Brave Little Gerda Faces the Cutting Winds

[Gerda]

I am guessing that these feelings are relatively new, in that you have not been feeling these for years and years. I could be way off base, however that is the premise I’m going with.

DnJ

Well, no. I was just explaining something to Gordie because of his description of my situation -- with me as a saint of some kind and my H as a Pharisee screaming to crucify me.

What I was trying to say is that I am no saint and don't want to be a martyr. That I am tempted as much as the next girl -- maybe even as much as my H was -- at least in response to his breaking my heart. I am the most faithful and loving lady around, when I am loved back. I remember even telling my H once when things started slipping that my love was conditional, that I couldn't love him if he didn't love me back, as it hurt too much. God had other plans for me; He wanted me to learn to love unconditionally. When I first was doing the Love Dare, after BD, and getting rejected over and over and over, I remember very clearly one day after some monstrous response from my H being hit suddenly with the thought, Oh, that is what Christ is. Loving even when all you get back is hate. That hit me like a bolt. It's what made me want to be a Christian.

It is not easy for me to choose to stand and be faithful, especially because this stand just keeps stretching out longer and longer. But I feel the call from God so powerfully and so inescapably that I have no choice but to listen. I understand that being called by God will include a very heavy cross and that I may be crucified upon it.

I know God loves me in my sorrow -- and that he loves me as I am now, with my battles against temptations of all kinds, from anger to bitterness to despair to paralysis to chocolate to thoughts of other men. I don't think that I can just wait for those feelings to pass until the real me comes. I know that I am incapable of fighting them alone. My courage is in going to God with all of those things and ask him to take them away. I could never do it on my own will. I can barely resist a milk dud. I just feel the call from God very powerfully and I can't ignore it. I ask God for help and He always prevents me from walking too far down those paths, always in a way that I would never have thought of myself.

You know, I never liked drinking or drugs because I grew up in a pill popping and drinking house and I thought it was really ugly. I like to have control of my mind. But I smoked for many years and I picked it up again at BD. Smoking all that first year after BD was part of how I got myself back, in some weird way. But I stopped, never to do it again when I got cancer.