My Murky Future

When I was in high school, my family went swimming for the afternoon at a really huge pond. We were all in the water swimming and splashing around, just having a fabulous time, when I got this really creepy feeling. I cannot describe it, but I just felt like something was wrong. As I bobbed around in the water, I started feeling as though something was touching my legs. I paddled around a little looking for an explanation for the bumps and touches I would intermittently feel. Realizing I was alone in the area sent me swimming to the shore in a panic! When I got onto the beach, I told my older brother Micky about the touches and he said it was probably fish bumping into my legs. Nothing to worry about. I immediately felt better and the cloud was lifted.

That night, we were watching the 11 o'clock news when a story about a missing man came on. He had been located, earlier in the evening....in the pond where I had been swimming. Police divers had pulled his body from the area in the pond where I was. He had been there for quite a while. Needless to say, I freaked out. What if that dead guy had been touching my legs? What if it was his phantom fingers reaching out from the murky depths of the pond and brushing my feet? I had nightmares for a long time and in all honesty, I have never recovered from it.

Since that day more than 20 years ago, I have not gone swimming in anything other than a pool. No lie. At a lake, I will wade out a little ways, take a lawn chair and plop my tooshie down and do some power reading whilst dipping my toes in the cool water. But I won't venture out any farther than that; I know far too much about what possibly lies beneath my ability to see. I know what you are thinking; and I agree. The possibility that my feet will somehow locate another dead dude is remote at best, but when I get out in the water and it does not permit me to see what is in it, I freeze and cannot go any farther.

To me, my future is like a lake that I gaze into and cannot see what is below the surface. I fear the future in much the same way I fear any non-chlorinated body of water and for the same reason: I cannot see what lies in it. I may not seem like it, but I am actually a very plan-full person. I like knowing what is coming down the pike. I like planning ahead, knowing what's up and being able to anticipate what I will need or need to do. I do like lists, order and schedules even if I am not all that rigid about making sure the list gets done, or the schedule is followed. It's just nice to know it's there percolating in my brain.

This is why the future is so hard for me...God has given me nothing to percolate on! I am certain of nothing except that nothing is certain. I can't see what God's plans are for me and He did that on purpose. Where is my faith to follow Him if I can see where He is leading?

Confession time: Beneath this laid-back exterior lies the heart (and the stomach aches) of a dyed-in-the-wool worrywart. I don't share it, I don't talk about it and I don't like to think about it, but the worry is there. I feel it in my stomach. I find it in the night when I cannot sleep. It distracts me from my present and robs me of my future. I spend so much time on the worry that I forget to trust.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on Me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, " declares the LORD....Jeremiah 29:11-14a

This is a classic verse, quoted so much it's almost a cliche...but it's truth rings forth so strongly to me. The question is, DO I TRUST GOD FOR MY FUTURE?

Here's the comfort in all this blah blah blah I am sharing. I can't see the future. It is a black, murky, bloggy mess to me, but not to God! HE sees the future. HE has a plan for my life. HE is the boss of me and knows what is going to happen. He doesn't promise my future will turn out the way I want, but He does promise to give me a hope and future that will not cause me harm and will only prosper me. This gives me reason to rejoice, reason to keep going and reason to once again, thank God that I am His child. With this hope, and this reassurance of God's faithfulness, I am going to endeavor to look upon the future with anticipation and not fear. I want to enjoy every second of my life and not regret the moments lost by worrying about things I cannot change. Once again I find myself saying, "Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!" II Corinthians 9:15


P.S. I am almost 100% positive that my future will be dead-guy-in-the-pond free!

Grass Houses and Mud Pies

When I was a little girl, we lived in a house that had a huge grass field in the pasture. I would go out there and plow through the tall grass and disappear. I would lay down in there and be invisible...no one could find me. I liked being invisible. I lived in a house of chaos and neglect. If I was invisible, no one could yell at me, hit me or hurt me. I could lay on my back in the grass and listen to the whisper of silence in the blades.

As an adult, I have come to equate the feeling of insignificance to the feeling of being invisible. I don't want to be invisible. I don't like it. I want to be noticed. I want to shake the world! I want to be the one at work to change a life, to save a family, to have an insight that changes the mind of someone who is lost. I want to make a difference. I want to be.....SIGNIFICANT!

Interestingly enough, God has allowed none of those things to happen to me. I sit in my beige cube day after day like a meatloaf, plow through tons of paperwork and then leave. I feel like the biggest fakity-faker in the world. I feel like a little girl trying to wear mommas shoes when I sit in meetings and trainings. In my mind, I don't make a difference.

