Spiritside

I Really Wish I knew Something

I know one thing for sure, and that is I exist not knowing very much of anything.  The frustration this knowledge brings makes me cringe, grip my face in my hands and scream.  Because I'm not the kind of person who believes ignorance is bliss.  I can't stand that I don't focus, commit myself to a single way of thinking of being, to "know".  I change daily.  What I think I know on Monday will be different on Tuesday.  One day I think I know what to do to better serve my role as parent, the next everything I thought I was doing right ends up either not being right, thus causing endless self doubt, or I see the situation differently and change my mind.  It's hard in life to always feel like I don't get what others seem to get so effortlessly.

It becomes scary when it starts to involve my spiritual life.  I've been blessed in that I've sat at the feet of some of our great modern teachers.  Equally as in love with God, equally preaching a righteous word, but not always in agreement.  Which led me to believe that even among one group of people, who share a belief in a specific thing, there will be many differences.  I know how obvious this sounds.  How many denominations are there in Christianity?  How many people who love the Lord with the same vigor believe totally different things?  Who is right?  Who is wrong?  Even with scripture as the plumb line there can still be differences in fundamental beliefs.  I've met folks who love God with all their heart, the same God I love, and believe that without baptism one is bound for Hell.  I've met their counterparts who see baptism as an outward expression of our changed nature, obedience, but having nothing to do with a person landing in Hell.  And I've heard both pull verses and believe that they had scriptural proof for their ideal.  Everyone single person I've met believes themselves to be right. 

I have a long, long list of things I do not know.  I don't know how to be a widow.  I don't know why I am a widow and my children fatherless.  I don't know why I'm lonely one day and can't muster the energy to get together with  a friend.  I don't know why I allow Jessica to anger me when I am the mom and make the rules.  I don't know what I'm looking for.  I don't know if my need for spirituality will lead me down a dangerous road, or if on my quest for spiritual wisdom I will be right where God wants me.  I really don't know if every single person has to believe the exact same thing in order to have salvation.  What about those beautiful souls who have changed the way they worship, but still worship?  If everyone is supposed to believe the exact same thing, than are we never supposed to question?  If so, then why did God place in us the need to question?  Can I love God differently then you?  I don't know how to reach my kids regarding their dad's death.  I don't know what to do with my sadness.  I don't know how to meet people who will accept me where I am without trying to change me.  See....on and on and on it goes.  Not everything I used to believe is what I believe still. 

Maybe it's good to not know.  It certainly opens doors that were closed while I was so sure I had the answers.  It's certainly humbled me and caused me to love those who are different, when before I would have judged them for their differences. 

But there are some real negatives.  People never know what to make of me.  Because I'm comfortable saying and doing things that someone who had really strong convictions wouldn't.  I'm fine being in discovery mode and doing things differently.  It's just that even with being comfortable, I long for the feeling of community that comes with aligning ones self with a group of like minded people.  I don't have it in me to fake it, and so while I consider myself in discovery mode I also see myself as desperate at times.  I have reached out to total strangers with the hope of finding someone who might actually understand where I'm coming from, or at least not assume that I'm wrong if I'm different.

I'm not sure how much sense this really makes.  I've been thinking a lot about these things as I read all the wonderful blogs, get to know the hearts of the ones doing the writing.  I find a part of myself in every site I frequent.  I comment from the heart of my desire to make friends, connect, discover like minded and not like minded people who are open to friendships.  I think when you have your life shaken up the way I did at the age I did it makes you question, questioning makes you seem young/immature, and not the same person that those who loved you thought you were, so you end up having to start over.  So maybe that's it, maybe spiritually, emotionally, I'm back at a place where I was when I was first discovering myself a little more.  It can just be a little lonely.

a photo of depression

Food and drink, ya right.  This is what my car looks like on a day when I fight with the people I love the most, I haven't slept in a few days, my bank account won't allow me to buy the toy I want and I break a nail. 

