Isolation

I have been hesitant to post anymore dark dreary posts, just because I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do. I’m supposed to be salt and light. All I am is sad and lonely tonight. Which is stupid. I spent all day with a friend, and we had five dogs in the house. Yesterday I went to the movies with a great friend and talked on the phone with three people. Saturday I had wonderful quality time with my husband. I had several “friend” encounters last week too.

But I feel different from everybody else. Even my friends. I attended two (!) meetings today, Alanon and ACOA and both of them, went late, left early, said nothing. I’m supposed to be in my “safe place” there and I just shut down. I don’t really even feel like writing now, I’m just doing it because I feel I must.

Right now is a season of sacrifice for my husband and I. He is working like crazy and going to school. I leave the house when he’s gone, I get home and he’s gone. I came home at 1:30 after my workout and meeting and I saw the three dirty pans that he left on the stove, the butter and sriracha he left on the counter and I wanted to cry because I had missed him. The man refuses to use a damn microwave. I make full meals when he’s gone, and put them in pyrex dishes so he can just heat it up when he has the time. He to reheat every component in a different pan, using different utensils. Keeping up with the dishes is a full time job but I don’t care, because it’s him. I love his particularity. He once put a single serving of frozen microwave lasagna in the oven for an hour and insisted it was worth it.

I don’t really feel like being with anybody but him, he’s the only one who really knows me. I force myself anyway because I know I need to. It’s all very codependent. When he is there I feel so full and complete and loved and perfected. When he is gone, the darkness closes me in. I know that God is really trying to get me to count on him and these are just terrible little growing pains. That’s why I force myself. Because I have to give God my effort. My trying and eventually, it will be true.

You see, my husband won’t always be there for me. I know he will be there as much as he possibly can but God is showing me that though he may not be there, God will provide me with friends, and life and fulfillment all ripe for the picking if I am willing to accept it.

I realized Saturday that the single most important thing after breathing in and out is giving my minutes, my hours, my days to the Lord and committed to doing so. I got busy today and I forgot. I pulled into the driveway at 8:15pm, and tried not to get my hopes up that my husband would be home yet because I know not to expect him till 11:30. But I did anyway, then I sat in the car not wanting to go into the big empty house, and trying to figure out why I feel so desperately lonesome when I finally remembered. And I gave my God the pitiful leftovers of my day hoping he could piece something together that made sense in the short time left.

Hey Jude is playing right now on my Pandora, and it was the part where he’s screaming over and over again, better, Better, BETTER, BETTER!!!!!! It made me smile. It was like his promise to me, God’s promise to me. Things will get better, I will get better, Better, BETTER BETTER!

God in a Box

Did you ever watch I Dream of Jeannie? She was this very powerful little gal who lived in a bottle and was finally found and released after 2000 years by Captain Nelson who was this hot Astronaut. She instantaneously fell in love with him upon meeting and became his genie in a bottle. Hilarity ensues.

There is a point to this. See, I have realized that I created a God when I was little in my head. Like an imaginary friend, like Jeannie. A God who loved me and only me, took great care of me, thought I was special, etc. Who liked my quirks and understood me. Who still loved me when I sinned against him, and thought I was just the best, smartest, funniest, prettiest little girl ever. I really think that God allowed me to think this way, because I needed to believe I was special so I could survive my childhood rejection. He told me that the stuff I did was ok. That I was ok, I was going to be ok.

This was before I believed that Christ came down to redeem my sins. I just made up whatever I thought God was.

Then I met him, and found out that there is a book to get to know him. That there are other people who know him, that he loves JUST AS MUCH AS ME. This is hard for me to swallow. See, in my head he loves me MORE than he loves you. More than he loves anybody. He still loves you, don’t get me wrong, but just not as much as me.

I am telling you this because I just realized how wrong I was and how this viewpoint has totally handicapped me in my faith in God.

I always thought I had great faith because I believed. But my struggles in life all revolve around me not being able to give up control to him. About me having to be perfect and falling short and escaping so I don’t have to realize how completely hopeless my plight is. The trouble about the God that I created is, he’s a lie.

God is so big and so great and so AWESOME, the Creator of the universe. All things that walk and live and breathe. If no one worships him, it is written that the ROCKS will sing his praises. This is how big God is. And I put him in a box, trapped him there where he could love nobody but me. This severely limited the way that I saw him at work in my life. Instead of a God, I created a genie.

The more I read of God and his character and his limitless bounds and his amazing grace, the more separated he becomes from the God of my youth. I am praying right now for him to reveal himself to me, for him to show me how big and how great is his power.

