My Prayer

" While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death. And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God."
 Hebrews 5:7NLT

Father,
I want to start out by apologizing. I want to humbly ask your forgiveness for every sinful thing I have done/said/thought based on this immense pain in my life. Even if the sin was unintentional or unknown at any time, I still ask your forgiveness. There is never any excuse for unrepentant sinning. I ask that you remove the consuming anger  I have towards those who continue to hurt me and  drag my reputation through the mud. Please restore me from having a heart of stone towards some to a heart of flesh towards all. I realize that this means I will continue to feel the sting of rejection and others' pain at times as they lash out at me in their own suffering. Allow my life to be an example,once again, of your never ending love and patience towards an undeserving world.  Please cleanse my heart and mind and renew a right spirit within me.

Jesus I ask that you please cover my children and all who sleep under my roof at any given point with your protecting hand. Cover them with your wing, as a mother bird shelters her fledglings from the storm. Please let my house, no matter where it may be, be a home and feel as such to all who enter it.

God, I know you have seen my suffering.I never questioned where you were in the past- you were always there with me, just as you are with me now and are already with me in the future. Please take away these unbearable and incessant feelings of fear( of what the future holds and what I cannot control), loneliness, depression, heartache,shock and brokeness. God, please restore my peaceful sleep again. Reverse this horrible insomnia that is eating away at my health and whatever shred of peace I am blessed with in my nightly state of unconsciousness. Grant me strength in my body again and protect me from myself. From eating unhealthily, from thoughts of committing crimes of irreversible damage to the temple you have designated to be my body for the time being.

Jesus I'm suffering so much right now. My soul feels like it is dying everyday. I have never felt the weight of my own tears so strongly as they thud rapidly against my hands and run down to the desk into a cooled puddle. It actually startles me. They flow so freely and from such a sense of agony from somewhere within me, it's like what I'm going through and what I know to be the causes of this pain aren't even scratching the surface; it's as if my tears come from a secret reservoir of despair that even I don't know existed. Then again, maybe they just come from almost 2 decades of trying to be strong and carry on in my own strength. Maybe my soul is just plain...weary.

Jesus, I don't know what has happened to the life that I thought was safe and normal. You do. I don't know how I have gotten here to this point.You do. I don't know where I'll be in the future, who, if any, will be standing by my side supporting and loving me.You do.Please let this be enough for me- to know that You do, and You are already there. Let me never be swayed, or give up living this Christian Life.It is SO hard. I am judged not just by the unsaved, but by those who claim to be Yours- and these judgments cut so much further in me....

I praise you for being God. Against this awkward feeling of trying to give thanks when I can't see a thing to be grateful or happy for, I praise you. I praise you for having my life planned out and and I ask you to open my eyes to see and recognize the angels and guides you send into my life that are there to nudge me in the correct narrow direction.Please be with me in all my decisions,actions and words.Guide me as I try to guide my children. Keep us all safe from harm and please don't let my past mistakes and sins affect,scar or sway my babies from the Way Everlasting.
In Jesus' Name.

Question of the Week

What songs do you listen to to get through a rough day?

Who am I?

One of the things I hate most about this new life is that I feel like I've lost my identity.

It's like, my whole life, I have been in training to be a wife and a mother- and not just a wife and mother- but a good one. The Proverbs 31 woman. It's been a long hard journey. There were days that I didn't feel like doing chores,like most teenagers, and learning new "womanly" skills sometimes seemed so demeaning.  had dreams of being a journalist, travelling the world in pursuit of uncovering truth, or a teacher, molding the minds of future generations. Why on earth would I care how to properly fold a fitted sheet or make a succulent roast chicken?

But then as time went on, what started out as a degrading bothersome chore, quickly changed into a ministry. I didn't just want to learn how to do these things, but I wanted to be the best at them. I wanted to marry a wonderful man one day and have him be the envy of all his friends and coworkers. Where other men were lamenting their wives' entitled ways of thinking when it came to frivolous spending, mine would be able to not just leave me a debit card and checkbook, but trust me enough to put me charge of the finances and bill paying. When he would come home and tell these heart breaking tales of run around wives who slept with more men in town then the number of hours their husbands worked, mine always knew exactly where I was and what I was doing. I was keeping home, teaching and rearing children and making sure to have a hot home cooked meal prepared and waiting for him,still hot but not burned, for whenever he returned for dinner. There would never be anything he would want for. I would put aside my exhaustion to fulfil his intimate needs, serve him and his offspring their meal portions first and make sure theirs were the largest before my own. Clothes were dutifully washed in a homemade soap, kitchen sparkling( not always, but I tried) and that was who I was.