The good news that day was that the Sponge Bob toy buried beneath my pile of medication was one my daughter really wanted.  So, after consuming an untold number of Kids Meals, and washing them down with pringles and diet cokes, I finally found the the right one.  In case your wondering, I'm one of those people who actually can't eat when I'm depressed, but all the sugary and salty carbs sound good, so I buy them.  Except for the diet coke, the rest of this pretty much remained in this position until it started to make my car smell bad, then I fed it to my dog, which would explain his weight issues.

By the way, this is all true.  I craved that stupid cherry pie, but the thought of eating it made me even more depressed.   Oh, there are also a pack of zingers, the raspberry ones, in there somewhere also.

What I Think I Want

It's easy to feel sorry for myself.  I've had a lot of loss in my life, and I've had to deal with some situations that have reduced me.  Each time I've thought "no more Lord, I can't".  When I had a still birth I thought that was the most horrific pain my heart would ever endure.  I was wrong. 

I was praying, talking, crying with some very transparent friends last night, and as we spoke I wondered how they knew.  How did they know I was so down.  I always put on a happy face, I never sob like that in front of my youngest, yet it all happened so quickly, this transition from one mom picking up her child at another home to three adults sitting in the living room pouring out their souls to each other.  I thought I had some right to hope for more than I have right now.  I want my old life back, my lost husband back, the new man in my life to be different.  I have not put any of the pain to rest.  I felt so sad as I stood there realizing that not once did I seek God.  I've prayed, gone to church, done Bible study, but I have not allowed Him to love me enough to help me.   I haven't sought HIM.  He knows, He sees the struggles that I have.  My friends very lovingly kept saying "you can't give up hope, you can't be hopeless, you have to trust God".  I want to.  I hate that my faith is so weak, even though I understand why it is.  How could it not be tested after so much?  All this time I thought I knew what I wanted, in the blink of an eye it's all changed, because all I want now is my life with God back.  I don't care if I ever go to church again, corporately pray, give to missions, I just want my heart to be His and only His, and allow Him to give me what I need, instead of seeking my joy from other sources that will never heal my heart.  I love a man, his family, his children, and I have wanted that to fill me.  The man I love now does not seek Christ, and I don't know if he ever will.  I have turned to him to join with me in those things of the Spirit, but he cannot.  He doesn't know the Spirit.  But I do. 

Now I know all the people saying "Do not be unequally yoked", and I'm not denying those words in the Bible, and the fact that in the year I've been seeking a deeper relationship with Chris and not able to attain it because we are not even close to on the same page spiritually prove why those words ring true.  Instead of wishing he'd be different I just want his salvation.  I want him to know the God that loves him no matter what, to experience what it feels like to know that God is good.  And  I guess that's what I want anyone who may be reading these words right now to know.  The same God who allowed my to have a still birth, who allowed my husband and father of my babies to perish in a terrorist attack is GOOD.  He is a great and amazing lover of humanity, no matter what trials I go through, or you are going through, He is Good. 

How I pray to want more of Him again.  I want everyday to remember that what ever happens with Chris, my kids, me, I only want Him.

Misplaced

Hope is a double edged sword.  In hoping I am made vulnerable, and that vulnerability has frightened me since the first time I discovered, with great disillusionment, my mother was not perfect.  In fact, my mother was ill, mentally and physically, and so was not able to care for me.  I spent my childhood hoping for a "normal" mom.  One who'd come to eat lunch with me at school, one who would drop me off and pick me up from school so I didn't have to envy the other children whose moms were always there.  Mine was perpetually absent.  When she was there I never knew which side of her I'd get.  The angry mom, the detached, the drunk, the "in love".

When my husband died all the hope I had for my life began spilling out slowly, like a reverse IV dripping out of me instead of in.  It never dawned on me, no matter how many times we made arrangements for the horrid "what ifs" that I would actually believing them.  And you make plans that focus on the business of the "what ifs", but there is no way to factor in the emotional.  We may take care to choose guardians for our kids, decide what the best thing to do with the house, but you can't know till you're there that you won't care about the house.  All the things I hoped for were blown up, literally.  Growing old with him, raising our kids together, the phone calls I would wait for, the trips we planned.  Gone.  I felt betrayed in ways I can't even fathom.  I was supposed to have this life, wasn't I?  Yes, I know loving God doesn't mean that things like this will never happen, but I was confident that hoping for something as basic as growing old with the one I love was a safe bet.

