It was meant to be...

“Fate is never fair. You are caught in a current much stronger than you are; struggle against it and you'll drown not just yourself but those who try to save you. Swim with it. and you'll survive”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes

"It was meant to be..."  My daughter told me this tonight.  If I had a dollar for every time I heard a well-meaning person tell me this, at least half my troubles would disappear.

The first time I really remember hearing it was when I lost the baby.  Five years of trying and all my hopes were wrenched out of me along with her body.  I always think of her as a girl although I will never know as I was only twelve weeks along.  "There was probably something wrong with it, so it's probably for the best" one friend said.  "Everything happens for a reason" said another.   So many people with such good intentions.  Little did they know that every time felt like another stab to my soul.  "God has a purpose, so this is meant to be" said a third.  There - they pulled out the God card.  This couldn't just be an accident.  God caused it to happen so that makes everything OK.  Like it would take some of the pain out of the situation somehow if I knew that God wanted me to lose my baby.  

Lately I have heard these "words of encouragement" entirely too much since Wayne left.  What makes it so much harder for me is knowing that God brought him into my life.  Well, that's what we always told each other.  If this is true, than God ripped him right out of it as well.  I've been struggling with this thought for months.  Why would he take him out of my life?  Am I being punished for something I did?  I must have some really bad karma coming back my way.  Is he being punished?  I think a large part of my depression stems from just not understanding this.  I look for logic in everything and this time there just doesn't seem to be any.

I've been reading a lot of books in my journey to heal and I'm beginning to realize that God probably isn't overly concerned with who I date or marry.  I'm not sure He even has a hand in matchmaking at all.  I think He essentially wants us to be happy and He wants us to be with a certain type of person so we can do amazing things to glorify Him.  If I chose Joe or Tom or Larry, as long as we do what's right and look upwards, God's going to be happy.  

If I look at the alternative, it's almost devastating.  I mean - if all of this pain was meant to be than God is really, really mad at me.  And every single time something bad happens to me I must deserve it.  I'm not perfect by any means, but I can't believe that I have been that bad. 

So, for now, I'm going to try to convince myself that this year just simply sucked.  Not because God wanted it to.  Or because I did something wrong.  It just did.  And someday, hopefully soon, the suckiness will start blowing away and life will get better again.  And I do believe God will very much be a part of the good.  But not because He thinks I deserve it finally.  But because I let Him be.  That is the one thing I can control.

Faith Revisited

"Faith isn't faith until it's all you're holding on to" ~Patrick Overton

Y'all know I've had a pretty crappy summer.  My fall isn't looking so hot yet either.  All of this has made me take a hard look back and evaluate the last three years.  

Three years ago I moved from the city I had lived in my entire adult life back home.  I quit the job I had for 17 years and I came without a job.  I moved with the job market the worst it had been since I graduated from high school to one of the cities with the least amount of potential jobs.  I packed up three kids and drove 10 hours away from everything that I knew to a city I could barely remember.  I leapt with both feet and no net knowing that God would carry us.

And He did.  I was filled with faith

Until this year.  This year, everything we had built up started crashing down.  The future we had built was ripped away.  Our support system virtually disappeared.  Our world as we knew it was turned upside down overnight.

I've spent the better part of 4 months trying to recover.  The first month just trying to find my footing.  The second month trying to crawl out of the hole I had fallen so deeply into.  The third month just being.  Being still.  Being patient.  Being a mom and an employee and attempting to be a functioning human being.  This last month I have tried to heal and figure out where to move forward. 

Now, as I'm trying to put the pieces back together, I'm having a hard time finding the path.  Every step I take seems like it's backwards.  Doors are slamming in my face left and right.  I'm a do-er, and everything I do seems to be fraught with problems.  I'm not sure at all if I'm doing this right or even if I should be doing it.

I've lost my faith.

When I moved back, faith was easy.  I had my 401k money in the bank.  No matter what, we were going to be taken care of.  My relationship with my family was good.  We had places to go if everything else failed.  The future was easy because we believed.  We just knew it was all going to turn out OK.

Now that we have been let down by people that we never expected to hurt us, faith is much harder to come by.  It's so much harder to trust when you expect to be hurt again.  It's harder to believe because dreams don't always come true.  It's harder to stick your neck out when time and time again you bang your head against another closed door.

But I realized yesterday that I am exactly where I need to be right now.  God said "Yeah, it was easy to have faith when you had everything.  Now I want you to have it when you have lost everything.  Show me just how faithful you are."  Wow.  Yeah.  I got that message loud and clear.  I have to believe that even if I lose what little we have left, He is still going to take care of us.  He will provide, even if it's not what I expect.

