WHEN MY HEART WENT DARK

I am a happy, go lucky person. I always saw the bright side of life. There was nothing a little determination could fix and then... Just a few years ago, my heart was broken. In that time, I was distraught, confused and lost and then...I was angry. I wasn't just angry, I was mad! I was so mad, I saw red. I could feel it from my toes all the way up to the top of my head, even my hair hurt. I felt the injustice of that time. I knew that my well laid out plans with having children with someone to watching them grow up to dancing together at their wedding to babysitting the grandkids were over because of what? Selfishness. Inconsideration. "A tough time." "A bad day." Not only were my dreams shattered but my children's security was gone as well. He had taken so much.

  To say one is mad is one thing, at one point my heart went dark. I felt as if I had not just built a wall but it had bobbed wire on top and if by chance someone got too close or asked about the ex, the venom that spewed from my mouth was something to be reckoned with. Every man was the same. Every man secretly had the heart of the one that hurt me. Every man was punished for his sins. I would date but I would feel myself setting them up to see if they would "take the bait" and prove what I thought in my heart was right. After all, they were just like the one that hurt me. Since I couldn't make him pay, I would make everyone else pay instead. I told myself this wasn't the case, that I was ok but it was the furthest thing from the truth. Everyone else, including me, paid for his sins. I was drinking poison and expecting him to get sick. 

  Everyone that was kind to me HAD to have an ulterior motive. Every church was the same as the one that turned their back on me. Every "friend" was the same as the one that didn't want to associate with me because of what I was going through. I had even cut myself off from my family for a time. I was "protecting" myself. If I was protecting myself, why did it hurt so much and feel so lonely? Oh, I was ok,  but could still feel the anger inside me so strongly that it literally burned. I could speak his name but only through gritted teeth. I could tell "my story" but with more anger than understanding and compassion. My heart was cold and dark. I consistently had a scowl on my face and didn't even know that I did. 

  One day, my son said, "Mom, why are you angry all the time?" I chuckled and said,"I'm not. Why would you say that?" He very seriously looked at me and then wrinkled up his face in a hideous scowl and said, "because your face always looks like this." I felt my face fall. I just stared at him and the first time in ages, I felt tears in my eyes. I AM angry all the time and they are suffering for it. Everyone is suffering for what one person did. I knew my heart was dark. I believed that everyone turned their backs on me and I was suffering an unjust punishment for something that I must have done a long time ago. If God was REALLY a God of love, why would he allow that? What an unfair question but i said it anyway. 

  I took some time and went through the days of my marriage and everything that lead up to that moment but I processed it through different eyes and with a different heart. I allowed myself to be angry but not to stay that way. I allowed myself time to cry but not to continue to cry. I could feel the darkness fighting with the new knowledge that I had and love I wanted to feel. It felt as though I was cutting away at the weeds and briars that had overtaken my "garden" with dull pair of child's scissors. I felt as though I had made some progress and then I would see him again. He would say something hurtful and I would see red. I wanted to take those dull scissors and... Well, I would have to start over. Each time was less and less. I eventually found some "weed killer". I began to open up to my real friends. I shared my story. I learned compassion and how to turn around such a unimaginable situation into a tool to help other people. I still struggle. He says something hurtful or uses the kids as a tool to hurt me and I see red! Again! I stop, take a breath, cry, vent and then I ask for forgiveness for the anger that overtook me for that time and move on. Sometimes it takes longer than others but it always goes away. I refuse to drink the poison and allow that darkness to overtake my heart again. 

  The darkness still looms. It is an ever present feeling. Some days it is almost akin to the feeling you get when you feel someone staring at you. Or someone that is standing near you that you don't see but you feel. Sometimes it doesn't even seem like that was ever a part of my life. It doesn't seem real. If it weren't for the kids, my mind could be convinced it never happened. I realize that once I have seen and felt that darkness, it is something that I will have to be conscious of and know it would be so easy to let it overtake me again. Sometimes the light has to fight the darkness but the light has always won. The light that came into my life was the realization of Gods unconditional love. That love will always overpower anything but it is up to me to allow it to. 

