Back in 2002 i went to Australia to work with IMB in helping a church with their youth group program. I didn't realize then how much God would also be working on my heart. Today while reading in my "travel" Bible, i call it this cause of how small it is, i found a paper my partner, Kellie, gave me.
At that point in my life i had never had a boyfriend, and not the stuff that goes along with it. Kellie gave me a letter, explaining it had come from God for me. Now i would like to share it with you. It explains what God has planned for us, and even if we slip off the trail, He'll get us back on track.
"Everyone wants to give himself to someone completely, to have a deep down relationship with another, and to be loved throughly and exclusively. But God says to a Christian, "No, not until you are satisfied, fulfilled, and content with being loved by Me alone; until you are willing to give yourself totally and undeservingly to Me; until you have an intensely personal, unique relationship with Me alone, discovering that only in Me is your satisfaction to be found----
Only then will you be capable of the perfect human relationship that i have planned for you. You will never be united with another until you are united with Me, exclusive of other desires and longings. I want you to stop planning and stop wishing, and allow Me to give you the most thrilling plan existing----
One that you cannot imagine. Please allow Me to bring it to you . You must wait, that is all. Don't be anxious. Don't look at the thing you want. You just keep looking up to Me or you'll miss what i want to show you. And then, when you are ready, I will surprise you with a love more wonderful than any of you could dream of. I am working even this minute to have both of you ready at the same time. You must both be satisfied exclusively with Me and the gift i have prepared----
For this exemplifies your relationship with Me and this is the perfect love! I want you to see it in the flesh, a picture of your relationship with Me and the everlasting union of beauty, perfection, and love that i offer you with Myself. Know that I love you utterly. I am the Almighty God. Believe it and be satisfied."
Now sitting here after all that i've been through and what i know do i still believe this letter is true? And is it just about an external relationship?
I do believe this letter is quite true. I believe God, if we let Him, will and does prepare us for all things in life. He does this so we'll be more like Him. And being able to reread it, i see it's not just trusting God with our spouse, its about every aspect of our lives. To allow God to direct us in everything and all the while focusing on Him and being more like Him every minute of every day.
Is this easy and can we be perfect? No we are just humans, but the great news is God is and He continues to take us back and put us on His path.
Want to make God laugh?... Tell Him your plans :)
Friday, February 27, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Honesty
This subject has been laid heavily on my heart. What is honesty?
The quality or condition of being honest; integrity.
Truthfulness; sincerity: in all honesty.
I am realizing its not just being honest with other people as in..."did you do this?" but honesty with yourself and your own emotions.
I got a really unexpected apology from my soon to be ex-husband Jason. All these emotions begun to swirl inside of me. He admitted to not being there for me at all in the relationship and not pulling his weight around. He admitted to marrying me for all the wrong reasons such as he didn't want another relationship to end, and he thought marriage would fix everything. Lastly he apologized for the way he ended it by cheating on me and admitted he did cheat because he was all but physically involved with her. He was into her with all his emotion, heart and soul.
Then he went on to say it was really easy at the beginning to lay all the blame on me. To look the other way and pretend life is good and i was just bad. He told me he found God 6 months ago for the first time in his life. He had always believed their was a God and believed he was a Christian but not eat, breath, live for God. He said through this his girlfriend, Jessica, has come to find God too and was baptisted this past Sunday.
Here is where i began to have the swirlly emotions. The fight inside between wanting to have God smite him where he stood....or.....to let it go. To allow Christ to fully work inside of me to let the puss and green goo of built up hate and anger flow out of my heart and soul. The honesty on my part is to really allow this to be gone. To finally once and for all hand this over to God. But the hurt part of my soul cried out this was too much to bear...to allow forgivness to a man who had cut me so hard to the bone....
But then a funny thing happened. God showed me again what happened to His son due to MY sin due to MY human nature. And He showed me the mercy and love God gave to me when i was LEAST of all deserving of it.
He had forgiven me...my sins were as far as the east is from the west. Honesty is saying how can i not give forgiveness when my own Father forgave me before i ever knew Him.
Humility is a very humbling experience. At once i realize what honesty is. Its turning to God saying "I'm hurt, but i don't want to experience this pain any longer. What is done is done, and You are Lord over it all. Please take this pain and make beauty from ashes."
He gave His all for me, why can't i do the same for Him? If it begins with me finally saying i do forgive and I allow Him to heal me and let me truly move on serving Him....then this is what i am to do this day. Things in this world happen...a lot we can't control...but the things we can control we should using Him as our example. He forgave me therefore i will forgive all others.
The quality or condition of being honest; integrity.
Truthfulness; sincerity: in all honesty.
I am realizing its not just being honest with other people as in..."did you do this?" but honesty with yourself and your own emotions.
I got a really unexpected apology from my soon to be ex-husband Jason. All these emotions begun to swirl inside of me. He admitted to not being there for me at all in the relationship and not pulling his weight around. He admitted to marrying me for all the wrong reasons such as he didn't want another relationship to end, and he thought marriage would fix everything. Lastly he apologized for the way he ended it by cheating on me and admitted he did cheat because he was all but physically involved with her. He was into her with all his emotion, heart and soul.
