This is the day … (part 2)

… that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.

Translation – I will put on my big girl panties and deal with it. Again.

Although today is a little bit easier to deal with than yesterday. Today is the one-year anniversary of my Dad going to be eternally with God. Eternally rejoicing, eternally praising, taking residence in his mansion, taking walks on those golden streets with his Dad and Mom, and Jesus, too! And I know one of these days, I’ll be there too 🙂

It’s just a reminder that he’s not with us anymore on this planet, and that’s a little sad.

Please, God, help me be content

Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.  Philippians 4:11-12 NKJV

“I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content….” OH! How I wish I could speak truly those words right now. I am NOT content.

I miss my Daddy, oh, so much. More and more as I feel God pulling towards this lifestyle of homesteading I find myself wishing he was here so I could pick his brain for all it’s wealth of farming knowledge. And he would be the first one out there helping me build my dream, and my house. And OH! the man could MacGuyver / “rig” anything. Need a *insert some sort of useful but very expensive and/or it’s located too far away gizmo here* but all you’ve got is some chicken wire, a lawnmower engine and some twine, and my Daddy could figure out how to make it work!  (Daddy, some insight into a composting tumbler from the bits and pieces you left laying around plus the pallets I got for cheap wood would be wonderful right now….) But God decided this past May to take Daddy home, and I know he is rejoicing with the angels 🙂 And I have the assurance that one day, I’ll join him in forever praising our Heavenly Father, too. But in the meantime, I miss him bunches and bunches.

I love my mom, and I’m glad God has uniquely tailored our situations so that we need to help each other out, but I miss having a place of my own. A home where I’m the decorator (not that my skills are great) and furniture-picker-outer, and the setter-of-the-thermostat, and can have an indoor kitty, just because I want to.

And now to the “meat” of this post – I miss being married. Legally, I still am; “un-divorced” is the term I believe the media has coined for people like me, where for whatever reason (usually financial) the choice is made to not legally dissolve the marriage, but for all intents and purposes the marriage is over. I miss the illusion of having someone be there, someone who cares, someone who always put me first – except for God, of course – someone to help me parent my son, someone to love me in a physical and tangible way. And I say illusion because those aspects of my marriage either died out a long time ago or were never there in the first place.  I want to be somebody’s “somebody special,” but I know that can’t take place right now, not and remain true to what I believe, true to God’s law. (Just to clarify, there isn’t any somebody, this is me just pouring my heart out – the “warts and all” version, as my new blog friend Beth, would say. Her parents did a great job in picking her name, btw ;-)) And while I’m being “warts and all” honest, I don’t want my son’s father back, either. I don’t know who God would have to do the bigger work in for me to agree to take him back – him (because of the fact that he’s totally turned his back on God, and practically ignores Teddy) or me (because emotional and verbal abuse are just as damaging as physical abuse, but it’s not as noticeable when you’re in the situation because the scars it leaves aren’t visible). Yes, I believed with every fiber of my being that my marriage nearly 12-1/2 years ago was ordained by God’s hand, I just don’t know that I could accept him back into my life as someone I can make feel special, loved and wanted; trust lost takes a lo-oooo-ong time to gain back, especially when he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong and/or worthy of needing forgiving, so is therefore not doing anything towards re-building said trust. (I’ll step off the emotional soap-box now instead of going on, and on, etc, ad nauseam….)

Even back in junior high, I can remember begging God to please let me feel His touch in some tangible way, to somehow know I’m special and loved and wanted, and I guess, honestly, that’s what this post, right here, right now, is all about. I want to feel special, loved, and wanted – by somebody who is not related to me by blood. Was that wrong of me  all those years ago, to have that be my heart’s desire? I don’t know. I know that yes, now, it is wrong to desire this from someone other than my son’s father while we are still married. But I also know God knows my heart; nothing is hidden from Your eyes. Forgive me, Father, for sinning, because I want something I cannot have. Thank you for friends like Lacey and her husband, whose marriage and family situation give me hope that maybe, just maybe, it’s something I cannot have right now, that there is someone special You have for my future who will make me feel special, loved, and wanted, and to whom I can return those feelings as well.

So please, God, help me be content in the state I’m in – the state of “un-divorce,” the state of being a single mom struggling to do my best while living with my mom, the state of recovery from back surgery and preparing to go back to college full-time, the state of an almost 33-year old woman with God-given desires that cannot be fulfilled without sinning against You, my body, or the man to whom I am still married. I know all about the emotional hell that is experienced when you discover your spouse has committed adultery – the earthquake, nuclear explosion, volcanic eruption, tornado/whorl-wind, world-falling-off-its-axis all at once feeling, and I refuse to do that to even him.

Help me, God. You promise I can do all things in Your strength, and I know I cannot be content without relying solely on You and in You. In Jesus name I pray – Amen

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13 NKJV