Blessed be

It is not my intention to make every moment of my life, even in this "season", a crisis. At the same time, what I am experiencing I would easily describe as "traumatic." Things are hard, and I am definitely grieving, though in different ways at different times (and for different things). My main goal and heart's desire is to not lose sight of God in all of this. That is easier said than lived, on a good day. Right now I am in the wilderness, as the song below refers to. I look forward to when the sun is again "shining down on me." In the mean time, I have been continually blessed by the friends and family that are, in some cases, literally standing by, ready at any time to offer encouragement or thoughts or just listen. I have received encouragement from people that I have never really talked to in person . I have been prayed for and with and over. I am content in knowing that there are plans that God has for me, and that he will reveal them to me in his timing. I could say more, but really, I am exhausted.

What I learned for 80 bucks

Instead of going on and on about the posts I haven't been posting, the long month of getting to know my husband (and myself as a wife) all over again, the Deep and Spiritual growth occurring...I think today I will just share what goes on in my scattered brain.
As I sat in the chair at the oral surgeon's (code word for hard core dentist), I was grateful for the "anti-anxiety" pill that he had prescribed for me. It literally took me from a level of nervousness that had me considering canceling the appointment one minute to a nonchalant ambivalence the next. And really, when you know you're having a piece of your body ripped violently out while awake, ambivalence is the best you can hope for. SO, back to the chair. I could have just had the numbing shots, or the laughing gas for $80, or the I.V. stuff that "puts you in a drunken state" for an extra $200 (not covered by insurance). And really, if I wanted to be in a drunken state, I'm pretty sure I could have gotten myself there for much less than $200, though at 11 a.m. it might have proved a challenge. I opted for the gas, though, because I wanted to know as little about what was going on as possible. As I settled in the chair and they placed the mask on me, I literally felt all my cares float away. Even when they gave me a couple of rounds of shots, and I knew that my body was hurting and that I couldn't feel it, I just didn't care. I was conscious, but not concerned. And even in the midst of all the gas and pain medicine and Valium and numbing, I thought to myself, "This is how people can do the most horrible things, or allow the most horrible things to be done to them." I know, that is pretty deep for a dentist chair. But it opened my eyes to a world that I have little experience with. It showed me how prostitutes and abusers and addicts and broken people survive the continued damaging things through drug addictions. It took me about 3 minutes to not care if the dentist ripped out every tooth in my head, imagine what months or years on drugs would allow and abused girl-turned-prostitute to endure, without "caring." It was really an eye-opening experience (except for the part where I couldn't actually open my left eye for an hour or so because the shots "turned off my blinking muscle"). And a weird experience. Who thinks about these things in the dentist chair? Really? But as the hours have passed and my foggy brain has come back to its normal level of somewhat coherent thought....it occurs to me that this was actually an answer to prayer. In all of our relationship restoring and life rebuilding, Jimmy and I have been praying for wisdom. Not any specific kind of wisdom, but just that the wisdom of God would become more evident in our lives. That we would be able to see things with the light of the One who knows everything shining in our minds. I guess that today, God thought I needed to understand a bit more personally how people use drugs to hide pain. I don't know why, or how this wisdom will be used, but I thank God for the few minutes of teaching in the most unlikely of places.
What kind of wisdom are you seeking?

Easter

This song is Easter to me in its simplest form. It is the kind of hymn I grew up on, reminds me very much of hearing my parents or grandparents sing, standing next to me, in a church congregation. No fluff. No muss. Just the piano and voices singing.

Easter

I'm continuing my week of music that means Easter to me. This song pretty much sums up the "why" of Easter. Why did Christ willingly chose to endure, to be tortured, to be separated from his Father? So that I can say "My chains are gone....I've been set free!" To know that grace, to have been brought up believing in that grace, is greater than any fortune I could ever inherit.



The end of this song really sums it up. I don't place my faith in God for the help he brings me in THIS world, but for the glory that it will bring him in the next, FOREVER, world.

How beautiful

I did not give anything up for Lent. I have not thought a lot about the "true meaning of Easter" so far this year. Then, I went to church this morning, and my sweet friend Beth sang this song and it made me cry. And I've heard it before, many times, so I was a little surprised. But then, God has been making himself more real to me this past year than I have ever known him to be before. So, it makes sense that this song would break my heart now, today, THIS Easter.
I pray that your Easter week is filled with beauty and brokenness and that you are "waiting for your Groom with His light in your eyes."





Love,

Grace....stinkin' AMAZING

Time is tickin' away....(any old school D.C. Talk fans out there??)
Things will soon be changing. My husband will be coming home, and though I don't yet know the date, it is close enough to say "sooner than later". All of those things that have felt as if they were put on hold indefinitely will have to be decided, experienced, worked out, worked through, worked over...probably some wounds will be reopened, and for their own good. Healing will begin. Well, that's not true--a new type of healing will begin. But I can't discredit the healing that has already been "in progress."
As I get ready for this time, time that I know I will need prayer and encouragement more than ever, I can't help but just be in total, complete, mouth-dropping awe at what God has done for me. I have made it this far, by the GRACE of God. I have not filed for divorce, by the GRACE of God. I can honestly say that I love my husband now, more than ever, by the GRACE of God. I have maintained my God-given gift of humor, by the GRACE of God. I have been blessed by the prayers of many, because of God's GRACE in their lives. I am able to truly hope for the complete restoration of my marriage, because I know the GRACE of God. We still have so, so, SO far to go, and honestly, I don't care how long it takes us to get there. If you want to get down to it, the only thing I really care about is knowing more and more and more about God's grace. How to let it fill me up, how to let it pour from me. How to let our marriage be submerged in that grace. That said, there are two verses that are hitting home in our life this week.
The first one, I have been blessed to see in my own husband this week (well, more than this week, but this week it has knocked my socks off!).
Philippians 1:9 "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

The second one kind of sums up how I got here, to this point of being ready and willing to walk through the fire with my husband, to be prepared (or at least hope I am) to be refined and redeemed together, through God's GRACE in healing our marriage.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Be praying!
Love,

For I know the plans I have for you

Just about 2 years ago, I was going through an extremely hard time. My husband and I had separated, and all signs pointed to the end of our marriage. I wanted to escape, to run away, to get the heck out of Dodge. When I wasn't pulling my car over to the side of the road so I could sob uncontrollably (and safely), I was wishing for an "out." A chance to make my way to a different zip code and a different life.
I would surf the jobs, looking wistfully at the (low-paying and sketchy) nanny jobs in New York or Florida or even Ohio. I didn't care. I saw an ad for a political job. Lots of training, expenses paid, travel from town to town (this was a year before the presidential election). I submitted my application, got a call and a pre-interview. Then, for some reason, when the real interview time came, I just didn't follow through with it. Probably because I had enough chaos in my life. Probably because God was in control, even in the middle of all that grief and hopelessness. I thought nothing about the job, went on with my life, stayed where I was (in so many ways), and God continued to provide and to care and to heal and to reveal many things in my life.
The past few months, it has been a continuous blessing to me to see where I did not end up. This little escape of mine would have been with a company called ACORN.
I have had many chances to make the wrong choice in my life. I have reaped many of the non-rewards of taking the wrong path. It's nice, every once in a while, to see that sticking it out has a plus side. You know, like avoiding being in the middle of an embarrassing, illegal, public national scandal.

I won't apologize

Yes, I know it's another video link. Sometimes I do actually write things on this ol' blog. But sometimes there are just no words. I found this on another blog that I read from time to time, written by the wife of a member of my favorite music group ( <-- that's a song from our wedding, by the way).