Open your hand..there are new things

What new things does God have in store for us? How often have you learned that when He allows a door to close in our lives, another one opens? It is true. The only way we don't see the new opportunity is when we are to busy focusing on what is ending. That happens a lot because we are afraid of what we do not know, having become so comfortable in what we have.

Although I knew what had to be done, I was almost like a bean counter, calculating how many other lives would be affected at the cost of rescuing mine and those of my small family. The biggest decisions I made when I took my life back were based in fear of losing what I loved or had become accustomed to; and hurting or disappointing people.  God had already given me an open door. He knew what I was going to face, and He knew His plans for me.

It was everything and everybody that I would leave behind, be under the scrutiny of; and even cause pain to - that was the cause of my biggest remorse. I really had to hide under God's shadow to get through that part. First, I took care of what God had given me. I talked with my babies, prayed with them, got them into Christian counseling, got me into Christian counseling for their sake, and ours was a veritable house of prayer. We walked very carefully through a minefield blanketed by angels. God laid out His promises to me, which are in His word.

Oh, I nearly lost my mind in the process, but He kept me. See, sometimes in letting go of what is old, you have to pry your own little fingers loose so it can get completely out.

When the word and divine revelation come together, something amazing happens. I know what it means to have my mind staid on Jesus. It used to be a statement the elder 'saints' made at church. But when I had my mind staid on Jesus? He staid my mind.

This is real, so let me see if I can explain it a little better. For probably the better of six months, I was not carrying myself. Everything I did was in and of Jesus. In those six months I went through Griefshare, I went through counseling with my kids, I read and studied His word, and while I attended to the things of God, He attended to the things of me.

One of the most amazing things that happened was my ears were shut to the voices that held the most emotional blackmail power in my life. I just couldn't hear them. Because of that, my focus was directed toward action, planning, and healing. I kept my house in order; helped my children to thrive in mind and body and surrounded them with Christ minded people; better than that - kept those who did not have the mind of Christ at bay. We changed our environment completely. Our communication, our love for God, our health and family relationships - better than before. We still have those that were closed off to us during that time to work on, but the best part is that God worked forgiveness so tough that we can handle it.

It is almost as if Christ was doing His own surgery even while I was going through life sustaining surgeries at the hands of medical doctors with my failing health. But when it was over my life and health were recovered and I was renewed. For that I give Him praise.

I am sharing this with you to get to this point: old things become new. Yes, my relationship and marriage together extended over 20 years, and that is almost half of my life. That is a big chunk of who I was invested in another person and who they were and it came to an end. Not abruptly, but slowly through deterioration, neglect, and a form of ungodliness. But yet there was love there. God does not want me to dismiss that love. He wants me to embrace it, forgive in every way and love past my human capacity to blame, hate, loathe and fear. Then when I have reached my capacity, I understand that His love for us is far greater than my love can ever extend.

That exercise alone helps me get understanding, wisdom and healing.

I know that I will love again (doesn't that sound like some schmaltzy love song?) even though I am not quite ready. I have the revelation that a new thing is happening. An old door is closed and that can mean only one thing. Somewhere, a window of opportunity is opening.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 Corinthians 5:17

Why can't we have the fairytale?

This weekend, I found out that two of my friends marriages were ending. I was not happy. I encourage all of my married couples to make sure they have done all possible for the success of the relationship before ending it. My counsel is to seek wise counsel - pray together; and then get into counseling. Fight for your marriage. Don't let the enemy win.

When I heard about my friends marriages, I just wanted to ask God why. Why can't we have the fairytale? Why wont you let our marriages survive?

It seems so unfair that our children have divorced parents, and go through the heartache of mom and dad separating physically, emotionally and spiritually. It seems so unfair that after loving each other enough to commit to a lifetime together, a number of years have equated to enough.

I know that these friends have loved enough, forgiven enough, fought enough, cried enough, tried enough, survived enough, prayed enough, and even stayed enough that they should have been guaranteed successful marriages, the same as I should. Where else do you give all of yourself to another person and a cause for 10-15 years and then end up severed from that person? Eventually you return to stranger status. Where does that happen?

But life does not work like that. Even as I was asking God why, He was reminding me that His ways and thoughts are higher than ours, and our limited love is much different than His unlimited love. If some relationships do not last for a lifetime, it is not the end of the world. Nor is it the end of the story.

The further I grow into this divorced person that I am, trusting God with each new step in the process, the more I realize that I still have to pray for my ex husband and care for him. He is not a stranger. He is the man that I loved enough to take a journey that I would not with another man.  I loved him enough to have his children and support his dreams. Really, that love does not disappear, it is just redirected. A lot of times it turns into bitterness and anger, if we do not understand that God has given us the imperative to love beyond reason.

