Month: March 2015

Lucy – My First Step to Independence

If you have read my last post, you know that my life has recently been turned upside down. My husband and I are in the midst of a divorce to end our 25 year relationship, and I am living with my 22 year old son. Nothing in my life is recognizable as even similar to what my life was a year ago or even six months ago.

In the last few years, my husband has been very controlling. Everything was his way or no way. I was unable to please him in any way, and years ago I gave up trying to please him at all. I should not have given up. Doing so did not help our marriage but, more importantly, it did not help me. I became accustomed to failing as a wife and being criticized daily. I stopped trying to succeed as a wife because I could never please him in any way. I was always wrong and was never truly allowed to make any decisions or freely express an opinion on anything without some form of backlash.

Enough with the past…Let’s move forward to the present. I feel a peace at my son’s house that I have never felt before. There is no drama. There is no arguing. There is nothing to create stress. It is truly amazing to experience true peace for the first time in nearly 43 years of life, but peace does not travel alone. Peace pairs with quiet. My son’s job requires that he works out of town for a week or two at a time. When he is gone, his house is quiet, too quiet. It is so quiet that I feared the depression I have fought for many years and only recently walked out of would return.

I don’t like being alone. I don’t like sleeping alone. I don’t like having no one to talk to or watch a movie with on the evenings when my son is out of town. I wanted Hank. Hank is a half English mastiff and half great dane we got for my daughter two years ago. My daughter loves him dearly and has worked with him so much that he is a perfect gentle giant in whatever environment she takes him to. Hank loves and respects my daughter, but Hank chose me as a friend. I don’t know why, but he has always been very attached to me. I missed him and wanted to bring him to my son’s house to live with me, but I knew my daughter would be devastated. I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t hurt her any more than this divorce is already doing, but I missed Hank so much that I cried frequently about him.

As soon as I moved in with my son, he started suggesting that he should get a puppy since he had me to take care of it while he worked out of town. I have told him numerous times that I was not going to take care of a puppy because I had too much going on right now. Then I realized I needed a companion and a puppy seemed like an excellent idea, so after five weeks of telling my son, “No, we cannot get a puppy,” I called my son and asked him if I could get a puppy. He immediately told me I could and then teased me about my complete reversal.

I decided I was going to get the dog I always wanted but my husband always told me I could not have. I wanted a harlequin great dane puppy. I searched online and found the exact puppy I wanted. It was within my price range and seemed too good to be true. I was so excited…until I found out it really was too good to be true. It was a scam. I was devestated. I was finally making my first big decision for my own happiness without having to answer to my husband, but that decision fell apart. I cried that evening because I felt like my entire world had been turned upside down and God must have been punishing me by making one more thing go against me. I was so very wrong.

My best friend knew how sad I was about the puppy. I didn’t know she was spending the entire evening trying to find me a great dane until she called me to tell me she found one. It was not a puppy. It was a 2 year old female, rather than the male puppy I wanted and I was very skeptical. I didn’t think I was going to like the dog but I contacted the owners. Not only was she not the age nor gender I wanted, she was also not a harlequin marked dane. My son suggested we drive to Georgia and at least meet the dog. I really didn’t think there was a chance that she was a dog I would want…but then I met her.

Lucy did not fit any of the criteria I had set in place for the dog I wanted, but God knew what I needed. I had prayed frequently that He would give me the puppy that I wanted, but He answered those prayers with a firm, “No.” Instead, He gave me Lucy. Lucy is so much like Hank that it is almost like he is here with me. She has his personality, his mannerisms, his size, his habits… She is absolutely precious. It took only moments for Lucy to win my love.

I’m sure you have heard that country song that says, “I thank God for unanswered prayers.” That is how I feel about Lucy. She is an amazing companion. She is happy and energetic and likes to snuggle on the couch and sit in your lap, though she sits taller on the couch than I do. She will sit beside me and watch movies. She even sleeps in my waterbed with me most nights and has only put one hole in it. I could never have found a more perfect companion than Lucy. If God had given me what I wanted instead of what He gave me, I would have missed out on His blessing, because Lucy is truly a blessing from God.

Shifting From the Winds to the Eye of the Storm

Have you ever lived in a geographic location where you have to deal with the threat of possible hurricanes?  The weather guy has made his prediction that it’s a category 2 now but may strengthen and make landfall as a category 4 in the next 24 to 48 hours.  Should you run to the store and stock up on bread and bottled water?  Should you go to the nearest gas station and fill your vehicles and multiple gas cans…just in case?  Should you evacuate and hope everything is still standing when the storm is over?  Should you just stay put and not worry about anything because these things usually end up proving to be much less than predicted?

In recent months, I have found that my life has almost always consisted of preparations for the next “hurricane,” but in the last few years I have not been preparing as I should.  It took the most recent hurricane for me to realize just how ill-prepared I really am.  Four weeks ago, I moved out.  I left my husband whom I have been with for the last 25 years, and I am now living with my 22 year old son.  I was not really prepared for this hurricane at all.  At first, I thought the storm would completely blow over and dissipate as real hurricanes often do.  I was wrong.  The hurricane force winds are still blowing all around me as they have done for years, but one thing is very different.  I don’t feel those winds.  I am sitting comfortably in the eye of the storm.  I can see the winds, but they can’t touch me unless I allow myself to shift from the eye of the storm back into the actual storm itself.

Every day I spend out of the winds makes me realize a little more just how hard and how long they have been blowing.  I think I have been trying to stand upright in the strongest of hurricane winds for most of my life.  For years, I have fought to hold my life together using my own strength, but I have always known my own strength would never be enough.  I have always known that God was the only One strong enough to hold anything together, but I have consistently fought giving Him control.  Oh, I say all the right things: “I have given everything in this situation to God and will accept whatever He does to fix it.”  In reality, I may give it to Him, but I keep my grip firmly on one little corner and eventually pull the whole situation, no matter what it is, back on my own shoulders which have proven time and again to be too weak to carry the burden.

I am a fixer by nature.  I fix other peoples’ problems all the time.  I have many people who come to me at the first indication of a problem and ask for my advice and help.  I’ve been told I give good advice.  I help everyone else prepare for whatever hurricane they are living through, but when it comes to my own hurricanes I have consistently found myself ill-prepared.  I know where I need to go for hurricane provisions, but I have avoided gathering those provisions because I was afraid I would not find the answers I wanted mixed in with the bread and bottled water.  I was terrified that I would read Scripture and pray and realize that God never wanted me where I was and definitely wanted me elsewhere.  I have been terrified for a very long time, I think because I have known for a very long time that God did not want me to have ever stepped into the path of these particular winds.  I walked right into these hurricane force winds on my own and begged God to calm the storm.  Of course, He would calm the storm because He does not condone divorce, right?

God did not calm the storm.  He did not stop the winds.  He did not provide any way to survive in the storm.  Instead, He gave me numerous opportunities to walk out of the storm on my own, but I ignored those opportunities.  I was stubborn and stayed just to prove I could and used Scripture in the wrong way in order to excuse my bad decision.  I should have left at year two, at year five and at year twenty, but I didn’t.  I waited until twenty-five years were spent trying to stand in winds that no one can truly stand in.  For now, I will live my life in the eye where the winds cannot touch me.  I will use the hurricane provisions that God has generously supplied and remember, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13)”