So,  now I will have to test just how much faith I have in God.  I will have to completely open myself up to being vulnerable and trust in whatever plans He has for our future.  I have to quit trying to be in control and let God take the wheel - He has a much better driving record anyways.  I need to go back to that cliff now that my eyes have been opened and I can see just how far away the bottom is and leap again.  No safety net.  No way to know if He will catch me this time.  It's all I have left to hold on to.  Well, here I go...

P.S.  This is the original Faith post just over three years ago.

Unwanted

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty." ~Mother Theresa

This week marks the third anniversary of my divorce.  It doesn't quite feel right to celebrate the ending of a covenant such as that.  Granted, it was necessary and the right move for us, but the thought of this makes me sad.

Yesterday I saw that a past love changed his status update to engaged.  That guy that was never going to get married again.  The one who brought me out of such a dark time.  I'm truly happy for him though.  That means he's healed.  He figured out how to finally love himself so he can now love someone else.

And last night I listened to the last voicemail I got from Wayne.  At the end of it he said "I love you."  Five days later he left.  I still can't figure out how this happened.  My love didn't fade - it's still as strong today as it was four months ago.  Broken and battered, but still there.  

But it's unwelcome.  

Unwanted.  

And that makes me feel unwanted.  

Unwanted.  Ouch.  Yeah... a failed marriage.  A discarded love.  A forgotten heart simply left behind.  They walked away and just left me standing there.

This takes me back to the nightmare class they called gym.  On dodge ball (AKA the cruelest game ever) day.  The worst.  The two coolest people got picked to be team captains.  Then they chose their friends: the popular kids; the athletic ones.  They went through the lines and, one by one, everyone is picked.  All I could do was pray that I wouldn't be last.  I mean, I had to be just a little bit better, a little cooler, than that kid at the end.  Every once in a while I ended up being that kid and it sucked.

Today I feel like that kid.  

I'm the last one in line.  

All the other kids have found a team.  

I am standing alone on the wall wishing I could fade into the cold cinder blocks. 

Now I get to Jesus-juke you.  Because it's OK that I'm last.  It doesn't matter that the cool kids didn't pick me.  I'm not the most popular.  I'm not the most athletic or the prettiest or even the most pulled together (far from it).  But there's one who chose me despite all of this and possibly because of it.  Jesus chose me.  He died on the cross for me.  He took every poke of that thorny crown and every swing of the hammer that forced the nails through his skin.  He did all that for me.  Because He loved me that much.  How could I let the fact that it didn't work with these guys take away from all of that?  

So, it doesn't matter that my ex and I couldn't work it out.  It doesn't matter that someone could just walk away.  What matters is that the love I've been given is so much greater than all of this.  And the love I have to give is so much greater than this.  And I know that someone very special is still waiting out there for me. 

Understanding

"The way Signor Brasini stopped, turned to his wife, put his big farmer's hands out and caressed her face.  Pulled her close to him and kissed her just like in the films.  He kissed her for a long time and then looked at her and smiled… And when I saw all that, I knew that their way would be my way.  Their way, not my father's...way - their way was how I wanted my life to be.  I knew that someday I would be loved by a man like Brasini.  I understood how things worked and how they didn't work." ~ Marlena De Blasi “That Summer in Sicily”

This is a story of a 9-year-old girl whose cold-hearted father sells her to a rich prince.  The prince inquires "How did you manage to emerge from such hurtful abandonment by your father without growing bitter yourself?"  She answered by telling of an experience she had in the market one day.

"Well", you're probably asking yourself, "why is this soccer mom writing about a little Italian girl?" It goes back to a challenge I was given to tell who my hero was from growing up.  I thought long and hard on this and realized that I didn't really have a person in my life that I would call hero.  I felt pretty bad about that but realized there had to be someone or something that motivated me to crawl out of the life I was born into.  Someone that made me believe in something better. 

My "Brasini" were the characters in my book.  Hundreds and probably thousands of books I kept my nose deeply buried in.  Every book in my school library was polished off.  Then I finished every last book at the public library close to my house.  The librarians would save the new books so that I could read them before anyone else.  

My books were my escape.  I lived in Narnia.  Then traveled through the universe on a tesseract.  You might find me swinging over a creek in Terabithia or solving mysteries with Encyclopedia Brown.  And then as I got older, murder mysteries to solve and then romances where the fair prince would come and steal me away from all of the pain.

But the characters - that was what hooked me.  Their normal families doing normal things in a house with a white picket fence.  "Their way was how I wanted my life to be."  They showed me there was something better.  There was no screaming and fighting.  No crying mom or worn-out dad.  No divorce.  No alcoholism.  In books I could be anyone.  I wasn't a scared, shy little girl who was afraid of her own shadow.  There were no limits as to where I could go or what I could do. Or to the kind of life I could have.  