The other day, I was doing my bible study and a stumbled across this quote by C.S. Lewis:

"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because she cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

Oh boy.

Why am I so willing to settle for less in my life? Why oh why do I willingly turn away from the staggering blessings that God offers me as His child in order to try and achieve something to glorify myself? God has given me all I need to have a great life...correction, an abundant life, yet I cling desperately to my mud pies! I feel insignificant because I don't see Him in my every day life. I have been a Christian for 24 years and yet, I still flounder around in my need to matter to everyone else and ignore the rest and peace that comes from trading my ambitions for my life for His will and ways.

Truth is, I always have and probably always will struggle with my self-esteem. The feeling of being "less than" is an old friend of mine. I know that God is working in me because I am recognizing this weakness and I am confessing it. I no longer want to be so easily satisfied with what I am able to conjure up on my own as a successful life. I want life...and I want it more abundantly.

Confessions of a Fat Girl

Have you ever just felt trapped in your own skin? As if you didn't change you were going to explode? I have felt like that the past couple of days. I don't know if it's the sun or the spring or the fact that I have sassy new hair, but sometimes I just feel so.........trapped. I want a new job, a new life, a new body a new start, a new town a new cat....a new EVERYTHING!

Yesterday (after trying on the 18th shirt that didn't fit at Ross) I realized something: I feel trapped inside of ME! It's not my job or my life or my car--- it's me that I want to escape from. I admit that I don't like myself very much. I am constantly inundated with negative self-talk, self-hatred and loathing. I have never been able to look in the mirror and tell myself, "You are beautiful." I had some ladies tell me at a meeting this morning to do positive affirmations and I couldn't help wonder why I would lie to myself like that? I have never liked myself, never felt beautiful and always felt like the fattest wench in the world.

I am not trying to be a bummer; I am just trying to be authentic, real. I have struggled with insecurity my whole life. As a Christian I feel double shame at times because I don't ever want God to believe that I am not thankful for whom He made me to be. I just don't understand why I couldn't be who I am supposed to be only lighter? I get so irritated with all these skinny, skinny people who are "dieting". I just want to shake them! If they think they need to lose weight, what must they think of me? It's not as though I lose sleep over worry of what others think, I just wonder if they aren't comfortable in their own skin, is it any wonder I am uncomfortable in mine?

I hear all the time, "If you don't want to be fat, lose weight." Ah, if only it were that easy. I wish that people could understand that food is as much an addiction as methamphetamines, alcohol or marijuana. Food is my crack. I cannot escape it...it follows me where ever I go. I have been heavy my whole life. I have used food for comfort, company and consolation. I have turned again and again to my drug of choice when my life is happy, sad, angry or boring. I have developed a life-long habit with food and as I stare down the barrel of my last year in my 30s, I am worried. I feel scared. Why scared? Because it is a known fact that losing weight after 40 is infinitely harder than in your 30s. Lucky me.

I don't know what to do. I am in a hate-hate relationship with myself. Rene' and I have decided to join the YMCA, but with my track history I don't even know if I have the staying power. I know this is a depressing blog, but I am just expressing what is going on in my head. It's not always fun and games boys and girls...sometimes it’s just....me.

Refuge

Sometimes, when I hang up the phone, I am fighting back tears. I just feel so incompetent, so…ineffective to help. She is the only person in my life in which I have to weigh and measure every word I say before it comes out of my mouth for fear of hurting her or provoking her anger. I tiptoe. I dance around my feelings because honestly, they don’t matter. What matters is her journey to becoming an adult. She is fighting this fight not me. I have to stand by and watch her suffer, make mistakes, feel desperate and alone. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to say it. I have my thoughts and my feelings but again; they don’t really matter.

I am dying inside because I desperately want to help her. I am screaming inside my head, “Let me help you! Please!” I have begged her to let me help her. I have pleaded with her to lay aside her pride and let me ease her burden; but she refuses. Time and time again I have to reach deep inside of myself to find that little bit of restraint that keeps me from grabbing her, holding her to my chest and never letting her leave my house. She is not a baby anymore; she is well on her way to adulthood and I can no longer block the world from darkening her door or protect her from the boogeyman that lurks in the shadows.

I am learning that growing up is not just her journey, it is mine. My growing up is about learning to let go, stop trying to control everything, be still, be quiet. Trust the Lord with all my heart. Trust him because my daughter is my heart. There is no one who is able to guard and protect her the way He will. My control is just an illusion and every single time I try to interfere in her life I am robbing her of the opportunity to learn the lessons that God has so carefully crafted for her. And for me.