Now I know there is only one safe bet.  Christ is it.  I don't mean He is the one, la de dah, but He Is The One, the only thing that can be counted on.  Any time I place my hope anywhere else, even places I consider worthy, I'm reminded of this.  I have hoped for love, only to loose it when hatred and man's free will imploded.  I have hoped for friendship, only to discover that I was always seemingly letting someone down or being let down.  I hoped for family, and with my daughters God has answered this prayer, but I have no extended family to speak of, and Lenny's family caused us such damage I'm still trying to undo it.  But Christ has never failed me.  He chose me, for whatever reason, and I can place my hope in Him without fear.  His grace, His compassion, His Spirit are always there. 

I wish I could say my joy is complete because of this, but the loss of what I hoped for stings still, and while my head understands the magnitude of Christ as my hope my heart still yearns.  There are moments of real hopelessness, I can't see a future so radically altered from the one I wanted.  But I do try.  I promise I do.  It's easier some days, but never easy.  I am in the crawling stages of my faith again, making the things I know into truths I live.  Because I know where my hope needs to be I work at living that out.  But there are so many "wrong" hopes, or areas of misplaced hopes to unlearn.  One day I believe my joy will be complete in Him, even if it's not until I'm actually with Him.  Knowing that is the beginning,I guess, of this new hope.

My Reflection

I've thought a lot lately about what I believe is the sourse of my worth, what and where my worth is.  I was a good wife before, that identity gave me a great feeling of worthiness.  I tried to be a good mother, I tried to do everything right.  Gymboree, play-dates, keeping them safe.  I dappled in writing but only showed my husband.  If he liked it I assumed it was good, and again the feeling of being worthy would flow.  The kind words, security, conpliments and pride my husband lavished on me were the first loving things another person ever gave me, so, because he loved me, I figured there must be something to love. 

He's gone now, the kind words, the security, the compliments.  All of that is remembered, but nothing new can be added to the pot, and so I wonder, where does my worth lie?  I'm no longer a good wife, and whatever I may do, I have no way of knowing right now if I am good at parenting.  From this point on I see signs in my children that they have morals, values, faith, intelligence, but not much of that is from my daily influence anymore.  They are older, past the days of car seats and learning manners.  They are great kids, but because of who God created them to be.  Their personalities are blooming, and I may have had a hand in the manners department, but every parent knows and sees the things in their kids that are "just the way they are".

So who am I?  Who values me?  Who believes in me the way my husband did?  No family alive, no friends from the old neighborhood, since my old neighborhood is 3000 miles west of here, some new friends, yes, and a church family, but all that's really recent, there isn't that sense of having been known forever and loved anyway.  Except for One.  The One.  When this hit me it hit me really hard.  I am the daughter of the One True God!  Growing up in a single parent home, alcholic mother and no contact with my father, to think that I'm adopted by The One, it blows my mind.  Why?  Why would this God want a thing to do with me, let alone an eternity?  Because He desires all to be saved, yes, but beyond that He has pursued me, and I've needed to be pursued.  He has liberated me from the beliefs that if I try hard enough, give more, allow the world to have it's way with me than I can be.  There is so much I don't understand about His love for me, but I know that my mother, and hers, my sister as well have always turned their backs on their own hearts to gain love.  How amazing that with God I don't have to.  I prayed earnestly when my now, as of today, teenager was a baby that God would free HER from my family's legacy of people pleasing, pleasing because there was no understanding that they were worth more than being someone's whipping boy.  I watch daily as He frees US from this legacy.  There are still times when I see myself or one of my girls taking the back seat, giving up a piece of themselves for another.  But it is not because we think that is all we deserve, it's because we know we deserve so much less than Christ has bestowed on us, and for Him to give so lavishly to us how can we not want to bless others.  That is a very different origin.

So no, my husband is no longer here to give me my worth, and my children are children and shouldn't be burdened by my neediness.  It's taken a lot of agony to finally see where my worth is, and I pray that in my humanity I never loose sight of who I am in Him.

