rest in my spirit and at peace in my life.  I had found love and it wasn’t just love that I had found, I had found a man who loved God, who was in fact a man, and who allowed me to be a girl.  That in itself is a profound discovery for any woman. However, love was not enough to keep our marriage together.  I was facing the great quandary of balancing my love for God and my love for my husband and not knowing what that looked like on a day to day level.

You see, I have never known God without struggle.  I have lived my life in survival mode.  My success, my looks, my disposition have all been a result of survival.  Suddenly, I am happy, from the inside out. Suddenly, I no longer have to struggle to support myself.  Suddenly, I no longer cry out to God in loneliness and heartache because I have found love.  I have found a husband who fulfills and satisfies me.   Little did I know that was coming to an end.  My happiness didn’t last long.  It wasn’t supposed to.  My dependency was on my husband instead of God, but I didn’t know that at the time.

When my marriage began to fall apart, two months into it, I continued to trust God and let him have control, or so I thought.  We split up, we got back together, we split up and got back together.  We filed for divorce, we called off the divorce, many times.  The whole time, I prayed, the whole time, I trusted God to intervene and the whole time, I kept trying to find ways to make it work.  I kept trying.  I kept trying.  I kept trying.  Until one day, the lord whispered into my spirit and said, “if you really trust me like you say you do, then you have to trust me in everything and let go of your husband, let go of your marriage and let go of your hope that it is going to work out.  Trust me to take care of your husband, and in the meantime, start taking care of yourself and get back to the position I have called you to.”

From that moment on, I have never been the same.  I realized that I was the one trying to make my marriage work by “works” by effort.  I wasn’t exercising trust in God at all, because if I had been exercising trust, I would have been able to surrender to the loss.  In that moment, I realized that I must trust God even if my hope was lost, even if my desire was dying, even if I had to be alone and face the failure of another failed relationship.  I had to trust that he knew what was best for me and that if I could let go, he would use if for the good at some future time in my life. 

But the grief was all consuming.  I was dying inside.  I had been mourning my marriage.  Mourning my hope of happiness.  Mourning my idea’s of my future.  I didn’t understand that my hope was in God alone.  It should have never been placed in my husband, but I was ignorant of that, until God revealed it to me.

I believe that is the great struggle.  We see things happen in our life and we view it as a fulfillment of promise.  A place of destiny, and it is.  However, just as God did with Abraham, when he required him to sacrifice Isaac, God will always require us to sacrifice what we value the most.  It is not some cruel joke, but rather a safe guard against our own demise.  Because every physical thing ever created will deteriorate and if our hope and faith and expectation is in the “thing”, the “person” or the “circumstance” then it will have the ability to devastate or destroy us when it deteriorates.  But if our hope is in God alone, then we are safeguarded against despair because he is our hope, he is our peace and he is the only real source of love.

So the process is the receiving of the thing we desire, the loss and surrender of that desire and the peace in knowing that God is in control of all things.

Today, two months after I received that revelation to surrender my marriage, I am with my husband at Buttonwillow Raceway watching him do what he loves, ride motorcycle.  As I sit and write this blog, I am amazed to realize that the 5 separations and three divorce filings where all part of the process to get me to this place of understanding and dependency on God.  We are together as husband and wife and I am forever changed.  God performed the miracle I had been praying for.  He saved my marriage.  But the miracle didn’t take place with my husband, it took place with me.  I changed.  I understand now what perhaps I was the problem all along.  God must always be my source of life and as long as I put him first everything else falls into place.

I think Whitney never got to the stage of surrender.  She stayed in the stage of sorrow and mourning for the loss of her marriage, the loss of her husband and the loss of her hope.  I am so sorry for her passing, especially because I know it didn’t have to be that way.  However, it has prompted so much reflection of my own life and has made me once again thankful for God’s grace and his mindfulness of me.  I strive to be ever thankful for another day that I have breath to tell someone else of his goodness.

“Without a vision, the people perish”  If we keep our eyes on the only eternal thing that is forever, God, then our vision will never wane and our hope will be eternal.  Lord help us all !

Living on Purpose !

This statement is going to sound like such a cliché and it is, but I would like to take a minute and talk about LIVING ON PURPOSE.  

Webster’s dictionary defines Living as:

1.  having life;  being alive; not dead: living persons.

2.  in actual existence or use; extant: living languages.

3. active or thriving; vigorous; strong: a living faith.

4. burning or glowing, as a coal.

5. flowing freely, as water.

Purpose is defined as :

1.  the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc.

2.  an intended or desired result; end; aim; goal.

3.  determination; resoluteness.

4.  the subject in hand; the point at issue.

5. practical result, effect, or advantage: to act to good purpose.

 

         So for purposes of this blog, I am going to define Living on Purpose  as “active, thriving, vigorously pursuing an intended and desired result or goal.

             I don’t know about you, but I have not been living each day on purpose.  Nope.  I have been going through the motions.  Life has been challenging the last couple of years and as a result, my vision has been clouded.  I have temporarily lost sight of who I am and where I was taking my life.  It happens to us all.  Totally unintentional but nonetheless sabotaging.  When life throws us a curve ball or we hit a bump in the road, it is so easy to get sidetracked from the goal.  Sometimes, it can take months or years to recover from an obstacle.

             Others of you haven’t had any upsets but have maintained a slow and steady course and reached the intended goal.  Now, you are just going through the motions of daily routine.  But, are you living on purpose?   Are you living intentional?  That is the question I have been asking myself for many weeks now.

Aristotle said it best “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.” 

            All of us have desires of what we want or wanted to do with our life.  But very few people actually follow through and achieve their goals.  Have you given up on those dreams or are they still alive?  Has circumstances changed the vision you had for your life?  What do you have left that God can use?  What are you good at?  What do friends complement you for?  What do you love to do with your free time?  Is there something special your spouse or family members like you to do for them?

            These are the things you can use to make a difference and begin to live each day on purpose.  Sometimes it feels like we are all used up.  Maybe you feel like you have squandered a big portion of your life on people or things that didn’t really matter.  Or perhaps you have lived your life on purpose and have made a difference to those around you.

            All I know for sure is that in order to live each day to the fullest, we must first start each day like Aristotle said, with intention.  Intension then translates to an action which translates to a habit.  As nice as it would be to live carefree and commitment free that type of life is usually one without direction and purpose.  Some of the most successful people in the world are people who were organized, planned and set goals for themselves.

I have noticed in my own life, my lack of intension.  It’s time to dig deep, clear the cobwebs from my eyes and get my vision back.  I don’t know what that looks like yet but what I do know is that I have talent, and God given abilities and with him on my side, I can be anything I want to be!  How about you? 

                                                    Will you join me?