I need more time!

Ok, so I’ve been having this weird fear lately.  Probably most of this year actually.  Pretty much since Tim confessed his affair.  I’ve had it in varying degrees and at different times, but it’s kinda always there nagging me.  Sometimes it actually causes me some anxiety.

And I don’t like it at all!

I’m so afraid that one of us is going to die.  Me, Tim, Caleb.  Or we will get cancer or something (this is a big one!).  Or Tim’s plane will go down (he’s been traveling for a job a bit lately).  Or I will get in a car accident.

I feel like life has been so hard, so many trials, and then it’s all going to end.  And this is all I get.

With all that has gone on this year, I REALLY don’t want life to end for any of us right now.

Not that ANYONE, or I, would EVER be ready to lose someone I love or want any of us to get sick.  And the thought of losing Caleb or him getting sick….I can’t even go there!

But I just have this horrible anxiety that now that we are trying to get life on track, now that we are doing SO much work…NOW is when it will all end.

And I want more time.  I’m not ready yet.

We are at the START of a long road of healing.  Of transformation.  Of renewing.  Of building and rebuilding.

I want to see all this work pay off!

I want to be married for 50 or 60 years (or 70??) and look back and see how far God taken us.

I want to look back on a family touched by God and therefore taken from our path of destruction and MAKE IT and THRIVE!

I want to look back on how we fought and clawed our way to defeat what could have destroyed us.

I want to raise a child (or children) and see what they turn out to be.  To see what God does with their lives.

I need more time!  I’m not ready to lose any one of use yet!

Sometimes this fear grips me so hard.  My dad was murdered when I was 13 and ever since then I have known life can be gone in an instant.  You may never see it coming.

I’m having a hard time just resting in knowing that God has us and will take care of us.

I don’t want to worry about this.  I have enough to deal with each day, I don’t need THIS added!  😉

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand, down we go!

This whole process has been a roller coaster.  For a little while there it was leveling out a bit.  I thought I had finally gotten past the high highs and low lows.

I was wrong.

Today is a bad day.  This rehab thing seemed to take a turn for the worse today.

We moved our desk and “office” stuff (files, etc) to the basement before Caleb was born so he could have a bedroom (aren’t we nice?!?!  ;).  That is bad for me.  I am not an organized person.  And so, with having all of that downstairs, I usually take papers that need to be filed, etc. and just throw them down there on the desk.  That mound gets WILDLY out of control!  Take whatever image you have in your head and multiply it by three and you may be accurate!  So, I got tired of it today as I was looking for an important piece of paper and decided to clean it up.

I have been dreading this task because of the mess, but also because I knew there was a lot of Veritas stuff buried in the pile.  I knew at some point I would have to dig that stuff up, look at it, and find a place for it.  I can’t part with it.  None of it.

There was a lot of paperwork in there from something that was done to us that is so painful, and requires some intense, supernatural forgiveness on my part.  And I have not been able to do that completely yet.  Not even close.  There just hasn’t been time to deal with all of that with only a couple weeks between that and Tim’s confession.  So, I had to look at all of that again.  Those feelings of pain and anger bubbled up in a fierce way.

There were a whole pile of contact cards from people’s first visits to Veritas.  A survey we did to get a pulse of what would best serve the people of Veritas, their friends and family and our community.  There were the commitments that people made for the fast we did at the beginning of 2010.  There fast that led to Tim’s confession of an affair.

The memories are just so painful.  And I am so angry today.

I don’t want to give grace today.  I don’t want to give grace to Tim for what he’s done.  I am angry at him for hurting me so intensely.  I am angry that his stupid choices led to closing a church.  I am angry that this is my life now.  I’m angry that I go to food when I am upset and stressed so I have gained even more weight through this whole thing.

I am hurting.  I know I need to forgive, but trying to think of offering that forgiveness hurts so bad.  What has been done, the events that have transpired, they just hurt so bad, so deep.

Have I lost all that ground I have worked SO hard to gain?  Is all that work lost?  Have I lost all that progress?

Psalm 23

1 The Lord is my shepherd;

I have all that I need.

2 He lets me rest in green meadows;

he leads me beside peaceful streams.

3 He renews my strength.

He guides me along right paths,

bringing honor to his name.

4 Even when I walk

through the darkest valley,

I will not be afraid,

for you are close beside me.

Your rod and your staff

protect and comfort me.

These verses came to my mind.  I know this is true.  I know this is God’s Word.  But it’s stuck in my head today, I’m not feeling it in my heart.

I feel like I am in a dark valley again.  I don’t want to be here.  I hope I will come out of it soon.  I know I’ve been here before, and I haven’t stayed here forever.  It just feels like it’s forever.  But feelings are not always reliable.

They sure are powerful though!