Worshiping Expectations

What I want.  What I expect.  When do these things cross the line from healthy desires to idolatry?  My expectations have become my curse.  Maybe they always were.  For as long as I can remember I've wanted certain things and have pursued those things, even to my own detriment.  Even to the point of forgetting that my desires may not be what God wants for me.  I believe that He gives me the desires of my heart, but is what I'm doing with those desires, healthy, spiritually or otherwise?  I mean honestly, when my expectations become the cause of either my happiness or sadness I feel that I have crossed a dangerous line.  The more my expectations are not met, the harder I fight for them to be.  I don't feel as though I'm being very clear, but the best i can say is this:  In my marriage I wanted certain things.  It was easy to say they were the right things because they revolved around Christ.  I wanted a family, a husband who lead our family in the ways of the Lord, kids who would pursue the same things that mattered to me.  I wanted passion, love, respect.  In the thirteen years before my husband's death I fought hard for those things.  When he died I could not believe that we'd never reach this apex of my desires.  When I look back now I feel a certain level of shame, because I was seeking what I wanted, and I would get so angry at my husband when he let me down.  He was a leader, in his own way.  He loved and respected me, but not enough, never enough.  It always came down to my expectations.  He was who God created him to be, and my expectations really had no business in that.  I'm not saying that there are not healthy components of marriage that need to be pursued, though out, shot for, just that our inability to have our expectations met should not be the plumb line with which we judge.  In fact, what do we really have the right to expect?

I can say now that the relationship I'm in does not meet my expectations.  And I'm mad.  But I don't want to worship those expectations.  I don't want to build them up into this idol that holds the key to my salvation, constantly seeking to have my expectations met rather than the God who has given me this need to be known, to be understood.  For so long I have wondered how to take the intangible, invisible God and allow that to be enough.  whether or not this relationship ever meets all my needs there is One who can.  All the struggles, the death of Lenny, the death of those dreams, those expectations should have taught me that expectations are particles of dust.  They can blow away one day, and the only true God will still be standing.

Praying for an Enemy

I have discovered something about people and obedience.  It just doesn't seem to matter what someone is told do, human nature dictates that we either avoid or rebel.  Yes, I am the mom of a teen, so maybe it's just the experiences I'm having currently that have caused me to pause and reflect on the principle of obeying.  But I also know that we long to be masters of our own selves, and when someone, even someone we love dearly, tells us what to do it can make us feel as though we are loosing that ability.  I know I always want what I want when I want it.  I'm no different than my teen in that regard.  If I want to do something I will. 

Of course, as a parent, I have put in place rules that I expect my kids to follow.  And every single one of those rules has a purpose to do with their well being.  Clean up before games and computer, responsibility.  Respecting others, teaching them to respect themselves as well as value other and themselves.  Not going outside when I'm not home, or not talking to strangers, and most especially not giving personal information on the computer, their safety.  Going to bed at a decent time, eating well, exercise, showering, all things designed for their health and well being.  They don't always see it that way.  In fact, they always have the same reaction to information they hear every single day.  Man.  Not just "man" but a long, whining, drawn out "Mmmaaaaannnnn!".  It's as if they never heard that they have to do their homework first before!

Obedience gets really tricky for me when I know God needs me to do something, yet I don't want to.  I know where my kids get that whining "man" thing from.  I'm not very legalistic in my approach to God.  Not to say I don't long to serve, to obey, but that I don't believe His love for me is conditional on anything I can do.  I love Him, I adore the Jesus I've come to know.  That is why I long to do what He says.  And I don't set up many spiritual rules for myself.  By that I mean that since Lenny's death, adding the pressure of trying to live up to my old expectations for myself would probably do me in.  If I can't get up and spend the time I used to in study, if I don't serve at my church the way I used to, I believe I still honor Him by the choices I make and the way live. 

