Let me tell you a little secret...love is what it is. Period. In my personal experience, people sometimes harbor a vile anger toward an ex-spouse. Except that anger is not really towards a person. It can't be, logically, because one person wasn't in that relationship alone. Anger can mask fear of another emotion, in this case it is often fear of bottled up hurt and pain. There are some emotions that are not easy to face; some, even, that require giving God full permission and exclusive entrance into your soul and situation.
One of the most difficult exercises in faith is asking God to show you all of you. The difficulty lies in the fact that you are not all that pretty in entirety, and not at all what you have pretended to be, either publicly or privately. It is a humbling experience, but also one full of freedom and revelatory wisdom. There are issues I am still facing that make me cringe.
Like, how come I cannot tell a person is secretly mentally ill until I have already engaged in a friendship or relationship with them and they become diabolical, and then I feel all bad because they are nuts? Am I secretly nuts for attracting them? What did I do wrong? Who, me? Okay, as you can see I still have work to do. We all do - it's a continuous work in progress. He did say the perfecting would continue until the coming of Christ Jesus. Don't judge me. It will take too much time and you'll get all caught up in it, and have no time to spend with God on yourself. It's a trick of the enemy, don't let him use you today. I digress {and isn't that normal?}.
Let me try, in my human way, to tell you what I know from experience as the benefit from looking through a Spiritual mirror at your pretty/ugly self in entirety.
I love my ex husband. Yes - this is as big a surprise to you as it was underwhelming for me to accept. I want him to have a successful, fruitful and blessed life in Christ. I want my children to have a healthy and whole father who can show them the truth about what a father and a Godly man looks like. Here is something else you should know: he is not the same man he was when we went through our divorce, and while we worked up to it. That is because of God and not by any work of his own hands.
Now, to say that I love him is not the same as saying that I want him, or I want to be back in a marriage with him.I do not want to be married to my ex husband. That would be to limit myself to experience only that particular aspect of love. The past happened, really. It is forgiven, but it is not erased. That is what God can do - he can forgive your sin and remove it from Him as far as the east is from the west. Not people. We can forgive each other and not charge each other for our past in present and future dealings; but we will not forget. That would be insane. Who among you can say that you can erase history? You lie, just like that.
Would you not think it odd that a lioness and a jackass were married? What if the jackass told the lioness he was born again? That is an extreme example of uneven yoke. I am often amazed when people say they are born again and think that means God made them a completely different physical and mental person than they were before. He did not. He gave you the mind of Christ that if you would be disciplined to use it, you would do right when your flesh would tell you to do wrong and you are still of the same species. If you don't work out your own soul salvation and understand that you are man made in the image of God after you accept salvation, you are still like a baby - trying out everything. Pulling your own hair even though it hurts every time you pull it.
What allowing God to work out my hurt and pain does is allow me to embrace my love for my ex husband, free me to embrace the good memories we made together, the family members we have in common, and substantiate the new relationship we are building as parents, without malice.
Because of this freedom, I don't have to be in a rush to find somebody to 'replace' him to prove to him, naysayers, or even myself that he is replaceable, because I know that any new intimate love can only enhance the past love I have experienced. I don't believe Jesus ever intended for us to dwell on any one experience of love, but to embrace each experience of love as a new and more exciting, invigorating engagement.
We have a propensity toward cloaking love in human conditions. Love is a separate entity that exists outside of our humanity. It's completely superior, and that is why we mess it up so easily. Love is about beauty and ugliness, perfection and flaws, good and bad, success and failure. That is why Peter admonishes us in I Peter 4:8 that above anything else we do, let the deep love that we have for each other show, because it COVERS OVER a great number or collectivity of; a great amount of sins.
It's everlasting.
Like, how come I cannot tell a person is secretly mentally ill until I have already engaged in a friendship or relationship with them and they become diabolical, and then I feel all bad because they are nuts? Am I secretly nuts for attracting them? What did I do wrong? Who, me? Okay, as you can see I still have work to do. We all do - it's a continuous work in progress. He did say the perfecting would continue until the coming of Christ Jesus. Don't judge me. It will take too much time and you'll get all caught up in it, and have no time to spend with God on yourself. It's a trick of the enemy, don't let him use you today. I digress {and isn't that normal?}.Now, to say that I love him is not the same as saying that I want him, or I want to be back in a marriage with him.I do not want to be married to my ex husband. That would be to limit myself to experience only that particular aspect of love. The past happened, really. It is forgiven, but it is not erased. That is what God can do - he can forgive your sin and remove it from Him as far as the east is from the west. Not people. We can forgive each other and not charge each other for our past in present and future dealings; but we will not forget. That would be insane. Who among you can say that you can erase history? You lie, just like that.
Would you not think it odd that a lioness and a jackass were married? What if the jackass told the lioness he was born again? That is an extreme example of uneven yoke. I am often amazed when people say they are born again and think that means God made them a completely different physical and mental person than they were before. He did not. He gave you the mind of Christ that if you would be disciplined to use it, you would do right when your flesh would tell you to do wrong and you are still of the same species. If you don't work out your own soul salvation and understand that you are man made in the image of God after you accept salvation, you are still like a baby - trying out everything. Pulling your own hair even though it hurts every time you pull it.
What allowing God to work out my hurt and pain does is allow me to embrace my love for my ex husband, free me to embrace the good memories we made together, the family members we have in common, and substantiate the new relationship we are building as parents, without malice.
We have a propensity toward cloaking love in human conditions. Love is a separate entity that exists outside of our humanity. It's completely superior, and that is why we mess it up so easily. Love is about beauty and ugliness, perfection and flaws, good and bad, success and failure. That is why Peter admonishes us in I Peter 4:8 that above anything else we do, let the deep love that we have for each other show, because it COVERS OVER a great number or collectivity of; a great amount of sins.
It's everlasting.
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. I Peter 4:8NLV
Great post. I have a friend I will be forwarding this to. Found you via melomomma.
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