I was Donna Reed.

Now I feel like a nobody. Yes, I still get up and carry on. The house will always need to be kept clean and as much in order as a house can be with 4 children and 3 dogs. Meals are still hot and home cooked and clothes still washed in that homemade laundry soap. But there is a void.

There is a void in me.
 
Who am I?

Am I strong for not putting up with less than I deserved?Am I setting a good example for my daughters, to never feel like you must change who you are and what you believe in for acceptance and love? Have I been reduced to being what people have whispered and accused me of being because they think they know everything about me, but really have no idea???

I know who my mother always taught me to be. I am a King's daughter- so that makes me royalty. I am, she would always say,  the head and not the tail. I am the Christian foundation for my children and the voice for them when no one seems to want to listen to their little cries of concern. 

But there are so many days when it just doesn't even seem fair or real or possible. I don't feel beautiful and strong or royal or the head. I feel lost and scared and defeated and like I've let everyone around me down somehow. I feel like a failure.

It's all I can do to barely remember the verses I grew up on. They seem so far away and faded now. I can remember bits and pieces, but references escape me. I try to hold onto what I know to be true, even when it feels like it doesn't apply to me anymore. He will never leave me, nor forsake me. That I am in the palm of His hand, and no one can snatch me out of it. I looked my name up years ago and it means bitter sorrow. LOVELY. I feel as though I've been set up to fulfil that name's meaning, whether I want to or not. I read a few months ago Ruth 1:20, where after being widowed and left childless, Naomi went back to the land of her people with her daughter-in-law Ruth and the people asked if this was really Naomi. I can only guess what the grief of her circumstances and years from home had done to her facially.

  20 “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. 21 I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”

Mara is a form of the name Maria. Naomi's grief and environment had worn who she had been away. Look it up: her name means "Beautiful, pleasant, delightful". Life had turned her from beautiful to bitter.
This is what I'm trying to avoid but it is so hard. Beauty just seems so far away. The Light of the Truth of who I am and was meant to be seems so faded. It feels like I'm wandering around alone in the dark chasing this light, and I just can never get close enough to it. So until I can believe I am somebody, let alone somebody that will find happiness again, I choose to hold blindly to the knowledge that I am God's Child, still.

Embracing the Rage

I think one of the biggest misconceptions we as women ( and those sainted men out there) make when going through the decision that what we put up with is not what the Father intended for His daughters is feeling like we owe the world an explanation and the immensity of the guilt we heap on ourselves for "failing" or "being weak". I also think we do ourselves a horrible injustice when we don't admit to and embrace the amount of rage we feel inside. WE feel like we have to go on bravely, all the time- 24/7 with a stiff upper lip...best foot forward attitude. I got a secret for you.

IT'S OK TO EMBRACE THE RAGE.

 
I've spent my whole life being agreeable, non-confrontational and making light of my feelings,worries and fears. In doing what I thought was forgiving the incessant cycle of lies with the "there,there..I forgive you's" and inevitable letdowns, I did exactly what I swore I never would do: I stopped looking out for me. I have tried to dedicate my life to being the most open-minded,honest, loving,sensitive, caring person you could meet; I've heard countless times that so-and-so has never met anyone like me, that I'm an angel...that I'm different. Newsflash: I'm human on top of all that. I've been hurt and scarred, and now- I'm enraged.

I'm enraged that I was bold faced lied to from Day 1.
I'm enraged that starting a family was such a fight. I'm enraged that I saved and wasted my Innocence on one who never seemed to find the time to tell me that there were already hundreds- if not thousands- of unrealistic fantasy girls occupying my space there.