I must never forget that God chose me to be her mother and that I am the best person to help accomplish this good work he is doing in her. So as I fight back the tears and bite back my words I am compelled to turn to my Father who is desperate to help me and begs me, “Let me help you! Please!” Today, I choose to run into His arms, bury my head in His chest and be comforted.

“For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6

A Choice to Suffer

This has been a brutal week. No lie.

It has been painful, heartbreaking, stressful, exhausting, frustrating and LONG! Friday, morning after receiving yet another S.O.S call from the boys' mother, I was on the verge of tears. I felt utterly spent and completely drained. "Lord!", I cried in my soul, "I seriously cannot take any more!" I went to work already exhausted.

I have been a Christian since I was 14- years old. I have walked with God a long time and I know that being a Christian is not a shield from pain and sorrow. In fact there are many, many verses in the Bible that promise the exact opposite:

"Beloved, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though some strange thing were happening to you..." 1 Peter 4: 12

"Not only this, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering works perseverance; " Romans 5:3

"...that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings becoming conformed to His death; " Philippians 3:10

"The sufferings that you are enduring are for your discipline. God is dealing with you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?" Hebrews 12:7

I really hate suffering folks. I don't want to do it anymore! (picture me stomping my foot) In my childish heart, I just want to go about my life, raising my kids, going to church, hanging out with The Rene' and enjoying my suffering-free life. But I know this is never to be. Because there is so much more. God has so much more for my life than a life of mediocrity and beige! God is forming me and making me into a better version of me. God is growing me, shaping me and chastening me in order to bring Him glory and for me to learn to walk in Him. He loves me so much he doesn't want me to stay the same. Christ was God's only son, yet He had to learn obedience from the suffering He endured (Hebrews 5: 8). I am the daughter of God...I am no different.

Every day I have a choice to make. Walk with Jesus on the path He has chosen for me or walk by myself. One path leads to life and one path leads to my destruction. As painful as it is and as hard as it gets, today I am choosing to walk the road of suffering with Jesus. Who better to guide me than one who is so intimately acquainted with grief?

A Divine Romance

Did you know it's National Marriage Week?

Yeah, neither did I. How could such an important subject and an important institution get no attention? Be passed over or ignored? I don't understand it, but I decided to do something about it. I want to acknowledge what marriage means to me.

Marriage matters even if the institution itself has taken a beating in the last several years. My marriage matters to me. As the child of divorced parents and putting my kids through divorce, I want to state unequivocally that I believe in marriage. I believe in soul mates. I believe in "Happily Ever After", white picket fences and holding hands when you are 90 years old. Having spent years in quiet unhappiness, finding The One who has made my heart sing fills me with such joy I cannot adequately express it.

"I found the one my heart loves. I held him and would not let him go..." Song of Solomon 3:4

I love Rene'. He is the peanut butter to my jelly, the peas to my carrots. He has taught me so much about patience, steadfast faith, and the joy of homemade refried beans. He laughs at me and thinks I am cute. I dig that. God has used my marriage to Rene' to challenge me and to grow me. Every day I have to make the choice to put another's needs greater than my own and to esteem him greater than I esteem myself. Hot dog is that hard! Some days I don't really give a crap what he wants or needs. Some days I just want to showboat it and do it my way. But usually, that selfish desire doesn't last too long seeing as I have done it "my" way in the past and yeah, it didn't work out so well.

"More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse." ~Doug Larson

Blending families has taught me much about myself as well. I never thought of myself as a selfish person until I became a step-mother. Truth is: sometimes I don't WANT to step up and be there. Sometimes I have sullen, sulky thoughts like, "I raised my kids...why the heck do I have to raise more!" Or, "These aren't my kids...why am I pouring out all my heart into them only to have it stepped on?" I have learned some not-so-favorable things about myself because Joseph and Joshua are in my life and I am being forced to grow up. Trust me, this is a good thing. I don't want to be the proverbial "wicked step-mother" so I know I have to die to myself every single day and confront my "true" self on a daily basis. Without Joe and Josh, I doubt I would have never seen this side of myself and know I would've have missed an opportunity to grow. I am grateful for them.

"You can never be happily married to another until you get a divorce from yourself. Successful marriage demands a certain death to self." ~Jerry McCant

Bottom line: marriage is hard. Life is messy. Marriage is divine and sacred. It's never easy. It's the hardest thing I have ever done and it's completely worth it.