So I had this thought...

You know, when you're in the midst of an argument, the last thing you feel like doing is being 'godly', right? I mean, it's what we're suppose to do, but ideally, if we were able to do that, we wouldn't be in the deep weeds we're currently in; let's be realistic here. I want to be able to communicate amicably with my husband, I want to have every minute of our day blistful, but it's not always like that. None of us would be here if it were, so I don't feel so bad knowing I'm not alone in my sin.
However, usually, after we've said all kinds of mean things to each other, we KNOW in our hearts that we were part of the problem, sometimes more so than the solution (if we're completely honest with ourselves anyway and God knows what's in our hearts even when we don't want to admit it). So I had this thought... What if after we've regained some of our senses and have wrestled with the guilt, we searched a concordance and found all the words we thought we were displaying during that time? For instance, I may have been selfish, stubborn, arrogant, or whatever, and we searched the gospel for relating passages and prayed about them in our confession to God? I'm going to try it next time. I hope someone out there tries it with me and shares how it made them feel (once somebody realizes I'm here ;-) ).
How's this for honesty? He was sleeping when I snuck my laptop in here and started clacking away at midnight 30 and when he rolled over to see what I was doing, I was rude... what kind of example am I to the none of you? lol.. oh geez.. I've got so much to learn! I will log off and apologize to him, how's that?
Have a good night, I just wanted to jot this down before the thought turned into dust with so many of the other things going on in my head when I don't document them.
May God give you dreams of beautifulness my blessed friends.

I'm Back!

You know, things happen so fast in my life that I have sincere intentions to post again and before I know it, I've got a week, a couple of weeks and then a month's worth of posts in my head that I think I can remember once I get here but that never happens. The truth is, once I have something I'd like to share, I should just share it! Otherwise, it never gets done. Isn't that the way it is with all of us?
Oh well, here I am and it took me all of 10 minutes to figure out how to post something new. What kind of techie nerd am I? I'm not really, but it makes me sound smart, so I'll adopt it for another 30 seconds and then snap myself back into reality... 4, 3, 2, 1... OK! I'm back.
Why am I here again? Old age is catching up with me, but aside from all the other things taking place, one thing has been repeatedly popping back in the forefront of my life and that's the possibility of a marriage ministry. I hesitate because I know I'm the LAST person who should be preaching about how to keep a man happy, since I'm on my second marriage that has brushed the realities of the edge of divorce on more than one occasion.
Who wants to listen to somebody whose marriage is perfect and who wants to listen to somebody whose marriage is crumbling? The fact is, after several years of attempting counseling with my husband, I've come to the realization that we suck when it comes to trying to fix each other! Every time we go to counseling, one of us (my new nickname 'one of us') ends up doing all the work and the other one (his new nickname 'the other one') seems like he's getting a free ride to being excused for being such a poopie head because he feels that just because he shows up, it's proof that he's 'working on it'. What a bunch of poppy cock! Anyway.... (mega eyeroll here) ...
So what now? Here's where I begin to weird people out, but please stick with me for just a few minutes to explain my story. I've learned through the years that life hurts, surviving is mandatory and failing is not an option. When you begin to lose control in the midst of your hurt, you begin to feel like a failure and you just want to hide from the world so your survival instincts turn on and you become angry, bitter, sad, depressed, mean, hurtful toward others, judgmental and looking in the mirror makes you cry because not even you like you anymore.
I believe God has a way of allowing the enemy (satan) to hurt us beyond our ability to recover so that we are forced to turn to Him (God) for help out of desperation. We have hit a low so low that there is no other place to go except Up! Some people get angry with God, they blame Him, they hate Him and they allow their emotions to turn their belief in Him to disbelief.
I've always believed there was a God, but didn't know what that meant for so many years. I had more questions than answers and I even rationalized so many of the ugly things I had done for so long just so I wouldn't be accountable for facing my own sins. Until I found the Lord, all my problems were because of what other people in my life had done and not because of me at all. Talk about presumptuous and self-reliant huh? I searched for ways to fill my voids and none of them were productive, healthy or even safe.
How I came to the Lord is really such a long story that I will save you the gory details for now, but the point of all that is, I feel your pain! I really do. I know that people hurt us and we want things to be fair. We want the other person to hurt as much as they've hurt us and we want to be recognized for the efforts we put into something even if we're not comfortable with accepting compliments, we still want Somebody, Somewhere to just see us for once in our lives. Living the life of an invisible entity that helps God keep the world turning in the right direction is all we want credit for once in awhile, right? I mean, if it weren't for people like us, God's job would be much harder, geez, when will people see that anyway?
Yes, I hear you dear sisters, believe me.... I hear you! But back to reality once again. God is our creator; he does not NEED us to do His job. He delights in our commitment to be committed to Him by loving Him, our Savior and our fellow brethren; that's it! It's not your job to take on the world, not even take on your husband's world and what he forgets to do and our children will be better, more well-rounded people if we allow them to fail once in awhile. We are the people we are because we have experienced hurt in our lives. If we allow our children to be sheltered from reality forever, they will never learn how to overcome obstacles. We have to realize that by 'saving' the world, we're hurting those who would benefit most from experiencing the world.
What does all this have to do with a marriage ministry then, right? I told you I'm full of stuff I've been wanting to say ;-). Knowing all of this about me, I hope you realize that I wouldn't take you on a journey that I haven't traveled myself. I won't try to pretend that my marriage is all fixed, that I know more than you, or that I have all the answers. What I can promise you is that I know what it's like to hurt, to cry yourself to sleep, to wonder why you married this person, to doubt God, to ask God why he's putting me through this, to scream at God, to fall asleep in the middle of a deep, heartfelt prayer asking for something better, to wake up refreshed knowing I slept in God's arms all night and that He comforted me to sleep on more than one night. God knows your heart, sister. He loves you more than any man could ever love you, He wants you to spend eternity with Him and most of all, He has not made a mistake in pairing you with the person you vowed to spend your life with. God never promised things would be easy, but He did promise to never leave you, to never betray you, to never expect you to fix things without His guidance or help and He most certainly has a way of showing Himself in the most peculiar of situations and circumstances when you least expect Him to.
What can I do for you? I'm not sure yet to be completely honest. I don't know that there's anything I can do for you that God isn't already planning to have you do yourself. What I hope to be able to do for us, as sisters in Christ and in crisis, is to form a safe, support system amongst ourselves where we can be honest with each other, where we can laugh, cry and vent together and possibly begin to heal with each other.
Until we meet again,
CJ