I sometimes think my ex husband is the most frustrating person walking the face of the planet earth. I wonder why he is still speaking in the same atmosphere in which I am living. But I still have the capacity to love him beyond his faults and pray for his needs. I am not a saint, and I will tell him what I think of his best laid plans that are all for naught faster than I can remember my Godly purpose is to love past pain, which is temporary, and into life, which is empowering.

I am still hurt that my friends marriages are suffering, and maybe ending in divorce. I want them to survive. I want the enemy to lose at all cost. I want my own failed marriage to be an anomaly, not the norm. I want to pray for them with a power that wins. But in the end, I want them to be able to love each other beyond pain. Love beyond their normal capacity for love - like Jesus did.

7 Day Rule and Other Stuff

My close friends and family know I have this 7-Day Rule. Seven is the perfect number; it means completion. God laid the foundation of its meaning when He introduced this number in the context of His finished work in the book of Genesis. The word translated as finished is the Greek teléo which basically means to bring to a close, to complete, to end, to fulfill.

I believe that in 7 days time you should be able to get over the initial shock of an ended relationship and get back into life. Yes, healing takes longer than that, but the actual activity of your life cannot stop because your spouse walked away or you gave them a road map and bag lunch and sent 'em packing.

If you can make it through the first 7 days after a break up, you will be well on your way to staring anew. God created the heavens and the earth in 7 days, surely you can conquer one heart ache.

Day 1

On today, you can whine, cry, mope, pity yourself - all day long. Take the day off, stay in the bed, eat comfort food, cry it out. Read something inspirational. Start reading Proverbs according to the day of the month. This is your day to revel in your misery - but only for 24 hours.

Day 2

By day two you should be up and at 'em.  Be sad, but be active. If you lived together, clear your home of every reminder of him. Don't throw away anything important - put that all in one box to give to him later. March everything else to the trash like a paid City employee working weekend overtime. Men leave little stuff behind when they move out. I think there are two reasons for this:

• He is just damn lazy and doesn't want to bother with getting all of his stuff; after all you have been cleaning up after him for how long?
• He wants any other man who comes into this domicile to know he  was here. It is kinda like a wandering dog marking it's territory by peeing on bushes and light poles along the path. 

Maybe there is a yet another reason:

• he believes he is coming back as soon as this blows over.

Unless you believe that as well, put on your favorite 'he's gone' music and clean your house.

Once, a good friend of mine was feeling sad about a break up and I had just encountered the Winan's 1990 CD, Return featuring the song "A Friend". I brought my CD to her house and I must have played this song about 10 times. The next two songs on the CD are "Gonna Be Alright" and "When You Cry". Yeah, I wasn't cheering her up much, but I was oblivious to her state of mind at the time. She revealed to me years later that she had been trying to hold it together and  here I come with this dag on CD and this song. We laugh about it now, but she recorded several of the songs off the CD before I left that day.

These songs became some of our favorites, and they also nurtured her at a time when she needed it most. They have nurtured me through some things as well.

Day 3

Get up early and talk to God. Keep up your Proverbial reading. Listen for God, too. Today, get out of the house. Do your hair, put on something presentable, and go spend time with your friends and family, or see a movie. Go shopping or get a pedicure and manicure. Take your kids out on a date. Just don't sit around the house feeling pitiful.

Day 4

Midway through the 7 day process. This may be a really hard day. You may be wondering what and who he is doing. You sure in hell know it is not you. Do not skip your positive activities today. Definitely keep your daily routine of work and home life.

Write him a letter (one that he will never get) and describe your angst and disappointment in all of it's glory. Write down what you think happened and when the relationship became irreparable. Be honest - write down the things you blame him for and why. Maybe you shed some tears, maybe not. Hold on to this letter for later when you are going to forgive him and ask God to forgive your part in the destruction of the relationship. You are also going to forgive yourself. You can destroy the letter after that. Do not, I repeat, do not give the letter to him, even if you get back together.

Day 5

Yes, you will still have sadness in your heart today. If it hasn't happened yet, he may contact you, or you may call him. You shouldn't, but I know how hard it can be not to make that call. The thing is, you spent a lot of time looking at the reasons this relationship fell apart. You know that breaking up to make up is the fodder of songs, not a way of life. Maybe you can talk it out, if you are not so angry with each other you want to rip his knee caps out and tell him to stand up like a man. Remember that first you were friends. Oh, you weren't? Well, that is a whole 'nother topic. It is called Courting 101: Longer than one date.