So ok.  Praying for our enemies.  Here is the amazing beauty.  I have an "enemy".  Before I say another word I do want to add that I know just like my rules for my kids, God's directive are only for our benefit.  He is God, and whether or not we obey He is still God.  His wish for our best is the reason for what's written in that amazing Bible.  I don't for one minute pretend to know why He would care so deeply for us, but I revel in it.  Knowing all that did not make praying for this person one bit easier.  She is mean spirited and has said and done horrid things that my kids have also had to deal with.  She used me in a way, I let her use me in a way, that has had huge negative ramifications for my family.  She's Superior, self-centered to the point of neglecting her own child for a man twenty years her junior, and well, once I set up some healthier boundaries, and began to share the gospel with her, that was that.  The kicker I think, was when after a couple of miscarriages she still kept trying to get pregnant.  Because she was bored.  That's what she said.  After that I could not stay quiet, and that's when I became the "bitch".  I shared with her Psalm 139, I talked to her about mentoring, a subject near and dear to me.  She was still the wronged person.  I haven't talked negatively about her to a soul.  Even writing these words I feel hypocritical because I sound so stinking judgmental, and it's so clear she needs God, healing, His power.  Anyway, after the friendship ended and she began to do and say some things that caused a great deal of harm I began to fantasize about retaliation!  I did.  I harbored my anger, didn't let it get to far from me.  I didn't tell anyone, but I would think it.  I would think the worse possible things.  Until one day at church, right before communion, the Pastor asked what's been on our minds of late.  As if he spoke directly to me he asked if there were any lost souls we needed to pray for.  Any unfinished business that needed finishing before we partook.  Her face filled my mind, and I began right then to pray for her.  And for myself, confession.  Now every time I feel that anger and resentment flow to the surface, which it does as things she says and does against me trickle into my circle, I begin praying earnestly for her and I swear, I honestly swear that the minute I begin to pray I feel nothing but sadness for her.  No anger, hatred, nothing I feel ashamed of.  Just this overwhelming sadness and a sense of being stuck, because she is stuck.  I began longing for her salvation instead of longing to get even. 

I can't say that I'm praying for all who have ever wronged me.  I do try, but I believe God will bring me to the places I need to be before I can sincerely pray for those who took my husband's life, along with 3000 others.  But I have seen Him work, and in that I take great rest.

Help!!!

I am Jewish by birth.  I became a Christian at 17, mostly because the man who had been witnessing to me never gave up, and besides have no arguments I wanted him to shut up!  He was my dearest friend of the opposite sex, and has been married to my best friend of the same sex for fifteen years, and together they have three amazing children.  I am the one, if something should ever happen to my friends, that their kids would come to, and same here.  If something ever happened to me I'd want my kids with Kate and Craig!

But Craig really was determined, and I remember being 17, in my bed listening to a radio Pastor pray the sinners prayer.  I prayed it with him, and when it got the part about Jesus dying for my sins, and my accepting Him as my Savior I knew if I said yes there would be no turning back.  At that moment I stopped.  I remember feeling as though I was floating above myself, the room spinning, and when I looked down at myself on my bed I saw me, only hollowed out.  Not really dead, but not really alive.  In that moment I knew who I would continue to be without Jesus, and it scared me into a profession of faith and commitment I'm still trying to live up to.  After, I got up and went about my business, but kept it to myself for awhile.  Not out of shame, but the way a person might keep a new love all to themselves at first, to sort of revel in it and enjoy the secrecy. 

The day came when I informed my Jewish mother of my choice.  I was asked to move out.  Really I was tossed out on my ear, but hey, God provided and I was always safe and cared for.   The thing she didn't understand was that by accepting Christ I was not trying to turn my back on my upbringing but fully living it.  I take great pride in my heritage.  So why the declaration for help?  I don't feel that I have a full grasp of the issues in the Middle East at this point in my life and I have a deep desire to know and understand.  I am hoping to find some reading material, personal insights, anything.  I want to comprehend prophecy, know the place of the Jewish people in God's plan, understand myself as His a little better.  I do feel that "End Times" issues have to do with this very explosive region, and, well, I just want to know more.  I'd really appreciate any feed back, and I live in between five book stores, including a Family, so picking up a few books on the topic is fairly easy to do.

Thanks!