I believe … [day 3]

It’s October again and time for 31 days of writing. This year I’m only linking up with my FMF sisters. Trying once again to get back to my first creative love, writing. Pen and paper, computer screen, lunch bag and envelopes! Writing is my calling, I believe 😉

Today’s Prompt:

Believe.

Go …

What do I believe? The question is really ,’who do I believe?’.

John 14:1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God^[a]; believe also in me.

Jesus. Father God. The Holy Spirit.

These I believe The Word of God.

I also belive that most people believe “in” God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit; as if they are imaginary. I can’t remember when the ‘I believe’ became revelation to me, but knowing that I know that they are real, that the Word is alive became a revelation, but I did have that AHA moment and it was early on in my walk.

Then life got really hard and my mind tried to close up operations making those thing real questionable. Trauma does this. It began when my Don …

STOP!

It began when my Don went home to be with the LORD. I woke up 3 days later at 5 in the morning (I’ll never forget) after he left and spoke outloud to the Father. Like Abraham I reminded Him (Abraham often reminded God) that since my husband was now with Him that He was my husband, my source…my comfort (though the comfort, while there, is often even now, overwhelmed by the losses I’ve endured). It was a spontaneous conversation with God and after putting out my demands I came to realize that I could still feel Don’s love. I still felt loved. I just had to adjust to my ‘new normal’; goodness widows hate that term. Seriously all widows feel the same about that phrase.

So today I believe … I continue to simply believe as I’ve been instructed to believe –

IN FAITH I believe. Without this knowledge I would have lost the battle to retain my mind after losing Don and Shane. Sometime the battle tries to overwhelm me so I cling to THEM for dear life. THEY save me daily.

Each.And.Every.Day.

John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷ If you really know me, you will know^[b] my Father as well.  From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

About a year ago … the mark of having lost my son for one year , I heard this song. It truly says what I believe.

I believe He is.

Thanks so much for stopping by and coming with me on this journey of mine. God bless.

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I just let go …

I just let go …

Surrendered again this morning …

I feel raw – fully awake and enduring the pain. I’m a mess. I don’t care about anything right now – just going through the motions of life – work and all the trappings of this life – simply so no one actually sees the brokenness.

Nothing else to lose is how I feel. But even now I realize I thought that 6 months ago as I was rounding 18 months without my husband and my boy went home to the Lord by his own hand …

I surrender now. Each.Day.Anew.

Today seems to be killing me … 2 days to 2 years living this life without my marriage. 2 years without hearing his voice, seeing his eyes laugh at me. I can hardly believe … 2 years!

So I went to YouTube to my praise and worship playlist and did my office work for the day.

I find myself singing the words through the tears … those tears I know God collects for me.

STOP

You see it’s easy to sing and praise the Lord when life is all sun shine and rainbows.

Not so much those gloomy and dark days when the sun doesn’t break through the mist of rain drops and wind.

When life is just proving to me that there will always be days that the memories or the aloneness will bring my heart to a stop. When I realize I’m not breathing, let alone moving. Stuck.

It’s been a hard week. I swear my body knows how close the pain is before I begin to feel it’s aching on the edges of my soul. It gets harder as the day gets closer …

Grief knows the date …

Grief stretches into years. We don’t move on … we don’t let go … we simply move forward and learn to live with the pain.

God I need you now … trusting you on this path I didn’t plan.

I thank God that I am in a place in my faith that I can wake each morning and praise Him through the deep ache of loss. That I can sing through the tears, worshiping His faithfulness.

It is well with my soul. 

Pain.

Have you ever experienced emotional or spiritual pain so devastating that you simply didn’t believe you could survive it?

I completely understand.

I’ve read several articles and blogs that say  essentially (paraphrased and combined) that pain is a gift [from God] that motivates. This is not biblical and it frustrates me.

The Bible says that every GOOD and Perfect thing is from God. This implies that bad and flawed things are not from God.

James 1:17 “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

Pain is neither good, or is it perfect.

