The last two years have been some of the hardest in my life. Honestly, I had thought I had gone through some crazy stuff when I was younger. Yes, it was crazy when I was younger, but it was a different crazy. The last couple years I have come face to face with my own crazy. For the first time in years, I was able to put aside the crap others had done to me and work through my own ugliness. God has been working to pry off the rose colored glasses I had glued to my head.
I am letting go of “Christianese,” yet knowing there are boundaries I won’t cross. What are those boundaries and who defines them? What defines me and when does it define me? I believe this is what people call a midlife crisis, but in the homeschooling method we follow they call it a reset. A time in life when you stop, evaluate and allow the “What’s happening?” to allow you to evolve.
Everything around me feels more real than it has felt in a long time. Pain hurts like hell. Mark and I fight, but I am no longer losing sleep over “Oh my gosh, he’s mad at me.” Seriously, last night we had a fight. My first reaction was to get mad, and my second was to brush it off and deal with it in the morning. It was amazing! I was not confined to him. I was free to let him be mad, and he was free to be mad without me losing it.
It feels a little hippy-ish. I’m seriously going to be walking around with flowers on my head, bright, happy clothes on my body, and a smile on my face. The Lord has been showing me what it truly means to be saved by His grace. He is giving me an understanding of the depth to which He went for me. He is destroying so many of my shallow versions of salvation and my relationship with Him. Freedom is what I am finding… freedom from others and freedom from myself.
Yet I am caught in a world I was not prepared for. A platform that feels like the whole world is watching me and has often caused me to run off the stage. Every time God came and found me, He has set me right back up on stage. Seriously, I have tried to walk away five times this year and each time God said, “No, turn around and go back.” I would sigh and say, “Fine.” (Picture a teenager pouting and stomping off). God sent my tribe for this time in my life. My tribe says, “Get back up there, keep going, do the hard thing, don’t give up.”
Ginny Owen’s song “If You Want Me To” has been a good friend of mine for years. “I don’t know why have me here, but just because you love me the way that you do, I’m going to walk through the fire if you want me to“. I have often said, “God why me? Couldn’t someone else do what I do?” I have spoken this to those around me and they look at me like I have lost my head. “No,” they say, “Someone else can’t do what you can do.” Well, huh. Really?! It’s humbling, awesome and scary. But I’m finding the scary part becoming less so.
God made me a fighter and I keep problem solving. I’m trusting God to bring the classes, connections, time and sanity it will require to accomplish this stage in my life.
What an honest and brave post. Prayers for guidance from Him and trust during this “reset” in life.
Thank you, Val. He has been faithful before and I know he will be so in the future. Now, to learn the whole “do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow has enough worries of its own.”