I realize now that all of the fiction that I devoured caused me to romanticize every facet of my life:  my relationships, my career, and my family.  Just as I hid from reality in my books, I chose not to look at the reality of my reality.  I wanted to believe in the good.  I wanted everything to work out and I guess I thought if I just wished it that way that it would.  I mean - it always worked out in the books, right?

So, just as the books gave me my dreams, I have found a new set of heroes to help me rebuild my reality - a completely amazing community that is helping me to find my dreams and become the person I am meant to be.  It took me being broken to see through the fantasy world I had always hoped for into a little bit harsher, more serious world.  There is still beauty, but the sun does have to set, the thorns do make me bleed, and the prince may or may not carry me off into the sunset.  I am going to have to make it on my own.  I am going to have to make adult decisions and I won't always like the consequences.  But I have a feeling that the ending of this story is going to be ever so much better than any book I could write...

What I Might Be...

"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be." ~Lao Tsu

There is a positive side to being crushed and broken.  When your guts are exposed for all of the world to see, you are finally able to start seeing yourself for who you really are. Or aren't in my case.

You see - I was Superwoman.  

I could leap tall buildings with a single bound and traverse freeways at high speeds to get to a soccer game without getting a ticket or losing a kid.  I ran from one end of town to another because I was an awesome mom.  I stayed up until 4 a.m. to make cupcakes so everyone would know what a perfect family we had.

I was the fixer.  

I was the one to make everything better because I was so good at it.  I was the strong one.  I could face giants with just my slingshot and battle evil Principals to advocate for my children.  I was the loyal one.  I stuck it out even though the marriage had torn me to shreds and daily stole a little bit more of my soul.  Because it was the right thing to do.

I was the karate kid.

I earned my blackbelt in my early 40's.  I was a ultra-marathon athlete (5k actually) climbing over foreboding obstacles and crawling through the mud.  I was the biggest loser who lost 80 pounds in 6 months.  I worked out not to get in shape, but because I didn't want to be the fat bride in the wedding pictures when that finally happened.  I spend a small fortune on clothes and shoes and jewelry so I can look great for a guy because I am so afraid that he is going to see me for who I really am - a 42-year-old divorced mom with a few more stretch marks than she would like vegging in shorts and a tank top.  

I am a fraud.

I am not really any of those things - strong, confident, together, Superwoman, fixed.  What I am is a scared little girl that has no real idea how to make it in this world.  I am fighting by instinct alone, having grown up without any guidelines as to what a normal family is.  I don't know how to be a great mom while working 50 hours a week.  I am afraid to write what is really on my heart because I am so scared I am going to hurt someone else's feelings - totally disregarding my own.

I am afraid.

I am still that scared little girl in St. Jerome's playground sitting on the curb afraid to talk to anyone because I am afraid that no one will really like me when they see who I really am.  I am a frazzled, wannabe soccer mom who desperately wants a normal family with a dad and mom and a white picket fence, not a two bedroom apartment in the middle of 1300 other apartments that is a mess because today we had to run to karate, cub scouts, two soccer games on the other end of town, the grocery store, Wendy's drive -in, parent teacher conferences and then back to Walgreen's because the girls have a project due tomorrow and it's already way past their bedtime.  So I'll drive across town to meet you not because I'm so cool but because after all of that, I didn't have time to wash the dishes or make my bed.  

I am broken.

But now, being broken, all the pieces are laid out before me now like a shattered mirror.  I can see every imperfection reflecting back at me.  I can still see the good stuff too but I'm able to put them in perspective now.  I know all of the pieces are going to be put back together as I heal.  It won't be perfect.  It might not even be pretty.  Not all the pieces will fit just right, so there may be some extra putty holding it there.  But I know God will be that putty and if I just give in a be who I am instead of who I want everyone to think I am, it will be ok.  I will be ok.  And now I get to start seeing just who I might be...

Found my rose-colored glasses...

“It's not what's happening to you now or what has happened in your past that determines who you become. Rather, it's your decisions about what to focus on, what things mean to you, and what you're going to do about them that will determine your ultimate destiny.” ~Anthony Robbins

Focus.  Today was a difficult day for me.  I should have been in a beautiful place with an amazing person having the time of my life.  Instead, I got to play soccer mom.  Granted, it's one of my favorite jobs in the whole world, but that trip had been "our" trip.  At least for the seemingly fairy-taley last two years.  But he's gone and is no longer our trip.

