I love my Jesus. Just when I think that God has tuned me out and no longer especially cared that I felt like I was drowning in my pain, He swoops in with a total moment of clarity and I'm able to realize everything is as it should be. He also reminded me once again that He has my best interests at heart, and sometimes pain is necessary to get me to where I need to be. He is faithful in answering prayer, but He does not always answer in the way I would have preferred. Even when I don't exactly know what I want, His answer may not be anything I expected. I can get so caught up in my own broken heart that I fail to see He has given me exactly what I asked for and needed.
Two nights ago, I found pot in Max's room. It almost killed me. With the way things have been for the last year or so, I didn't even think I had a heart left to break. It gave me physical chest pains to not only realize I had been played for a fool, but that maybe I never really knew Max to begin with. It makes you second guess yourself, and question your relationships with everyone around you. Max and I are unusually close as siblings. We've always been that way. It wasn't a secret that I put up with his crap way more than I probably should. But drugs in my house? I honestly thought he would never do that to me.. that he respected me too much. I was wrong. I KNEW I had to kick him out, but it was beyond hard for me (I finally understand what parents mean when they punish you and say "This hurts me more than it hurts you"). It is by far one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. The only way I even could gather enough strength to do it was by putting Dan first. His name is on the lease, and Max's is not. We would have been held responsible, and Dan's career would have been in the toilet. I will not allow that to happen. He deserves better than that... but it still hurts. I think I've cried like 15 times just in the last two days.
By this morning, I was ready to never get out of bed again. My life is generally pretty chaotic, but the last 6 or so months have been ridiculous. I could NOT get ahead of the drama, not to mention the amount of times I felt like the people I trusted the most kept slapping me in the face. I was so tired of hurting. Dan and I have been growing in leaps and bounds in our marriage.. I can't even begin to explain the amount of restoration God has done. All I could think about was getting out of San Diego. And THAT is when it hit me.
For months, I had praying for the strength to leave.. to do the Godly thing and follow my husband to Alaska. During Dan's deployment, I sort of put down roots here and I couldn't stomach the idea of leaving the people and places that were so comforting and safe to me. Every single day I would ask God how He expected me to just up and leave when things were so rocky with Dan and I felt so much more loved down here. I didn't exactly know how I wanted Him to go about getting me up there, but I was expecting something... well.. positive. Something that would not be painful and hard to deal with. I should have known better. The chain of events that have occurred since January were.. unpleasant. I was pretty much reeling from all the emotional blows. Things I had never even thought to worry about came out of nowhere, prompting my favorite lines to be: "What just happened?!" and "What is going on right now?!" By the time finding pot in Max's room rolled around, I was in a complete and total funk and could feel myself slipping into a depression. Last night, my prayers went something like: "I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU EXPECT OF ME ANYMORE! WHERE ARE YOU?!" I could feel God moving in my marriage.. I was pretty doubtful I would ever feel the same about my relationship with Dan.. and actually, I was right.. I just didn't expect where we are now to be SO much more healthy and amazing. I knew it was all God, and while I was so thankful things were getting better in my marriage, I couldn't hear God about what I was supposed to be doing HERE. Imagine my surprise this morning when I realized that God had done exactly what I asked.. but He did it by removing every obstacle that was keeping me from leaving. I LOVED being Mason's nanny and I would cry every time I thought about leaving him.. but then his parents moved to Carlsbad, making the commute to work horrendous. His new nanny lives in Carlsbad as well, which means he will get to see her way more often than me (it's seriously like a 40 minute drive to their house). I loved my apartment, but the crime rate in my neighborhood has sky rocketed, making the expensive rent no longer worth it (a guy got stabbed in the head with a screwdriver in my parking lot and I swear an entire band of homeless people have moved to my street). It's so bad that even if I was staying here, I would be moving out of the area. The idea of leaving Max still kills me, but I no longer feel guilty about moving out of our apartment because he isn't living here anymore. The people I had been close to, the ones in my weekly routine that I couldn't imagine not being there, have either moved (or about to move), or circumstances in the relationship has led to much needed space. There have been numerous other things along those lines, and all were pretty painful to deal with. I was so focused on the individual events that I failed to see the big picture until now.
While I am still hurting in a lot of ways, it was a great relief to see that God is paying attention. I could kick myself for not trusting Him.. for getting frustrated with Him. It is ridiculous to me sometimes that I have been a Christian my entire life and despite God not EVER letting me down, I still expect Him to bail. So lame. It is a good thing that in my relationship with God, at least one of us knows the best course of action. Half the time I don't even know what I want.. my heart wanders.. I feel lost.. and yet I sometimes trust myself rather than trust God, or assume I know how things should go when my reality is so small and limited. Lucky for us as humans, God never even considers bailing on us.. and love doesn't get any better than that.
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