Pain is NOT from God, though he will use it to push us forward. It is not the pain that motivates us, it is our level of faith and trust in God that motivates us toward Him and forward in our lives on His strength.

There was another concept that I read … “The pain is in the healing”. I thought this to be unbiblical also, but when researched it became clear, expanding an understanding I already held.

God doesn’t cause the pain. However, He advises us not to be surprised by what comes against us in this world we currently reside in.

And pain definitely comes against us in this world, in many different forms. Pain can also mark us, for the good or the bad. I am not simply referring to our outward appearances but more importantly who we are at our very core. Who God created us to be.

It changes us, pain does …

there are

So He uses the pain to motivate us. However, again, it’s not to persevere or endure alone, or with out earthly companions. It is to motivate us to press into Him.

Many in the bible cried out to God for relief of pain, or to ask God why; David, Job, and even the tenacious Jeremiah. Pain was bore by Adam and Eve; in the fall. Sin brings in the pain. I recently ministered to my sister saying that sin allows painful things to occur. In our bodies, our minds and even our spirits.

Pain within our physical [body], mental or emotions [our mind/soul realm] is subject to the consequence of sin in and around our lives. That’s why Peter and Paul advise us not to feel that these things are strange. It’s a product of earthly living.

Our Spirit on the other hand is experiences pain when our body and mind take us away from God. Whether from the intensity, or the frustration, or simply weariness we forget and function within our own abilities and outside of God. And sometimes we weary because the pain continues even as we press into God.

But as Peter and Paul and God have encouraged, be courageous, do not weary, do not fear .. God is with you in the midst of your most terrible pain.

I am currently experiencing devastation within my emotions. I recently lost my beloveds; my husband and youngest son. They passed within 16 months of one another. There are day when I cry out in agony. Mornings when I hear myself refusing to be awake, loathing the thought of the pain the day would hold.

It is a constant ache that rises in unannounced waves. No rhyme or reason, just a thought or a scent, a movie scene or the scene of a happy couple or parent and child. I feel pain intermingled with jealousy when I attend family or church events. It’s terrible to feel all that knowing that bitterness and contempt are attempting to take over.

I trust in God. I have faith in God. I have the knowledge of where my beloveds are. The knowledge that God holds my every tear as He comforts me. I feel like I am fighting a never ending battle, but know in my heart that God is the one fighting and that I am simply enduring the pain and pressing into Him.

I’ve been mourning for just short of two years now. A compounded grief multiplied by both losses.

Yet …

I rise each day and move forward.

I minister to others.

I nourish entire self with God’s Word.

I sit under His annointing.

I persevere while resting beneath His wings.

I know your pain today. Grief is grief and mourning is mourning … no one’s is more than another because grief is bore out of love. We mourn only that which we cherish. Even bodily pain can be known by each of us; no one more than the other.

These are not competitions. These are our lives giving us decisions to make, sometimes in the blink of an eye, changing us deeply, marking us for eternity.

What is your pain today? How can I pray for you?

I encourage you to seek God. Cry out to Him. I can confidently promise you that even before that seeking, that cry, His full attention is on you. Desiring nothing more than to strengthen and heal you while you rest beneath His wings.

My prayers are with you today. The prayers help me to heal too. God bless. 

 

New Depths

Sleeping woman with a cat Wladyslaw Slewinski (ca. 1896)

 

February 6,16

The world, my life, has become a desolate and dry place. Unforgiving in it’s doling out of pain and deep distress. Though it has become easier to smile through the hard moments and push through this ever so dull, empty ache.

I have tried to find solace and relief in the things of this world: food – mindless entertainment – people, only to find that nothing satisfies – nothing heals the deep wound I have sustained. All of my futile attempts at solace have brought me closer to ill health and damaged relationships. I find I’ve made the mistake of seeking relief in the wrong places, the wrong things, the wrong persons.

This relief is only found IN God.

Seeking God is a concept that I’ve found, in my 14 year walk with God, cannot be taught. It cannot be imitated. How another reaches intimacy with God is not how I will reach that intimacy. God, while constant, made us “in” his likeness and each of us is unique in how we show God through us. We each walk our own route on His narrow path.