I did it

I am a visual person.  I work in the visual arts, I think in imagery.  A few weeks ago I was telling my counselor how difficult and crippling it is for me to have these images of Tim and her in my mind.  I never saw them together, but I imagine them together.  These images just pop into my head, often without any warning.  They can be debilitating they are so painful.

As we were talking about this my counselor reminded me that Jesus says we are to pray for our enemies.  I thought she was referring to Tim, to be perfectly honest.  But she wasn’t.

She was saying I should pray for “her”.  The woman Tim had the affair with.

I felt punched in the gut and enlightened at the same time.

I felt punched in the gut because that just sounds impossible.  I don’t hate her.  I don’t blame her.  These were TIM’S decisions.  He used her, and that was wrong of him.  BUT, that doesn’t mean I want to pray for her!

But I also felt enlightened because I saw that if I could pray for her, if I could try to see her as God sees her, then that takes the power away from Satan!  He can’t trow these images into my head and use them to destroy me if I am praying for her.  If I pray for her, then I see her as human.  I see her as the broken person who needs healing that only God can give.  I see her as someone who Jesus died for, JUST like He did for me.  And that takes power away from satan!  And I want to do that!

I did that today.  I have been wrestling with this idea for weeks.  I argued with God about it.  I’ve been doing a lot of arguing with God lately

This song was playing while I was arguing with God about this:

Eastern Hymn

by David Crowder Band on the album “Church Music”

Bring us love, You who are love

Bring us peace, You who are peace

We need love, O divine love

We need your peace, Your merciful peace

How gracefully

You come along

How gracefully

You come

Glory, glory, glory

God is near to each one of us

Holy, holy, holy

God is near to each one of us

O grant us reprieve from the fighting

So we just rest our head on the shoulder of the One

In His arms we’re forever grateful for the contact

O so blessed for a moment’s rest

Weeping knowing we have been touched

Weeping knowing we have been touched

O we have been touched

I couldn’t fight it anymore.  Those lyrics really spoke to me where I was at.

I was thinking about this Easter week.  I was thinking about losing Veritas.  I was thinking about Jesus hanging on that cross and telling His Father, “Father, forgive them.  They don’t know what they’re doing.”  If Jesus, in the midst of his horrendous, unspeakable pain and torture could look on the people who were killing His human body with compassion and forgiveness, then I need to also.

A main reason for opening Veritas in the first place was to be able to share God and His message of forgiveness and hope with people who don’t know Him.  As far as I know “she” does not have a relationship with God.  And, honestly, that makes my heart sad.  She needs God, we all do.  She has made some bad choices in her life.  We all have.  God is reaching out to her.  Jesus died to have a relationship with her.  That’s what I prayed for her today.

It was hard.  I cried a lot.  It was physically demanding to pray for her.  It was hard to get those words out of my mouth.  But I did it.

So many things to write…

…but its FAR too late.

And I am very tired.

The work isn’t done yet, but I MUST sleep.

Hopefully I will get to those thoughts another time…SOON!

There is a reason…right?!?

I haven’t written much lately. I’m kinda in a place where SO much is going on in my life and in my head, but I don’t know what to share. So, I’ve opted to not share anything. We’ll see if that was the right way to go.

So, at the moment EVERYTHING in my life is being thrown on the table. I have NO idea what the future holds and am terrified by that. But I have been working hard to spend more time praying about it. And praying more (in my opinion and research) correctly. This has been an interesting exercise.

So, I just got off the phone with my mom and my step-father went to the ER at work today. He fell at work on the dock a couple days ago and since has had a hard time breathing at night without pain. So, today at work it was so bad he had to take himself to the ER. We were thinking maybe he bruised or, worse yet, fractured a rib.

Well, it’s worse. They found a blood clot in his lung. I don’t know much about blood clots, but in my limited knowledge it seems like this is only SLIGHTLY less serious than a blood clot in the brain. The ER told him that if he hadn’t come in tonight he could have died.

I am blown away. This is really not what our family needs right now. And, that is such a stupid sentence…N O family would ever need or want this! There is just so much going on.

But, as I’m praying, God is challenging me to pray not just for healing, but for GOD’S will. I am reminded of Job. When he was going through his “hell” God was not doing all this TO him, he was allowing it because there was a higher purpose. There was a bigger reason. It was a teaching time. It was a time to show up Satan.

And God was not absent. God knew what was going on. He cared. He still loved Job.

I need to remember that. God is not doing all this TO me. He is with me. I need to stay focused on His promises. I need to stay focused on wanting to do my part to bring His Kingdom to this earth.

This may sound like a cop out. I think that sometimes when I hear others say that. But for me, in this phase of my life, it’s deep. It’s challenging. It’s changing the way I pray. I am trying to stay focused on the right things, because it is W A Y too easy to let the worries of this world and thoughts that are not true and not focused where they should be consume me. And drown me.