A Kind of Armageddon

Last night I finally reached the end of the photos. 

For the past two years, I have been working on reorganizing all the photos that I have accumulated in the past 20+ years. I have been taking them out of the albums, labeling the back with names, dates etc...and then filing them in a photo box.  It has been a tough road. In fact, I have only worked on it when I have a couple of days to devote to it because it is a long and time consuming process (thus the two years).   Lo and behold, this past week I had the flu sent from some under-minion of Satan, and my hubby suggested I spend my couch time sorting through the last two albums I had left. Since all I could do was sit, I decided to go for it and THIS time I would finish. And I did.

I have no more albums left and I filed the last picture.  I labeled the last label.  And I wept.  Not with joy over finishing a project; but with sorrow and grief because when I look in my children's photo boxes I see this: 

The significance of that year cannot be over-looked.  It was that year that my marriage ended.  It was that year that my children's family was destroyed and here was the proof of that destruction contained in an insignificant photo box.

As I looked through year after year of photographs, I finally understood what my children had lost.  I always understood intellectually, but I never really understood in my heart.  Last night, right now at this moment...I understand and I cry.  To my children, there is nothing but happy memories in those pictures.  They never knew that saddness and pain in their parent's marriage and that is good.  They could be children and be secure in the knowledge that all was right in the world.  I look at the pictures and I know our marriage was a painful mess, but my kids never knew that.  Not until their Dad sat us all down in the living room in December 2007 and told us he was leaving.  And in that moment...Armageddon for the family they had always known.

I write this blog today because I want you to know that once you have children, your marriage isn't just for you anymore.  It's for them too.  Your marriage is a bedrock foundation on which your children build every belief they have about love, relationships, security and stability.  If you are struggling in your marriage, if you are toying with the thought of leaving, giving up and walking away, I implore you...I beg you...don't.  Stay.  Fight.  Fight for your marriage, fight for your children, fight for their future.  Divorce has devastating and long-lasting consequences and in ways you can't even fathom or imagine.  I know that I never thought I would be putting together photo boxes seven years after my divorce and weeping for my lost family.  That pain just never goes away and I am an adult who went through the divorce....imagine the loss for the children.  For me, I don't have to imagine...I have the evidence of their destroyed family sitting in six photo boxes in my living room. 

Please fight for your marriages.  Please fight for your family.  Just keep trying.  Please. 

An Agent for Change

I haven't written a blog in a LONG time.  It's not that I didn't have anything to say, rather, I think God was saying some things to me...just for me. What has motivated me to write this blog is that I want to thank God for growth.  I am not the same, I have changed and I know that God alone has wrought this change in me.  Recent circumstances have shown to me that despite my feelings of feeling stuck, I am NOT the same as I was a year ago and HALLELUJAH to God for the chance to truly experience change in a tangible and meaningful way!

When my sweet hubby called me two days before Christmas to tell me he had lost his job I was stunned.  Completely blindsided.  We had no idea this was coming; his job seemed so secure!  As the phone call progressed and my sweetie related to me the circumstances behind his job loss, the first thing that popped into my mind was "What the heck?  God, what's up with this?  Why can't we catch a break?"  I am not ashamed of this, I am, after all, human and momentary self-pity is allowed.  As we were wrapping up the phone call, I told my hubby, "Well, we have been here before and I know God has a plan.  Let's just walk in that."  My Love agreed with me and we ended the call.  As I hung up the phone I realized that what I said was not a platitude, a flippant, trite comment or a fake response to placate my sad husband.  I actually meant what I said.  We have been here before and we have with the help of the Lord, walked in victory.

This time last year, I was unemployed and we were financially desperate.  I had been out of work for nine months, applied for dozens of jobs and faced rejection after rejection.  I was broken and crushed during the Christmas season; completely depleted of hope and running on fumes of old faith.  The beauty of that time is that at the bottom of it all, God was there.  I was cradled and cuddled by His love and His words. I clung to the words of David:

          "In my distress I called upon the LORD ; to my God I cried for help.  From His temple He heard my voice, and my cry to Him reached His ears." Psalm 18:6 

Over and over again God revealed himself not only to me, but to my family.  He blessed us beyond measure and I believed.  I came to a place in my life where I finally was able to say, "Your will, Your way" and mean it.   

In the days following the news of my husband's job loss I kept waiting for the fear, for the crushing sense of panic, for the sleepless nights and for the worry.  I kept wondering if I was in denial or some sort of fugue state because the feelings weren't coming.  Being the slow learner that I am, it took someone else to point out to me that maybe those feelings aren't there because I have changed.  My previous trials have taught me to rest in God and that He is in control and there is an answer to these problems, but I am not the one who has it.  The best part is that choosing to trust in a Faithful God is far less stressful than my previous response to trials.  I would get so tied up in knots, wrapped up in the sorrow and strain of our life situations that I would be paralyzed---I could not function.  I praise God that this is not so for me now.  I have learned!  In pondering all this, God brought this verse to mind;

  "We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;  persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body."

2 Corinthians 4:8-10

Today, I want to thank God for growth.  Today I want to say that I am not the same as I was a year ago and that God is the only one who could have brought this result about in me.  Please don't think this is a way for me to toot my own horn and say, "Wow, look how awesome I am" because it is not.  I am just a girl whose life has been changed and I want you all to know that God gets the glory and the praise.  Are you walking in a circumstance that seems crushing with no escape?  Believe me, I have been there and I encourage you to find a verse, cling to it, and let it be your life preserver in your storm.  God is there...He's got you in the palm of His hand and will calm the storm.