Seeking God, at first glance, seems a concept; one that seems just out of reach. I can feel it. I desire to be with God in a deeper relationship, it seems I’m just shy of understanding how to reach the next depth.

Unfortunately there is no guide, no instruction man can provide that teaches the how of seeking God.

It must be a desire; a crave. A immeasurable, almost desperate, desire – one set within by God. The Word says he gives us the desires of our hearts. In this place that I reside today, a place where I desire almost nothing in the numbness, I find my deepest desire is to know God. Deeply. Intimately.

I found in my bible studies that God desires us to desire him, he desires a relationship with each one of us; and he gives us the desires of our hearts, when we seek him and his righteousness. It’s cyclical … He has put our desires and dreams within us and our ultimate desire (realized or not) is relationship with God. And round we go. There it is – as simple and as complex as that.

He has set a limitless desire within me and I have realized it. He desires that I desire him, and as I desire him I seek him more.

{his patience with us is unlimited, he’s waited 51 years for me to realize my true desire}

This is not that school girl’s, or lonely lady’s, running after the heart of a mere man. A fickle soul who may tease and stray. This is the pursuit of a heart that has longed for my desire for him since before the foundation of the world that is now, finally, dry and unforgiving under my feet. I’ve come to the place in my life where I only want a deeper relationship with God. I don’t want an earthly relationship after losing my heart to heaven. Nothing that basic will sustain this heart. Nothing so human will help me continue forward in my life.

Tonight I seek God with great passion. I seek to know him with an intense intimacy so as to settle myself quietly within his heart. I what to know the Who that resides in the depths of me. I want to see and be present in his glory. I want this world to become a dreamscape that I frequent while I reside in the kingdom of God. I want to know his mysteries. I want to know him more intimately as I knew my husband.

I want to walk with him daily, as I did my love. I have nothing left for this world, except to be God’s instrument, my heart is in eternity. I long no more for things, they are not filling me with life or health. I long for heavenly mysteries.

Beautiful Dreamer – Lauren Rudolf Art

I’m seeking God knowing that I will find myself within him. Him within me. Like I said it’s cyclical. Only then will I be capable of fulfilling his will and desires for me here on this earth.

I want so much to be hidden within God knowing that this will fulfill my every desire. Quenching that thirsty need that nags at my splintered heart, making it whole once more.

I want desperately to feel God’s presence continually. I want it to become that presence to become my presence. I want to feel his tender embrace and know that I am being embraced. I purpose to be present in those moments, knowing it’s God. I purpose for those moments to become constants.

I know, today, that I am cared for in a much deeper capacity than any human heart can offer. And I can be content there.

I am actively seeking God – to know Him – to glorify Him – to love Him – to be one with Him.

Thanks for reading. Be Blessed.

Deep Quiet

It’s on mornings like this, when the house is quiet and I am alone with my thoughts, that a soft sadness envelopes me.

Don’t feel sorry for me, I am not looking for attention; just sharing a part of my life with you, as we bloggers do. Don’t be burdened by the thought that you must say something kind and comforting in the comments, you don’t. There is no worldly comfort for this and I imagine there shouldn’t be. This type of pain is God’s territory.

And this process is about trusting God and the spiritual changes that come with such a significant change in one’s life.

Moving forward in one’s life after such a loss is difficult, always. Not like before when change was uncomfortable, maybe even painful and resisted; no nothing like the ease of that.

The perspective has changed.

In the quiet I experience the changes in my life both physically, tangibly and inwardly. The full human affect. They become more real, more apart of me, as I move forward to who I am without him.

He was such an integrated part of who I was, and who I am, still. Though even after only eight and a half months that seems to be fading into the background. And while that is a good sign that I am moving right along and well, there is an acute sadness that wants to be guilt.

We, no one, is who we were yesterday.With each passing moment, each morning sunrise, we are someone completely new. Our core self, our spirit, remains intact and unchanged. But the part of us made up of our morals and values – those environmental settings built into us by our parents and cultures and religions; those are changeable, those are the things that move and adjust along with us on this plane of life. The things that change about us, if we allow it.