In Deuteronomy 32:3-6 it says, “I will proclaim the name of the Lord. Oh praise the greatness of our God! He is the Rock, his works are perfect and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he. They have acted corruptly toward him, to their shame they are no longer his children, but a warped and crooked generation. Is this the way you repay the Lord, oh foolish and unwise people? Is he not your Father, your creator who made you and formed you?”

I am going to let God free in my life, be his child. He is my creator who made me and formed me. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I only know a fraction of his character because I thought it was perfectly adequate to keep him where I knew him. “Like newborn babies, crave spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is Good.” 1 Peter 2:2. It is time for me to grow up. I’m ready.

Understanding God

I have been trying to read scripture every day. I am inclined to want to spend a great deal of time and energy and effort and do it perfectly, going over a book, and the Bible and highlighting and taking notes, that stuff really jazzes me. When I do it, which is rarely because it takes such and involved effort to do it perfectly. That is NOT Biblical. God doesn’t care if you do it perfectly, half of it is just showing up. So to avoid my perfectionism I decided to just read proverbs daily, correlating to the day of the month.

It’s been a little scary to be honest with you.

Certain scriptures have been jumping out at me and taking hold of my heart and speaking to me that make me really uncomfortable.

Oct 28th: He who works his land will have abundant food, but the one who chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty, Proverbs 28:19

Oct 29th: A man who remains stiff-necked ater many rebukes will suddenly be destroyed without remedy. Proverbs 29:1

I am not really sure if it is God or the guilt that lives inside of me for so many wasted gifts and hours that makes these scriptures slap me in the face. It is said in the Bible that ALL scripture is God-breathed. These proverbs make me feel as though God is going to smite the crap out of me tomorrow…SMITE, SMITE, SMITE- Like so much Dragon’s breath. I can just see him with his lightning rod, tossing bolts down from heaven upon me destroying me without remedy, bringing me from my American dream into the depths of poverty.

Now, it is good to have a healthy fear of God. Blessed are those who fear the Lord. But I don’t think that the way I am interpreting these scriptures is correct. He is a God of love and he says that love is patient and kind and is not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs, always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. THIS is GOD.

It’s hard to get sometimes.

Which brings me to my Proverb today Oct 30th:

I am the most ignorant of men. I do not have a man’s understanding. I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One. Who has gone up to heaven and come down? Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands? Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name and the name of his son? Tell me if you know!- Proverbs 30: 2-4

You can hear the author’s desperation in his voice, the fact that he cannot understand God, that the knows that SOMEONE must be up in heaven, SOMEONE must have control over the winds and the waters and the ends of the earth. But he doesn’t know who. How frustrating. I have never really felt this way. I always knew that God was there and that he loved me, from when I was a tiny kid I believed. This is not the case for everybody. Especially analytical people who like numbers and facts and full explanations. For whom a feeling just isn’t enough.

The reason I bring this up, is this is a particularly meaningful scripture to me. It brings me to tears to remember it. In my Bible, in the corner above it in tiny lettering is the writing “K is here- 6/30/03”.  In ’03 I was talking to an old boyfriend again after being broken up for over a year and living in different cities. I was a new believer in Christ and he wasn’t. I told him I was only looking for a husband and only wanted a Christian husband, but we continued talking on the phone anyway.

When I talked to him I could feel his desperate confusion, his knowing that there was SOMETHING greater than himself out there, but not knowing what it was, or how to reach it. He could see the coincidences that were not coincidences, the miracles that were to big to ignore, yet too intangible to be sure. He would go from admitting that there was a God, to being angered at the very thought that he was considering it. He wanted names and places and proof and without a reasonable doubt. And I just couldn’t give it. And it wasn’t my job. So I wished him luck and told him not to call me anymore.

We didn’t talk that whole entire summer which was incredibly hard, because I had been so sure that I would marry him. I prayed fervently and so many other people that I don’t even talk to now did too. I quit smoking in June because he had once told me that he would never marry a smoker and I told him I would never marry an atheist. I decided to prepare for him to return to me. In August he called me up again. Triumphant, he understood he said. He got it. He had started going to a Bible study, and seeking other men and it happened. In January we were engaged, and by the following August, we were married. And he has been the most amazing blessing, and most Godly man I can imagine.

I am reminded that it is not my job to know, that I am human and He is God and he is in charge and I am not.

I don’t get alot of what I read, but if I continue to seek, God will make sure I know what I need to know, when the time is right. I don’t have to worry about being in poverty or being destroyed by God. Because he is with me, he comforts me, he loves me. But I need to heed his warnings, because at the end of it all, I don’t want to have nothing to show him for what he gave me, not because I am scared he’ll hurt me, but because I love him.