Then he went on to say it was really easy at the beginning to lay all the blame on me. To look the other way and pretend life is good and i was just bad. He told me he found God 6 months ago for the first time in his life. He had always believed their was a God and believed he was a Christian but not eat, breath, live for God. He said through this his girlfriend, Jessica, has come to find God too and was baptisted this past Sunday.
Here is where i began to have the swirlly emotions. The fight inside between wanting to have God smite him where he stood....or.....to let it go. To allow Christ to fully work inside of me to let the puss and green goo of built up hate and anger flow out of my heart and soul. The honesty on my part is to really allow this to be gone. To finally once and for all hand this over to God. But the hurt part of my soul cried out this was too much to bear...to allow forgivness to a man who had cut me so hard to the bone....
But then a funny thing happened. God showed me again what happened to His son due to MY sin due to MY human nature. And He showed me the mercy and love God gave to me when i was LEAST of all deserving of it.
He had forgiven me...my sins were as far as the east is from the west. Honesty is saying how can i not give forgiveness when my own Father forgave me before i ever knew Him.
Humility is a very humbling experience. At once i realize what honesty is. Its turning to God saying "I'm hurt, but i don't want to experience this pain any longer. What is done is done, and You are Lord over it all. Please take this pain and make beauty from ashes."
He gave His all for me, why can't i do the same for Him? If it begins with me finally saying i do forgive and I allow Him to heal me and let me truly move on serving Him....then this is what i am to do this day. Things in this world happen...a lot we can't control...but the things we can control we should using Him as our example. He forgave me therefore i will forgive all others.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The Beginning
Its usually quite hard to tell where one chapter in a book ends and a new one begins without the chapter headers. In life we are not given such a clear and defientive separation of the different parts. Some are easier to see than others, like graduating from schools or a career. But how do you know when it all seems to run together?So far in my life it's been just one long chapter or it's how it has seemed. The shift i am going through right now seems to be the biggest one yet...hopefully the most dramatic.
My separation from my ex, Jason Keene, will be a year at the end of march. According to South Carolina law one must be seperated for a year before you can even take it to court. It's an uncontested divorce but not because i wanted it at the time. To begin a new chapter, one must put the past to rest, and i guess that's what i am doing with this blog. Will anyone ever actually read it? I don't know, really don't care, not really the point. The Point is to get it out and begin a new chapter of my life, whole and compelete.
I met jason off of match.com...i know how silly. From the beginning it was a huge mismatch between us. I am very extervert, outgoing, friendly, etc. He was very painfully quiet. Since our seperation I have been going to a therapist to help not only to deal with such a shock to the system but to figure why and how i got in the position i did. I have the nurturing, caring type of personality. I want to be taken care of but i have a strong impulse to help others, sometimes to a point of dening myself what i need from a partner.
Anyways we starting dating and i got to know him more and more. I was in college trying to finish my degree in Biology and Chemistry and he was living at home working at Wal-mart. I was quite taken with the fact he claimed to be a Christian and had strong family ties. I enjoyed the attention, the importance that comes with dating someone. My self esteem was also quite low at this time and it just felt good to have someone.
Throughout our relationship we had ups and downs, times when i did call it off and times when i should have never entertained the thoughts of taking him back. We fought a lot. I wanted to live and go out. I wanted to enjoy life, he wanted to stay home and talk to his "girls" one of which would convince him i was no good. And the funny part of that was she was right. He was no good for me, and i not for him.
When you are with someone not on the same level as you, not the same mind thought, not the same ambition, things become frayed. I wanted a partner who loved the Lord whole mind thought and soul as me. When i would try to do evening devotionals with him he would fall asleep, or a prayer partner, he would wuss out of it. Try gettin him to go to church with me, he'ld come up with excuses as to why its so much better to not go cause church is full of hypocrites..i believe church is what you bring to it...if you believe hypocrites are there then usually its cause you are one. You tend to accuse others of what yourself is guility of. And if you are looking for somehting you will usually find it...so if you move your eyes to find loving ppl then that's whats there.
Anyways, it got bad, but i didn't know how to break it, didn't know how to leave cause i was scared if i left, this was before we got married, then he wouldn't know how to survive. I did everything in the relationship from getting the house we lived in to paying the bills to working two jobs to make sure there was enough for us to pay for everything.
I think a lot of people stay with the situation they are with because to them it's normal...its what they know. Changing themselves or their situation puts them into unknown territory. It because too scary, and plus everyone kept telling me how good i was for him, so maybe it was pride.
Anyways the end started with his fasitionation with having girls as friends, cause as he put it he just didn't know how to get along with the man's man. Apart of me still truly believes he could be gay and not realizing it. His family also thought this for a long time before i came along.
Anyways this one girl in particular..he worked with her and she was engaged. So he came to me asking about double dating complaining he wanted friends. Quite a hard thing to do if you're inverted.