  I'm enraged- Oh GOD! am I full of hurt and pain and anger!! I am infuriated with myself for feeling that my unpaid- barely recognized- 24 hour work schedule as a housewife, mother,maid,accountant,chef,taxi driver, scheduler, judge, referee, teacher, and woman of God could not hold a candle to the 12hr PAID work schedule that protected our things in my own eyes. To think that I apologized for not being a size 2 nymphomaniac with a flat belly that could be bejeweled with one of those stupid dangly navel thingies---OH! I could just slap myself.
And then, to top it all off...when the nearly 5 year long secret...the secret that I most feared but never expected came out,do you know what I did?
It was February 8,2009. It was 12:08am. I was 500 miles and 5 years away from having the privilege of hunting down that vile home-wrecking,life altering serpent. With all the shock and despair and pain and betrayal coursing through my 5½ months pregnant body, I said," I forgive you because if I don't- God won't forgive me."
I thought I was being pretty admirable and that I would be blessed by God. Some days, a lot of days, I wonder. Nights like tonight. I look back and all I see is that I tried. I tried to be what was desired. I tried to be the perfect everything- quite frankly, that's all I've ever tried to be. As perfect as possible. I'm not.

I rage. I cry. I sin. I give up, then give up giving up in order to try again the next day. But it all fell apart. Nights like tonight I wonder why God has allowed me to see what life would have been like had I married a man that could admit to his faults, but still love me unconditionally; who in genuinely seeking the grace and favor of his Father in Heaven daily would fight and conquer the same struggles with routine success. And for what? A tease? A taste at what actually having the answers to my prayers feels like? Why have the desires of my heart been dangled in front of me and ripped away over and over again? Why aren't I allowed to be happy?

I am raging, with every pound of these poor undeserving keys, I release the pent up hurt and fear and disappointments... the disappointments in my life, (forgive me Father) in God, but mostly in myself. I have nothing to blame God for and I know that. He allows the "sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."(Matthew 5:45) I probably have been blessed more times when I ought not have been. But I'm flesh as well as soul and I am hurting so badly right now. I'm so tired of being told I'm strong when it feels like every day I'm just minutes away from losing it. I'm tired of having so many open ended options to so many of the most frightening problems in my life- yet there are absolutely no solutions at all in sight.I'm tired of being told what I need to do and where I need to go, but no one can help me achieve these things, not in ways that remove the insecurity and fears of failure. I can't afford to fail. Not with my babies counting on me.
 
I need something to give me HOPE. Finding just that small something to give me a reason to keep hoping, a reason to keep trying....something that says "even though its not right now, your joy,your happiness....your storms end.... it will happen someday". I need to know that my life's verse is Jeremiah 29:11 and that it won't always be Psalms 119:25.

Now it is nearly 3am and I'm exhausted. I've gotten some of the poison out of my heart and at least feel like I can collapse in bed and have some kind of sleep, if not actual rest. I was able to embrace the rage, without sinning. I'd like to say I didn't let the sun go down while I was angry, since at sunset I was technically at least appearing ok. The rage didn't come forth until well after midnight...so I'm letting the moon set on my wrath. I know. That's weak, but did you really expect me to crack jokes at 3am after all that?

I probably should have warned you that my life is an open book and I am very VERY real. You should go read my blog The Heart of Ruth to see what I'm like when I'm on my spiritual game ( so to speak) and not so despairing. It goes back quite a bit- and if you get some restriction window that pops up from social iq, just X out of it. I don't know why it keeps popping up, but that should be a temporary fix. With that, I'm off to try and fall asleep without crying, and pray God gives me a word for someone soon. Since tonight was about allowing yourself to be angry, I'm hoping to get the right words together to allow yourself to smile as well.

Good night.

Question of the Week

Aside from a regular 8 or 12 hour shift job, what are some of the ways you have tried to make some extra earnings?

First Things First

Some of you may know me from my other blogs: 8 years of Growth and The Heart of Ruth. One was created from the loneliness and selfishness of being a new mother, the other as a ministry to others to combat the latter's selfishness. This...this one however is a journey of new proportions.
I have lived through a lot in my fast passing 31 years...someday I hope to write a book on my life. I still want to encourage others, entertain where I can, and find camaraderie in a world of seemingly dead ends and hopelessness. Just as I sit here praying to God that I'm not making a fool of myself and wasting my precious sleep time, I know that there have GOT to be others out there who, despite different circumstances and situations,we all go through the same gamut of emotions and wonderings about what the heck our lives are all about....I refuse to believe I'm the first! So I hope you will spread the word, come back here often and visit me and watch as this journey develops. I'm as curious as you to see where my life leads, and what the point of my being here is.