Our minds change. Our perspectives change.

After the loss of my other half I realize that some of those environmental and family cultural things have changed. Don’t misunderstand me here, those who know me know, that I am vastly different minded than the majority of my family; and I say majority even when I have found no one amongst my siblings, cousins or extended family who is of the same mind as I am. I don’t cling to those things that families clings to; as if I would lose who I am if I didn’t cling to the fact that I am just like everyone else in my family.

Reminding me that I will not lose myself with the loss of my husband.

I trust God and with that trust comes an ever flowing change of who I am to who I am in Christ.

Of late I don’t resist change. I’ve come to know, in this time of me without him, that the old adage is absolute truth: Change is inevitable.

Not only that, but … Control. We literally have no control over this thing called our lives. Again, this is God’s territory.

If change is inevitable. If I am not who I was with him, if I am not who I was yesterday, but did nothing purposely to change me … do you see where I am going?

And so the sadness comes in. I guess to a certain extent I am different from some widows. I don’t feel guilty that I am moving forward because I don’t see that I have a choice. I am moving forward, because back is impossible. And I don’t think I realized it as impossible before I lost him.

Before I lost that vital part of who I was for the last 26 years.

A lifetime.

Time for our children to grow into adults. Time for us to be finally considering a life for just the two of us …

Now it’s just a life for me … and that’s really sad. And it’s really okay.

… All at the same time.

It’s all so very much to take in, in one sitting of quiet. Yet, it is so very simple.

So in the quiet of this morning … with my warm cup of lemon and water, I look at the day and wonder.

Who will I be today? And I feel sad that it’s just me. And I miss him. And I get up, with thoughts of him helping my heart to beat and forge into this day.

Thanks for reading. God bless.

 

I wonder … and endure …

I’ve been struggling lately, for obvious reasons. Yet not so obvious to myself … I guess that doesn’t make sense. Anyway …

I’ve been wondering just how people endure this thing called grief. The world says there are five stages of grief …

denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Well I didn’t spend any time in denial … how does one, in all sanity, deny that death has taken their heart from them. I wake each morning to an empty bed. At 5:30 each evening, as his pup Habby sits at the window, no barking of joy marks his return. And the worst … I haven’t heard his voice or that laugh of his that I so loved in in almost a month (more really).

The bible says, in Romans 1 verses 1-5 that we have …

Peace and Hope

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,  through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.  Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;  perseverance, character; and character, hope.  And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

I guess this numbness and realization that this is my new life can be defined as a kind of peace. Like I said denial was never a place I truly visited.

We walked in faith. We prayed God’s perfect will and for healing. But in the end Don had an appointment to go home to be with the Lord. So denial and bargaining are (were always) off the table. So what is left?

Anger, Depression and Acceptance.

Well right now I am angry and depression sneaks up from time to time; but depression is just anger turned inward … so they are the same thing. And acceptance, I’ve excepted that my Love has gone home. So if I’ve logically come to terms with all these so called stages of grief I wonder how much longer the pain will remain.

When I am not in the throws of this anger; this slow burning dislike of life and breathing I feel, I know I am in faith.

I wonder … does anger affect faith? Does it change it?

I believe, no, I know that anger changes a person if left unchecked. So I don’t indulge for too long. I pray.

I look around my, our home and I wonder how, just how am I able to go on. I wonder if I’ll ever be happy again, because I am truly unhappy right now.

Is it really anger, I wonder, or just deep, deep unhappiness?

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

In my faith I don’t have the luxury of denial or bargaining. In my faith I must control this anger and depression; the bible tells me I have control over my emotions according to the Word and Will of God.

But this unhappiness is so vitally deep and when I try to get to it to reign it in it goes deeper.

I guess I’m just wondering, often these days, how long it will take to accept my new life and calling in Christ. I thought I knew my roll and God has suddenly changed that … so I wonder and endure …

Thanks for reading. God bless.