Day 6

Today your heart just hurts. You may be thinking about all the time you put into this relationship; how many other relationships are connected through this one; the friends and family members you will lose; the intimate relationship that is gone. Go do something with yourself. You are right now about to get on my last nerve. I can deal with love-lost looks, but not with every sentence being about how much you miss him. You do not. You hated every minute of the last 8 months. What do you miss about that?

This evening, write out a tentative plan for getting what you want out of life, spiritually, economically, physically, emotionally. Write down the kind of atmosphere you want in your home, all the endeavors you hope to undertake, all the moves you plan to make. Join a social group like meetup where you can start a group meeting around a similar interest, or find an existing group to join. It won't cost you anything and you will make new friends.

Day 7

This is it. The last and final day you get to visibly mope over this man. Get up, get dressed with the confidence of a woman, smile at yourself in the mirror. Say 'this too shall pass because God promised me, in His word. He is not a man that He would lie - He keeps all of His promises.' Go to work and focus intently on doing your job as if you are doing it unto God. When you get off, go out to dinner if you can. If you can't, make dinner special at home. If you have children, take the time to fully see them. They are life. Hug them and appreciate who they are and to whom they belong. Go ahead and reflect on the past one more time, because when you put yourself to bed tonight, you are going to put that relationship to bed as well.

Of course, your 7 days may not go exactly as described. Those first 7 days are like a gestation period before the rebirth of your single self. The basic premise is that after some measure of time, you have to actively get up and get back on the job of living. In the midst of this journey, you are going to learn how to forgive and forget, how to release someone else of the burden of fault for your perceived failures, how failure is a set-up for success if you keep getting back up; how he is not the enemy, but you are indeed the victor. You are going to learn that nothing is wasted if you plan to triumph.

Day 8 - Let the healing begin. Girl, put your records on....

What about the children?

One of my biggest considerations in making this decisions was the children. I cannot say it was the same for the Mister, as he was consumed with self survival. I am now amazed at how many men have a woman  and a family that loves them, yet still spawn bastard children and believe in the very core of their being that the betrayed family should grin and bear the consequences of their deceit.

What also sends me is when the female parent of said misguided men-beasts support the son and touch and agree that this can be worked out, r undermining and maligning another woman. I have only one response for these special breed = #saddown real close to Jesus so I don't end up in forgiveness camp for what may come out of my mouth when all restraints are loosed. Really. Stand down.I digress.

When I was deciding whether to go or stay, our 22 year old was  in college, and we had a 4 year old son, and a 10 year old daughter at home. I prayed so much about them and their well being that I know God was tired of hearing from me. I was torn between whether it was better for to stay in this humiliating and unhappy position or whether it was to leave and show them what is and is not acceptable in any relationship.

In my mind, if I stayed, I was showing my sons a picture of womanhood that I did not want them to have, and reinforcing an age old stereotype that 'boys will be boys'.  I was showing them how to be the wrong kind of man. If men look for the characteristics of their mother in a mate, I surely did not want them looking for a woman who would stay for anything and stand for nothing.

I was also  showing my daughter what a relationship should look like between a man and a woman. How much did I want her to think was too much to take from a man who supposedly loves her? How was I giving her a picture of what real love looks like between a man and a woman? Did I want her to think that it was okay to trade dignity, risk health issues, humiliation, degradation - all for love? I am going to plead  an Amy Winehouse on that one...No, No, No.

I spent a lot of time feeling like I was 'breaking' my children, and I tussled with  how to spare them as much hurt as possible. I researched how children of divorced families fair emotionally, psychologically. Eventually, it was the word of God that reminded me these babies are on loan to me; He is the real father. I cannot negate His ability to protect and sustain them unless I am also willing to negate my faith.

So what about the children? Our kids went to a Christian counselor because they needed somebody safe and unbiased with whom they could talk and work some issues out. We had designated Aunts, Uncles and cousins they could talk to at any time they needed to find comfort. I talked to their teachers and administrators about what was going on, so they would understand any changes in behavior and notify me as well. Friends, pastors, family members - covered us in prayer.

Once their father got his head unstuck, he came on board with the plan. We agreed to a very basic agenda about our children that superseded our own desires or comforts.

In theory, it seems like it was a smooth transition, when it was anything but that. The girl blamed the Father for breaking up our family and our home. The oldest son blamed the Father for everything wrong in the world at large including rainy days and gas prices, in addition to being angry at my mistreatment. The youngest son didn't blame anybody but he was sad all around the edges.

My babies and I spent a lot of time in therapy, prayer, consoling each other, conversation, and in healing. Still there, too. We work hard at it, and I can only pray that in the end, they will be stronger for the journey. I know they have picked up some good tools in this valley and they know how to use them. One of the biggest concepts that we have all embraced is that while divorce is the end of a relationship, it is the beginning of a new conceptual family. We have morphed into a different entity, tenuously at first, but more solidly as time passes.

