Night Shift provides a lot of time alone with your thoughts. While the rest of the world sleeps you find yourself awake and searching for something, anything to fill the loneliness or the boredom. I have not been adjusting well, which has probably been obvious. I don't know if it's the feeling of laziness or the lack of productivity or just being female but I had a bit of meltdown tonight with my best friend. As usual I more than likely over exaggerated, in my head, the gravity of what I was feeling, but nonetheless I felt overcome. It wasn't really anything specific but more general in nature. I have started to date again and I feel it is opening up things in my heart that I thought I had dealt with or closed, but those sneaky little wounds seem to reopen without much warning. Let me just start off by saying, I am horrible at dating. I don't do well with knowing the appropriate boundaries in newly developing relationship, because my entire personality is about all or nothing. I don't downshift very well or even shift at all. Even after years of counseling I find myself struggling with wether or not I even feel it's necessary to be different then who I am by default. It feels more like a game, and I am no good at that game. I want what's easy, and if it is easy I want it all the time. I'm simple in that regard. I can almost hear my friends chuckling to themselves as they read this, knowing exactly what I mean. So, how is dating going? It's depressing. I'm not really sure what "chemistry" is based upon but I know immediately if I feel it and if I don't I can't ever create it. I know there a lot of girls in my boots. We don't want to be alone, we want a family, but we also can't settle. I left a date the other night and I just began to sob in my car. All at once it hit me that this might just not happen for me again. I had a husband. I experienced the love that takes work and the reality of how difficult "unconditional" really is. That might have been my go around and the Lord quite possibly may have a completely different season in store. I think I have been trying to create it on my own because I thought I had it and it was amazing, and then it wasn't. I wanted that back. I wanted him back, and he wanted someone else. These wounds run deep. Probably all the way back to the garden. I'm not enough, I fail, I disappoint and I fall short regularly. What we are all searching for is for someone to say, even still, you are worth it and I will love you. I have that in the Lord. I want it in a man, I wanted it in this particular man, but that's not my story. I have different story. My tantrum tonight was about wanting a piece of the "joy" pie, and feeling shafted by God. I then started thinking about all my friends and their situations and I started feeling like all christians were getting shafted. I meditated on all those suffering with chronic illness, poverty, tragedy and relational devastation and my heart began to ache.  Oh satan, so sly in his dealings with us. I called my friend and I asked her to pray for me and I am just so thankful to have friends like her. She reminded me of this life being but a vapor, and to stay heavenly minded, she also talked about the grace and the mercy God has allotted us to endure. It's amazing how the truth does set you free. You can be drowning in your woes and then your heart gains perspective, you gain Christ and you are renewed. I don't know how those without Him as their hope survive. As we continued talking we started imagining a different story a bigger story. Maybe I will be in a orphanage and I can love without reserve without hesitation. All rules of engagement are cast away and I can give and that in of itself with give back. I got excited. I forgot about him not choosing me, and realized I am chosen and I can show others they are too. Thank you Lord for the fellowship of the body and friends that protect us from ourselves.

Survival creates within us an ability to endure far past what we thought ourselves capable. It blinds our minds and emotions so that one foot can be placed in front of the other  so insanity doesn't ensue. It's after the dust settles and during a time of peace that the beasts that have been so quiet within, awaken.

Complete Candor.....what am I wanting to risk, and why? Potentially I want wholeness and for my heart's thoughts and words to maybe....just maybe.... reach someone else. So here it is...

I felt hatred today. Stone cold hatred. This is super unusual for me because I have like a fifteen second rebound rate. My childhood developed within me an ability to believe and hope against all circumstance and trauma for the "just around the corner" break I knew had to come. If I didn't believe then I would have crumbled under the sorrow.  So I endure. I endure because I have taught myself too hope even in the hopeless. I built an entire identity on this and became the friend, the girlfriend, the wife that hoped against all logic for the good of man to prevail. It even felt super Christian like and gave me a sense of uniqueness I so desperately craved. It wasn't until my failed marriage that I realized that it was just a fancy way of being a codependent and I really had no idea how to love someone rightly. Unfortunately, this realization came after my heart had suffered an incredible amount of disappointment and loss. The anger and the hatred isn't about my past it's about my future, I feel robbed of the ability to trust. I want to blame someone, or something. I want someone to value what I suffered, but I feel that it might have been for no one's benefit. Not even my own. It's just the combination of a bunch of fucked up people doing what they have learned and been taught to do to survive. I want to hate my dad for not fighting harder for me as his daughter, but instead I think about what he must feel and the hurt he has had to swallow. I want to hate the man that swore to love me for forever but instead shattered my heart with his fist and his pride, but instead I ache for his own lack of example and the loneliness he has known since childhood. Who assumes responsibility for all of this? Is it God? Is He to blame? Is it Satan, the evilness of man? Is it just the wages of sin? Maybe a combination, I'm not sure, but the dust has settled and I feel the raging within. Who will fight my heart? Who will fight for me?

