Hi, Kaycie. I understand how you feel where your daughter is concerned. All I can say is pick your battles carefully. Kids need structure and loving guidance AND the fun and cuddly stuff. Even if it was imperfect, there was a time you and your husband complemented one another when it came to raising the kids. Now that you are separated, things are askew. Just don't forget that even though the duties and perks of parenting are off balance and even unfair now, the things you instilled in them when they were little will prevail.
That's when I signed the separation agreement and began planning to move out of the house with S. H was to move back in the house with D, who chose to live with him.
In the days that followed the signing of that agreement, I went to see my Pastor and his wife on a couple different occasions. I even got the keys to the church that Friday night and laid myself and that stupid agreement on the altar for quite some time.
Although I have planned to go a few times, I have never gone back to church since then. The Pastor's wife called me and emailed me, other members contacted me. I had however, planted both feet firmly in the world because I was angry with God and couldn't imagine things could get any worse simply because I wasn't warming a pew every Sunday. Besides, I prayed still, right? Still knew the scriptures? Yeah. They faded though as did my faith. I have still learned new lessons, sure. But that's just evidence God never took His hand off of me even when I turned my back on Him. That's what it was. You can talk the talk and not walk the walk and you can do it for a very long time. That has been me. Increasingly, my mind has become tainted by the things of the world, the people of the world. It wasn't like I didn't think about Jesus. I thought of Him every single day. But over time, He became kind of like a friend that had moved away. We became more and more distant. I knew in my soul He wasn't the one that moved. I just wasn't ready to address the reasons that I did.
Thankfully, even when walking outside of His will it is still possible to receive revelation knowledge. There have been many moments in which I have. Nothing than turned me back, though. One time back in the fall, my husband even begged me to go back to church. All that did was make the anger surface, though. I knew I wasn't going back yet. But perhaps the anger bubbling up was a foreshadowing...I don't know.
What I do know is I have been broken in an even deeper manner than when I came out of MLC and realized all the damage I had done. Yes, I had previously been in church and I did possess all the spiritual tools that were required to face my husband as well as other members of my family and say that I had been wrong (that's the "short version" if I ever heard one!). I had a scriptural basis from I drew hard and deep and it enabled me to stand. Ya'll have seen the rest of that process. Certainly not a cakewalk. I have felt much of my husband's own pain which was caused by me and that's a hard pill to swallow. The guilt and remorse alone have the power to devastate the newly awake and aware post-MLCer. It's not the biggest one though. The biggest is the one I'm facing now. Isolation and the absolute inability to reach my husband and the fact that I am able to do so little regarding my daughter (I'm not talking about D&D right now). I can not enter the house at all. His reaction to me the other night told me that when I asked if I could take down the tree. Understood. I will not go in and I have been over there 4 or 5 times this weekend and I just wait for D12 in my car. I know when I see a battle that isn't mine and this one, except where it has a direct impact on D12, is not my battle.
Today I had the rare pleasure of being able to shock both of my children. First was this morning when I opened my son's bedroom door fully dressed and announced I was going to church. I think I saw relief in eyes along with the surprise. I don't intend to make any fuss right now about him going with me. This is me that's being called back. The second was after I left church and called my daughter. We had spent yesterday looking for a pair of gym shorts for her but couldn't find anything appropriate. I called to tell her if she wanted I would pick her up in an hour and we'd try somewhere else. She asked me where I was. I said "I just left church". She was quiet for a minute and then she said "Really? You went back to church, Mom?" I said "Yes." Her silence told me she was shocked and I dare say maybe it made her feel good. Both the kids remember going. We went for a long time. We loved the people there. My son looked up to our Pastor and we knew him and his family well.
I took my son to the library for homework purposes and then we picked up D12, bought her shorts, went to the laundromat, then went back to her house where she picked up the ferret and we brought him back to the apartment. He had a ball running up and down the steps here! I took her back home at 5:30. I've pretty much had her with me all weekend. That's the only time I sense real peace...but still, something is missing. SomeONE. My husband.
Sheesh Amy.... I was wondering what all the thunder was about earlier today as the sky's grew dark and an odd kinda warm breeze came through for January...... that's what it was.... AmyC went back to church!!!!
HAHAHAHA..... hey, I couldn't resist. Seriously tho... I am very thankful you made that step.... and I know HE is doin' a happy dance!!!
One foot in front of the other girlie...
Psa 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Very interesting..........today in my Sunday school class our discussion was on Luke 2:41-52. Read it ......then come back to my comments.
Most people's question after reading this passage is "How could they have left Jesus behind and not known He was gone?" A few interesting points here........
Jesus' words in verse 49 are His earliest recorded words.
I read an interesting take on this passage. Rather than the normal question that people ask after reading this.......think about this question?
How many times have WE left Jesus behind for a day, or a week, or a month, or a year? When we finally come back to Him don't we normally ask something like "Where have you been? Why did you leave me?
