journeying into year two.

May 21

If you've been following my journey, you'll know how transparent I have been in sharing the ways God has been teaching my heart. And a journey it is. It's been an up and down rollercoaster of emotions and day to day struggles that seemingly sneak up when I least expect it. I expect the "significant" days to be hard, but so many of the days in between have been equally so. Healing is a process and is ongoing. Even though we made it through the first year, the milestones are still difficult. Case in point, this week we've had award's ceremonies on zoom and all the boys have teared up in sadness of yet another event that was missed. There's just no way around the loss for them.

I had a friend tell me years ago that one day I'd be sharing my story. At the time, I brushed it off, but on May 15th of last year it was one of the first things that came to mind. She was right. And that terrified me. I've chosen to keep the details minimal and mostly share my heart and how God has so graciously held us through each and every moment. There's only a few that know the full story of what my life was the past 17 years and I've chosen to remain vague because as I was telling a friend, "that's not for everyone." To which she responded, "but, it's your story to tell." True. It's a story that God is ever writing and more than anything I want to proclaim His goodness and faithfulness throughout. But I feel God pressing on my heart to go a bit deeper.

I listened to a podcast this morning that spoke on Psalm 37:3, "Trust in the LORD and do good." Trust. Small word, but easier said than done, right? I could not have survived this year without trust. It's all I had to hold onto in the midst of what felt like the worst circumstances imaginable, the impossible pain and heartbreak of my children, and the feelings of absolute devastation. There simply are not adequate words to describe it. My heart physically hurts on so many levels when I think of the loss, what should have been, and what will not be. I read the book It's Not Supposed to Be This Way soon after everything happened and that phrase pops in my head quite often. This isn't what life should look like. But guess what? It does. This is our life and it's not changing. I have to lay down the expectation of what should have been and even the expectations of what I want and live in the present. In the now. Jesus says, I AM. He is our daily bread, our living water, our moment to moment sustenance. He IS enough and He gives us enough in each moment if we reach out to Him. If He gave us everything we ever needed all at once, we wouldn't need Him at all. I know God's character and I know I can trust in Him. Though we live in time, He already knows the end from the beginning. It's already decided and ultimately I know that because HE is victorious, I am victorious as well. There is nothing else to know. If God showed us how our life would play out, would we want to even walk through it? I certainly wouldn't have chosen this. BUT I TRUST IN MY GOD.

"And do good." What good can come from such devastation? So much, my friends. Part of that good is sharing my story. If God can use it to touch even one heart, then it's all to His glory. At this point, I feel like it's time to take it to a deeper level. Some would say that I must be careful what I share because of my kids, and yes, that is so true. But please also know that when you have to sit your children down and explain that their father is in jail and then later that we were divorcing, there were lots of questions. Because this situation has been so public - literally, front page news - I have been nothing but honest with them. I could not send them to school knowing that their friends knew, to hear it at school. Again, there hasn't been a single easy decision to make in this past year. Those conversations were brutal. Looking your children in the eyes, breaking their hearts, and crushing their ideas of the future was only something that I got through by HIS grace alone. On my own sufficiencies I likely would have run away and not faced any of it.

Here is an excerpt from the podcast I listened to:

"You say you’re trusting God, but what are you doing? While you’re trusting God are you sowing some good seeds in someone else’s life? Even though you can’t fix your own problem, you can help somebody else and while you’re doing that, you’re sowing a seed that will produce a harvest in your life. And even in devastation, I don’t care how bad off you are, you can always do something for someone else. When we don’t understand and we start trying to figure out what only God knows, there can only be one result and that’s confusion. But here’s the truth… you can’t be confused if you refuse to try to figure it out. God knows and He’ll take care of it. We know in part. We don’t know everything and we are not intended to know everything. It wouldn’t even be good for us if we knew everything. If you knew right now everything coming up in your future, most of us would just sign off and say forget it. Or even if you knew how God intended to use you or bless you, you might get full of pride and that would ruin it. So God only reveals things to us a little bit at a time as He knows is right. There is no need for trust if we already know everything. God couldn’t even be your God if you knew everything that He knows. We need to get satisfied to know the One who knows. Can you take a step to say I don’t know what is going in my life but I am not going to try to figure it out anymore. I am gonna trust God and I am gonna do good."

So, that's what I intend to do. The only thing I want people to see in my situation is Jesus. How He can deliver, heal, redeem, restore, and turn all things for good. And I am so excited to share more in this process of where I was, going back to my childhood misconceptions and ideas of faith and marriage, to where He has lead me now in walking through a divorce and overcoming the feelings of pride, shame, and all the pain. It's a journey of coming to the place of realization that I do not have to understand it all, but I can trust. Where we cannot make sense of things, God can. And we can trust in His love, His care, and His ultimate plan for our lives. We have to live in the now and trust in the great I AM.

This song comes to mind so often and I play it on repeat. It is everything. Have a listen here.

"Trust in the LORD and do good.
Then you will live safely in the land and prosper.
Take delight in the LORD,
and he will give you your heart’s desires.
Commit everything you do to the LORD.
Trust him, and he will help you.
He will make your innocence radiate like the dawn,
and the justice of your cause will shine like the noonday sun.
Be still in the presence of the LORD,
and wait patiently for him to act."

I remember this day so distinctly. It was just a rough day and I went outside and was laying on the ground. I was looking UP. My perspective shifted. We cannot control anything around us, but we can control our FOCUS.