Giving thanks always for all things unto God. Ephesians 5: 20

I'm not really sure what "relationship" with God really means. Does He talk with us outside of the Bible? I don't know. How do we have a relationship with someone we only have one way conversations with? I don't doubt the existence of God and Christ, or even His sacrifice for me, but I struggle with believing in the intimacy between us. Obedience is commanded and rightly so; after all, He is God the creator and I am the created. I just cannot get my mind around what He wants with me relationally. I'm a firm believer that pain and suffering are gifts that He gives to build our character and our perseverance but what does He mean when He says "plans to prosper you, and not harm you, to give you a future and a hope"? I find my hopes often dashed and and my prosperity minimal. I know that most of this is based upon perspective. Of course I am blessed and I have a lot to be thankful for in comparison to so many. I try to hold on to this and really maintain a sense of contentment but my humanity often wins out and I feel sad for wanting more. I feel disappointed that my "christian" marriage fell apart and that I couldn't make it work, I feel sad that I am alone and without children and I'm frustrated that I haven't used my singleness as an opportunity to live whole heartedly for God. I some how feel entitled to His voice if He isn't going to give me the desires of my heart. I feel He owes me a "relationship". My brain can conclude that this is craziness, but my heart is relentless. How can He be 'All that I need' if what I need is a best friend, a lover and a dad? I opened up my devotional book yesterday and I was thinking about all of this and the Lord's 'answer' to me....Ephesians 5:20.

"Giving Thanks ALWAYS for all things unto GOd."

Regardless if I understand it or even believe whole heartedly, all things are Father filtered, and I have to trust in His kindness and love despite my feelings and my longings. This is the call of faith. It's often a battle within me, but I have learned that there is nothing else on earth worth holding on to or fighting for more.

Bittersweet

Sundays are bittersweet. Worshiping the Lord is one of the most incredible things we get to experience here on earth. My whole body is consumed by His love and for a brief time I forget about myself, and all the things that fade, and I'm in the presence of Glory. It truly is magical. The muddy waters my mind normally travels through become clear and I see how it suppose to be. My body responds almost without thought and all of me feels propelled to a place of complete surrender. I realize then how much I miss Him and want to be with Him and how no other place even compares. I wish each week that church wouldn't end and I could just be frozen there in His presence, but week after week the message comes and the service ends and I'm forced back into this world.  I come home to my empty house and I am just sad. I'm lonely for home. I'm weary of struggle, evil and the distance that my humanity creates. In my last entry I talked about how I once thought God wasn't enough, but the truth is that nothing else is enough and I can't have Him the way I want Him. I want Him the way He created me to want Him...always and without ceasing. Sometimes I am convinced my greatest wish is to be able to let  all that is... me....go. In the christian "ease" it's called dying to self. It so hard to die to yourself. I just want to be killed. As ridiculous as it sounds, i laugh through my tears because I realize how crazy it is to say. I just have this ache, and the only way I can describe it is a broken heart. I want heaven. I see now how Mary broke the bottle of perfume over Jesus' feet and wiped it with her hair. She looked as silly as I feel I'm sure, but girls in love act silly and say strange things. I pray that I would resist the urge to find solice in compromise and perserverance to hold on to what for sure will be.

  

My mind has been saturated with this message today. I can't stop thinking about the reality of it's truth in my own life. Yesterday I had some friends call me out about a sin pattern in my life and I wanted so desperately to argue my character and reputation but I didnt have a leg to stand on. They love me and weren't being hard on me they were just being honest. It stung! I want to feel "good enough" and I turn to anything other than Jesus to find it. Each time I experience regret and shame and yet I fall again and again. I remember calling a friend once, while I was married, and she asked me if Jesus was enough for me and I answered no. I could not imagine, at the time, Him providing me strength to endure, worth, value and peace admist my circumstances. I still struggle trusting in His goodness and love for me.  I have a hard time trusting anyone to love me. It's easy to love others. There are always people in need and looking for someone to care. It is much more difficult to trust someone to love you. Once you allow them a place.... what then? What happens if you grow to rely on them or you get comfortable and then it is taken away? I find myself even holding back with my creator. I don't want to need Him so much because it feels so vulnerable and terrifying.....my heart and my are reeling.