His response to us is always virtually the same as His response to His mother. "I never left. I have been here all along. It is you who left me."
I'm not sure yet where this is going but I am reviewing:
July 2, 2007:
Quote:
All the little spats over the last few months in which the anger (sometimes on BOTH sides) seemed more than the situation called for, all the little arguments over D11 and such, they've been like little fuses, lit but fizzling out, but the fuses have gotten shorter and shorter, closer to the explosive, which is the REAL ROOT of it all. Today I was remembering the argument we had a few weeks before school got out. The one D11 overheard, the one where he told me to leave but when we saw her standing there he asked her if she understood why were arguing and he said "it's not because we don't love you or because we don't love each other"... and then I explained to her how we both had different ideas of how to best help her (with her school problems) etc....etc...that was as close, and it was SCARY, as we have come to a major blowup that I know would have crossed all boundaries as far as the issues. But because both kids were in the house, it was neutralized. At the height of that argument he yelled at me "WHY DON'T YOU JUST LEAVE?!" and I said "No. I'm NEVER leaving AGAIN!" When I finally left later that night, we were on good, solid ground. Because we fought THROUGH. He let his anger begin to show and I realized where it was coming from and I knew if I walked out, that would tell him a million times over that he couldn't ever believe in me again.
Again, July 2nd:
Quote:
....a few weeks ago he played this song for me and told me it had "a hell of a message"
I Never Dreamed
My daddy told me always be strong son Don't you ever cry You find the pretty girls and then you love them Then you say goodbye I never dreamed that you would leave me But now you're gone I never dreamed that I would miss you Woman won't you come back home
I never dreamed that you could hurt me And leave me blue I've had a thousand, maybe more But never one like you I never dreamed I could feel so empty But now I'm down I never dreamed that I would beg you Woman I need you now
It seems to me I took your love for granted It feels to me that this time I was wrong, so wrong Oh Lord now I feel so lonely I say woman won't you come back home
I tried to do what my daddy taught me But I think he knew Someday that I would find one woman like you I never dreamed that it could feel so good, Lord That two could be one I never knew about sweet love So woman won't you come back home Oh baby won't you come back home
I might be overshooting here and I am going to have to review more of the last several months - and pray - before I can say for sure but I think...I THINK...we might have just managed to work our way bassackwards to the original battle...which was preempted by my MLC...
Amy, I have to wonder if he is having some serious self-worth issues. There seems to be nothing prosperous that he can cling to.... and it would seem that the alcohol numbs the pain of it all. Nothing you can do or say is going to make the change for him.... I know you know that.... just re-iterating.
Please don't let your focus get all caught up in his problem. Work on Amy... her relationship with God, our father and that will trickle blessedly to your children and others around you. Most definately continue prayer for Jeff.... but keep your eyes trained on Jesus not the circumstance.
Psa 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
I know my task, LnF. Thank you, though. I do have a tendency to get caught up in the battle and forget about myself and my own relationship with God, which has to be continuously fostered. I'm never going to have "arrived". I have to keep in constant walk beside Him not running ahead. Doing that has cost me, by my best calculations, a year and possibly even the entire last year and a half if you count the part where he told me he wanted the SA. That's where I lost it. No need in rehashing, but I made this a longer walk than it needed to be for myself. I can't even pray effectively for Jeff until I myself am back in total right standing with God. That's what I'm working on now. But there is a reason for my review as well and I deem that a blessing. It gives me hope. My hope has changed, though. I just want my family saved, safe and sound. Like it or not, it's on me to keep them at the foot of the cross. I do long to see the day my husband would step up though. I'd love to be second in command so to speak, as far as the spiritual aspects of the family are concerned. It's going to be a long time til then but it doesn't hurt to imagine it. Gotta believe it before you can see it...something is different now. I don't know how to explain what I mean by that just yet. I stood up after those first two weeks out of the MLC tunnel with both guns blazin' and I maintained that stamina for many, many months. It was extremely taxing on me, I see now. Then I walked away from my only Source of peace. That really became painfully clear to me when I went back to the office the Wednesday after Christmas. My boss had received a poinsetta from a client and in the 4 days no one was there, it was virtually all dried up except for a few red leaves at the tallest point. I took that poinsetta into the kitchen and watered it. Some of the leaves were falling off from the slightest movement. Others though, stayed attached even though they appeared also completely brown and withered. Over the course of the day as I was in and out of the kitchen, I watched the process of those leaves one might have previously chalked up to being dead. At 5pm, I touched one of the shriveled up leaves and it was moist. I looked real closely at it and there was a line of red running through the center vein. I thought to myself about all the ones that fell off when I began to water it. I thought "if only they'd have clinged to the vine...". The spiritual implications of that was not lost to me and it hit me like a ton of bricks because I knew I was like those leaves, barely clinging...and one more move could have knocked me right outta the running so to speak but maybe just maybe if I was "watered"...thus pretty much began my personal 180 .
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