I was worried that I wouldn't be able to think of anything else today.  I mean, I knew he was going to be there.  I knew he was with somebody new.  I knew someone else was going to be in his arms and causing his smile.  Damn.  

But God had other plans for me today.  I went to the soccer pictures and saw several of my East Side friends.  I went to practice and enjoyed the morning sun on my face and the dew on my feet.  I introduced myself to one of the Cub Scout moms.  Then, right as we were finished, I happened to strike up a conversation with a truly amazing pair of people.  And to think I almost walked away before I could meet them because we had been gone all morning.

We talked about everything from ADHD to dating to divorce and found that we had a ton of stuff in common.  But most importantly, we talked about God.  How He is in our lives and His plans for us.  How God should be first in our lives.  Our spouses second and kids third.  I know it's a hard pill to swallow, but it truly makes sense when you see it in action.  David said for the guy to focus on God and the wife to focus on the man.  That God on the sixth day sent His Spirit out into the world.

That's when it hit me.  I posted last week that I had misplaced my rose-colored glasses.  The glasses aren't glasses at all.  It's why I can see the good even though I acknowledge the bad.  God is the rose-colored tint.  He is the good I want to see despite the ugly.  Despite the wrinkles and the scars.  God is my pair of glasses and by looking for Him in the world, I will see the beauty that I have always craved.  His spirit is the beauty that I see in everyone.  

It has nothing to do with me only wanting to see the pretty side of things.  It's that I want to be closer to God and anything that reminds me of him.  From my kids to a sunset to a smile from a stranger.  The reason I thought I had misplaced them was because my anger was blinding me to the fact that God was there all the time waiting for me to open my eyes.  He hadn't gone anywhere.  My pain and anguish just caused me not to be willing to see what was right in front of my eyes. 

So today, go look for the beauty.  It is everywhere and in everything.  Know that the warmth and comfort you gain is the Holy Spirit laying His wings upon you.  And me.  Because I can finally see and feel what God has been telling me all along: "I'm here and I'm not going away.  You just have to look and I'm right there waiting for you."  And He is. 

Has anyone seen my rose-colored glasses?

“Rose-colored glasses are never made in bifocals. Nobody wants to read the small print in dreams.” ~Ann Landers

 Reality.  It sucks.  Yeah I said it.  I have been accused many times of looking through life through rose-colored glasses.  It's not that I'm naive (which I am sometimes).  It's that I like to focus on the good in people and situations.  I don't like to think about the ugly parts of it.   Life is too short to dwell on the negative.  But being depressed tends to change all that in a very abrupt and painful way.  It's like pulling an extremely sticky bandage off of a very open wound and then pouring acid on it.  And then putting the old dirty bandage back over it to seal in all the yuck.

  The great part about depression (as if there can be a great part to being devestated) is that it rips the rose-colored glasses off of you and shoves your face into reality.  If you allow it, it will only let you look at the ugly side of things.  I say that as if you could have any control at allowing it or not.  You don't.  You could have the most beautiful sunset on the most beautiful beach in the world sitting with the most amazing people and feel completely numb to it.  You almost can't feel the heat from the sun.  

  Believe me, I know from experience.  Because less than a month ago I was there.  On the perfect beach with a perfect sunset with the perfect people.  And I was just this side of numb.  I had the power of the warm salty ocean crashing against my body yet I could barely feel it.  Maybe it's because I put so many walls up so I couldn't feel the pain that it just blocked everything.

  Life has forced me to take a very harsh look at everything in my life.  It's almost like it screamed at me "wake up and take a look around you!"  What I see is very much not the perfect little life I thought I had.  Or maybe I had but I've lost it.  Everything looks different now.  Feels different now.  I'm back to those shadows I didn't even know existed until I was in the light.  Those rose-colored glasses not only skewed my vision but my feelings as well.  Now the warmth has been taken away.

  Or I'm blocking it.  Which means I hold the key to my recovery.  I'd like to find where I placed those glasses.  If I just had those, then everything would be warm and fuzzy.  I'm sitting here at my desk with the sunlight filtering in the window yet I'm sitting in the shadows.  The sun begins merely a foot or so away from me.  I know the light would warm me from the inside out yet I am paralyzed to move towards it.  Is it that I can't move or I won't?  Isn't that the million dollar question?!

  So for today, I am looking for the beauty in little things.  A pretty sunrise, a gentle wind blowing through the branches, a new melody that piques my curiosity.  I can't quite feel them yet and extract the pleasure that I know is there.  But I'm looking for them and towards them; trying to ignore the ugliness and putting it behind me.  I hope soon I can let it go instead of holding on to it like an anchor.  And maybe soon I will find where I misplaced those glasses...