Easter Epiphany

I have been thinking a lot about relationships and my emotional patterns having to do with them, lately... as I've pretty much been forced to, but also because I am determined to change them. After an amazing, wonderful Easter church service and potluck today, I felt something on my heart that needed to come out, and one of the things that helps me process feelings or just de-stress is taking a walk. So, with it being such a beautiful day, I did. And it was UH-mazing. God totally blessed me with a breakthrough and epiphany about the whole subject and challenge I have been facing.

I kind of mentally worked my way backwards through a series of questions, looking for connections to why things have always seemed to go a certain way for me in romantic relationships and looking for answers to questions. Instead of working my way backwards now (which is really more confusing), I'll work my way forwards so I give you the summary.

Basically, my question was: why do I always choose to date guys who don't love the Lord wholeheartedly?

And here's what I traced it all back to: My missing sense of self, a missing sense of true love, and a missing sense of worth.

When I was a child, my dad never really praised and affirmed me that much - causing my sense of self to be under-developed. Additionally, I never felt a wholehearted love from him. It always felt like He was living more for himself than for me, evidenced by him leaving my family when my parents separated. I always have seen it as him leaving ME, leaving us. It was heartbreaking. He pursued his better job and lifestyle, pursued other women. When he finally got remarried, he was always using dialogue about doing what made him happy. He favored his wife over me when she was mistreating me. He allowed me to be mistreated. My siblings and I are not even allowed to visit his home, because all he wants is peace, and somehow peace was not something that was ever present in the relationship with our step-mother. Again, prioritizing his needs.

So when I came of age to start dating, I was missing two major things: a sense of true love, (and usually the love of a father is pretty darn true) and an established sense of self - AND a sense of worth (I mean, my dad did leave me and my family...how could that have possibly made us feel about ourselves? Unworthy). I was already a Christian, but I was still young in my faith, and these scars had already been worked deep inside me. So I started looking for all of these things in dating relationships, looking to find them in and from guys. Instead of having the confidence and maturity to wait for a God-loving and God-fearing guy, I was so needy that I rushed into all the relationships that came my way, and they always left me hurt and more damaged than before.

I gave myself away sexually, and that, combined with never waiting for a Godly guy and dating non-Christians (which is frowned upon in the Bible and in the Christian culture), I began believing that I was unworthy of the kind of guy I truly dreamed of dating and marrying. So I started settling, because I started telling myself that was just my lot in my life that I had to accept. That I just wasn't the kind of girl that was going to get a Godly guy, the kind of guy I really wanted. That's another reason I didn't wait for a Godly guy to come along.

(when Satan gets a foothold, he really gets in good.)

When Stephen (my soon to be ex-husband) came along, he promised me everything I'd ever been wanting from a guy. Deep, lasting commitment and whole-hearted love, devotion, and exceptional treatment. So I fell head first and signed my life over to him. But then I got burned more badly than I ever had, and I was treated worse than I ever had been. I swore to myself that I would never date another non-Christian and that I would never repeat my unhealthy dating pattern again.

Unfortunately, deep-set emotional patterns are hard to undo and it takes a lot of work and time. It takes a lot of work and time to eradicate all of satan's lies that I've believed so completely for so many years.

Fortunately, my experience with Stephen has made me too afraid to enter another relationship that God is not the center of completely, because now I know how disastrous it is and will always be. Now I know that the feelings a guy has for me need to be rooted in God, and so do my feelings for him, and our relationship as a whole, completely. God is the center of EVERYTHING.

Now I know my task that lies ahead. I must re-establish my identity, and it needs to be in Christ, in Christ alone and completely. And I need to find my source of true love in the Lord, because the Lord will ALWAYS love me and NEVER disappoint me. The love of a man is just icing on the cake.

Love and Hate

I don't like the period of absorbing the conquences for your mistakes.

I don't like reality sometimes. I don't like it when you wish something was meant to be, but God tells you it's not. I know He has his reasons, His reasons are perfect, His will for you is best, and when you obey it, you will ultimately find more peace and joy you could have ever found or made for yourself. But accepting that something you desire to be right is not is very hard. Which has led me to be a repeat offender of some of the mistakes I had previously made... but not this time. Because once and for all I have recognized my patterns, and I am confident that with God's faithful help, they will be brought to an end.

I hate hurting someone's feelings through my mistakes. I hate hurting people I care about.

I hate that sometimes, when you know you're doing the right thing, someone else might not agree or maybe just can't see it, and therefore they still hurt or hurt worse, even though you deeply wish to take that pain away and regret causing it in the first place.