For the children, and to some extent for ourselves, we embraced forgiveness, and invited God to take the helm of this entire family. He is working it out, one day at a time.

The Great Man Drain

Okay, yes, I was a hot emotional unhealthy mess when my bro died. It was two weeks after my divorce was final, a week after my birthday, and I can say in retrospect, two weeks before the ex was remarried. I still looked incredible on the outside, if I do say so myself (and I will); but inside and in the comfort of home, I was unstable and emotional.

I think this is why my sister dragged me to Griefshare. After that first week, I went back. When it was time to greet the others, I said

 “I am Elizabeth. Of course, I am Theresa’s sister, and I am grieving the murder of my brother in law. I think I am also grieving my father, my father in law, both of my grandmothers, and my husband. My husband is not dead yet, but we are divorced. That is kinda similar.”  

There were chuckles and smiles, and also tears.

But I knew something I had not known – suppressed grief does not go away. There is no value to suppressing grief over anything or anyone who has passed through your life. Grieving is a step in healing – one cannot exist without the other.

My good friend Allison once told me that I walked in grief for my Dad for at least 7 years. Each one of those years felt like I was living, but when I realized how much I was not; when God unveiled that which I could handle anew; I could see the truth in retrospect.

Here is the thing – God never gave me more than I could bear. Because He knew I was not able to bear the full capacity of the grief I felt without first growing closer to Him and then having support, He kept it behind a veil. When I was ready, He put me in the right place at the right time and drew back the veil.

I had a little anger with him about it, too. I wanted to know why he would take almost every strong, safe protecting man from my life. Who does that? I wanted to know why He would let my brother in law die in the manner that he did, and leave my sister without her husband and my niece without her dad. I asked Him too. You can do that you know – ask God what you want to know. He hears and He will answer.

I can say this because I know it. God showed me how when my father died, the service was standing room only. My mother hired an extra limousine to carry all the young men in the neighborhood whose lives he had touched. A Sony executive called us because my Dad was the only one who gave him the time and a chance when he was just a young man. My sister girl, Diane, was ready to come home from Turkey where she was stationed for the service, because he had touched her in this way. 

He showed me how a humble man who just loves God can touch the hearts of many and draw them to the light in Him which is Christ. Then I was lead to reflect on the scripture where Jesus says that we will do greater works than He in the earth. God impressed upon me that the works Jesus did are directly related to the Father/Son/Holy Spirit relationship.

Next God broke it down like this for me:

Larry, my brother in law, had been a son to my father who only had daughters. He had watched and learned from my father as well as the other young men, but with a special bond. When Larry gave his life to Christ, he was then bound to do greater works in the earth than even my father. He held onto His salvation and to Christ with every fiber and He exuded Christ in his daily walk.

When Larry died, not only was there standing room only, but the witness of his life had touched people who called from other countries, who worked in the same office as the President of the University, and lived throughout his community, and who had WATCHED his journey to and through salvation. His death was documented on both local and national news, and caused the changing of dangerous policy. People who had seen him at his worst and best times found out something new about God through the light of Christ that lived in his son, Larry.

God reminded me then of His one goal: to redeem us by Jesus saving grace that we may be restored to a right relationship with God and spend eternity in His presence, for which we were created.

I miss my men. It be’s that way when you are accustomed to being a Princess. My mother is not quite aware of what Princess status means. I have been trying to help her with that for 12 years now. She is a lost cause. I have one brother in law now, and my sisters and I call him ‘our husband’. He can’t help but walk closer to Christ because otherwise, he is NOT gonna make it with the demands of these women in this family. He’s so graceful under pressure.

I remember the words of a song we sing at church: And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. It comes from the scripture in John 12:32 which says the very same. In context, that particular chapter talks about how Christ has walked among the people, done miracles, performed signs and wonders, and the people STILL don't believe who He is. Yet a little later, in Mark 25, there was a woman who had an issue of blood for 12 years. She had not walked with Jesus, but she had heard of Him (because people had talked of Him and lifted Him up) and knew in her being that He was the one who could heal her and make her whole. She pressed through all of the obstacles to get to Him just to touch the HEM of His garment.

12 years is long enough for a healing, and to be made whole.

I thank God that the lives and deaths of the men in my family served a higher purpose, and left a living legacy. So many times, we forget God’s objective in our lives, besides to love us, save us from our own mess, and provide for us. He is trying to get us back home and with a good report.

Alright - I will post again in a couple of days. We can't dialog if you don't leave a comment! Or email me. I have to tell you about so much that has happened during this walk. Just a note: I have not always been virtuous...don't tell anybody. I'll tell you about it in the next post.