So long story short i said sure...they got closer...she and her man didn't know how to love and she became jealous of what we had. Problem is what we had was a mirage....looks good from far away but it's all fake when you get close. Anyways on the outside he looked like he had it together and was responsible, but truthfully i was pulling all the weight. So when i had had enough with her constant calling and him becoming distant i put my foot down and said no more. This lead to them "talking" at work.
On March 27 2008 he calls me at work and tells me hes' in love with her and chooses her. I tried to talk him into couseling, i tried to stop it all from falling around me. He wanted us to contiunue to be friends and help each other out.
What i learned is boundaries are very important, one person shouldn't suck all the life out of another, relationships aren't supposed to be draining, God knows when people talk about loving Him but aren't sincere about it, partners are supposed to be just that, and some people really aren't mature when they pretend to be.
Mirages don't just happen in the desert...they can happen to a person whom you thought was one person and really is just that...a fake, was then and always will be. Person whos talks a good talk at first and tries to look good, but really no substance to back up their talk.
So a new chapter is beginning with a defientive end to the last one. I have and will continue to learn a great deal about myself and thankful knowing God truly has had a hand in all that has come my way. He truly makes beauty from ashes....
My separation from my ex, Jason Keene, will be a year at the end of march. According to South Carolina law one must be seperated for a year before you can even take it to court. It's an uncontested divorce but not because i wanted it at the time. To begin a new chapter, one must put the past to rest, and i guess that's what i am doing with this blog. Will anyone ever actually read it? I don't know, really don't care, not really the point. The Point is to get it out and begin a new chapter of my life, whole and compelete.
I met jason off of match.com...i know how silly. From the beginning it was a huge mismatch between us. I am very extervert, outgoing, friendly, etc. He was very painfully quiet. Since our seperation I have been going to a therapist to help not only to deal with such a shock to the system but to figure why and how i got in the position i did. I have the nurturing, caring type of personality. I want to be taken care of but i have a strong impulse to help others, sometimes to a point of dening myself what i need from a partner.
Anyways we starting dating and i got to know him more and more. I was in college trying to finish my degree in Biology and Chemistry and he was living at home working at Wal-mart. I was quite taken with the fact he claimed to be a Christian and had strong family ties. I enjoyed the attention, the importance that comes with dating someone. My self esteem was also quite low at this time and it just felt good to have someone.
Throughout our relationship we had ups and downs, times when i did call it off and times when i should have never entertained the thoughts of taking him back. We fought a lot. I wanted to live and go out. I wanted to enjoy life, he wanted to stay home and talk to his "girls" one of which would convince him i was no good. And the funny part of that was she was right. He was no good for me, and i not for him.
When you are with someone not on the same level as you, not the same mind thought, not the same ambition, things become frayed. I wanted a partner who loved the Lord whole mind thought and soul as me. When i would try to do evening devotionals with him he would fall asleep, or a prayer partner, he would wuss out of it. Try gettin him to go to church with me, he'ld come up with excuses as to why its so much better to not go cause church is full of hypocrites..i believe church is what you bring to it...if you believe hypocrites are there then usually its cause you are one. You tend to accuse others of what yourself is guility of. And if you are looking for somehting you will usually find it...so if you move your eyes to find loving ppl then that's whats there.
Anyways, it got bad, but i didn't know how to break it, didn't know how to leave cause i was scared if i left, this was before we got married, then he wouldn't know how to survive. I did everything in the relationship from getting the house we lived in to paying the bills to working two jobs to make sure there was enough for us to pay for everything.
I think a lot of people stay with the situation they are with because to them it's normal...its what they know. Changing themselves or their situation puts them into unknown territory. It because too scary, and plus everyone kept telling me how good i was for him, so maybe it was pride.
Anyways the end started with his fasitionation with having girls as friends, cause as he put it he just didn't know how to get along with the man's man. Apart of me still truly believes he could be gay and not realizing it. His family also thought this for a long time before i came along.
Anyways this one girl in particular..he worked with her and she was engaged. So he came to me asking about double dating complaining he wanted friends. Quite a hard thing to do if you're inverted.
So long story short i said sure...they got closer...she and her man didn't know how to love and she became jealous of what we had. Problem is what we had was a mirage....looks good from far away but it's all fake when you get close. Anyways on the outside he looked like he had it together and was responsible, but truthfully i was pulling all the weight. So when i had had enough with her constant calling and him becoming distant i put my foot down and said no more. This lead to them "talking" at work.
On March 27 2008 he calls me at work and tells me hes' in love with her and chooses her. I tried to talk him into couseling, i tried to stop it all from falling around me. He wanted us to contiunue to be friends and help each other out.
What i learned is boundaries are very important, one person shouldn't suck all the life out of another, relationships aren't supposed to be draining, God knows when people talk about loving Him but aren't sincere about it, partners are supposed to be just that, and some people really aren't mature when they pretend to be.
Mirages don't just happen in the desert...they can happen to a person whom you thought was one person and really is just that...a fake, was then and always will be. Person whos talks a good talk at first and tries to look good, but really no substance to back up their talk.
So a new chapter is beginning with a defientive end to the last one. I have and will continue to learn a great deal about myself and thankful knowing God truly has had a hand in all that has come my way. He truly makes beauty from ashes....
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