I hate it when other people don't have any confidence or faith in your decisions, don't trust you. Just think you're doing something wrong, even though you know you're doing something right. It kind of hurts, because it feels like they don't have faith in me period, because I'm not doing what that person thinks I should. I don't like the pain of having to live with that, because there's really nothing you can do to change their mind. But I hate the fact that that scenario exists really only because you made the mistake in the first place and hurt them pretty badly.

But I love knowing that I am doing the Lord's will. I love the peace that obeying the Lord's will brings. I love the comfort and joy the future brings, the hope that is promised by obedience, the blessings that are promised in obedience. I love knowing that even though I'm experiencing some pain, I will be blessed with joy in the future that far exceeds my expectations. I love that God's joy is better than anything else on this earth. I love that God's wisdom is greater than my own, and God's plans better than anything I could ever plan. I love knowing that even when you have messed up so badly that you think you can never recover, be successful, be blessed, or be happy, you are never without hope - God's arms ALWAYS welcome you back, and I love that with repentance, God is always quick to forgive and restore you to full and true life.

I just love GOD. And I love the life that God gives... I love that He was gracious enough to bless us with it, and I love that heaven's going to be unequivocally better. I love that He loves me, and loves me no matter what. I love that He welcomes me back no matter how big my mistakes, how often, how repetitive - every time. I love that with God, I'll never be alone. I'll never be without hope. I'll never be without what I need. I'll never be unloved.

When I was a child and teen going through my bleakest years of life - years filled with so much darkness and pain, I thought I would never see the end - God was my only source of hope, and I clung to him with every breath. And always, in the quiet times, in the night or in my despair - He would ALWAYS whisper to me, "It's going to be ok."

It's ALWAYS going to be ok.

One More

How do you deal with problems head on, when you have somehow developed the habit of running away from them?

Spiritual Questions

I have a million life/spiritual questions running through my head lately...

How do you maintain a close relationship with God? I know the pat answers of spending time in the Word and prayer... but how, throughout your day, when you can't sit down to read the Bible and pray?

How does an emotionally-controlled person break those habits in order to become mind/logic controlled?

How do you break sin patterns?

How do you break unhealthy emotional patterns?

How do you stop unintentionally not thinking things through before you do them?

How do you stop unintentionally not considering other people's feelings and negative consequences before you act?

How do you surrender something to God, when, even though you've tried, and said you surrender to Him over and over again, somehow it feels like you haven't truly done that... what's the missing step?

How do you truly CHANGE?

How do you keep your focus on God when other relationships are also vying for your attention?

Ugh, feels like I'm trying to solve world hunger. lol. This might take a while.

Long Time, No See

Yeah, I haven't been here in a while. Life has resumed being incredibly busy - but then again, when it wasn't, I was incredibly depressed, so as overwhelmed as I might be sometimes, I would rather it be this way. I'm thankful to have a healthy social life, a job, a church, and to be progressing with dreams and plans for my future as God decides to bless them.

My life has been filled with amazing blessings since I've been back in CO. I've established and re-established friendships with amazing people, I was blessed with a new engine in my car that I didn't have to pay a penny for, I was blessed with the perfect job that is making me very happy (and paying my bills and benefiting my health!), I've had quality time just being single and loved and cared for.... I've had a renewed and deeper closeness with the Lord.

But as I'm becoming fully integrated into life again, I'm reminded of how hard it is to maintain a close relationship with God on a daily basis. I'm reminded of how hard it is to hear His voice sometimes. I'm reminded of the things I need to work on spiritually. I'm reminded to not lose my priorities. That God is the only One I should be dependent on, that nothing is worth giving up the joy and peace of the Lord for. The reality though is that it is just HARD when you are doing work, school, church, and socializing, not to mention all of the mundane things of life like remembering to pay bills on time...

These past couple of weeks have found me losing touch with God a bit as I've become so busy again... It's just starting to get to me, because that's not the way I want to be, or want my relationship with God to be. It had gotten so close in the weeks after I came back to CO and was experiencing so much blessing. I still am experiencing so many blessings, and I'm so thankful for that and I praise the Lord for that. That is certainly his great mercy and kindness. I just don't want to lose my connection with him, and I'm just reminded this week of how vital it is and how I need to be putting in more effort to do that. A relationship with God is the most important thing anyone can ever have, and the one thing that should never get ignored... I guess I'm just missing him a little today! I'm dedicating as much time as I can to Him tonight, and hopefully waking up early tomorrow morning to start a new routine in which my time with Him is first in my day.