I DON'T UNDERSTAND

Sometimes I really struggle with things that happen in my life and those around me. It's hard to see others suffer even more than it is to suffer myself. For a while I have went through some tough times self inflicted, mainly out of naivety, and inflicted by others. Still today, I have to endure the consequences of those tough times. I see good people suffer and it is so hard to see it happen. Sometimes, I want to scream out the injustice and broadcast to the world what the "real" story is and make them suffer as they have made me or my loved one suffer. Don't be too shocked, I'm pretty sure I am not alone in that.
  Throughout the years, I have learned that it is not my job to understand or to exact revenge, it is my job to trust. How simple that sounds. Trust means to have a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability or strength of someone or something. Trusting someone is not that easy for me. I have put my trust in a lot of people and that didn't go so well. Before you start producing all kinds of platitudes and scripture, hear me out. As a child, we are exceptionally trusting and forgiving to a fault. We have to be taught to distrust.
 Growing up, I was a teetotaler. I did everything expected of me, plus some. I never gave my family any reason to worry. I thought I did it all "right". According to how we were taught, if you do that and follow the well laid "plan", certain things you wouldn't have to worry about. You've heard the sermons on how to protect your marriage from infidelity or the way you dress will protect you from someone taking advantage of you. I'm afraid to report that is a huge misconception. It took me a while to realize that and quit blaming myself for the events that happened in my life. Don't get me wrong, I took ownership of my mistakes but I quit blaming myself for the things that I didn't do or were responsible for. The blame that was laid at my feet for the mistakes, bitterness and desires someone else had in there life. I had to learn, if someone blamed me it was because they couldn't handle the guilt that they carried.
  When I was still a teenager, I was married. I was so young and innocent. I had two kids before I had even cut my wisdom teeth. I had said some STUPID things in my innocence. I was told because of what I wore (pants), I had sin in my life and that was why my marriage ended in the way it did. I was told that if I would have loved him more and been more spiritual, he wouldn't have made the decisions he did. Let's get some things straight, everyone is responsible for their own choices. How spiritual I was wasn't reflected in his decisions, how spiritual he was was reflected in those decision. What I wear shouldn't influence anyone in the way it was told to me. You and I may disagree but on that we should agree on just fine. Some of those people offered that advice and input that love me very much. They were people I had trusted. When i finally started voicing what was going on behind closed doors, there was an invisible line drawn in the sand that I didn't realize was there. I was on the wrong side of that line. I was the one who verbally ended the marriage. My name was the first one on the divorce papers. I do not trust easily because the ones I chose to council with and speak the truth too were the ones that turned their backs on me or shared my personal information to better their cause.
  I know, not everyone is like that. I know to not put your eyes on man but on God. Believe me, if I judged God by how others betrayed Him, I would spend my life telling others not to trust in a god like that. How do you trust Someone that has allowed you to go through all of these thought times and loss? How do you trust someone that seems so harsh? As I have told many others and have had to remind myself, forget everything you know, trust and have heard and start over. Become a blank slate. Read the Bible as if it is the first time. Take everything you read with an open mind and heart and then form your opinions. We may be saved by asking the Lord to forgive the wrong things we have done, believe that He died on the cross in order to make a way, through His blood, to for us to join Him in Heaven one day. Through His blood and our belief, we trust Him with our eternity but how much more difficult is it to ask for the every day things in life? Why is that?
 That trust to take care of things in the same way that you would. For example, I may get a babysitter for my kids and asked them to do certain things while I'm away. I know very good and well, those things may be done but they for sure won't be done the way I would have done them. I trusted her to do them, but not the way I would. What I think we get mixed up is, God wants us to succeed and have the desires of our hearts much more than even we do. Why then, would he give us just enough for a tease? Why would He give us something just to take it away again like a cruel joke? Some have said, "I would never blame God". Haven't you though? Haven't you asked, why has this happened? I have done everything you asked and yet, here I am. Why would you allow this? Here's the deal, bad things happen to good people. We may be saved, we may do the "right" things but we live with the effects of sin. Jesus was perfect. He never sinned and yet He was brutally beaten to death and hung on the cross as He was suffocating, He gave himself up to death. The people He created for fellowship with Him did the unthinkable to Him. He lived with the effects of that first sin. Can you imagine that? Committing the sin that ultimately put Jesus on the cross. We all can take the blame for that. Knowing that, I cannot feel "blameless" in what led to the demise in my marriage or even the "words of wisdom" some people shared with me. I cannot feel too pious in the injustice that has been done to me.
  What amazes me about knowing that Christ did all of that for me, and no it isn't a fairy tale, is that He knew it was going to happen and created mankind anyway. Think of it from a mom's perspective. We knew that childbirth was going to be some of the most pain we have ever experienced. We knew long before we heard our baby's first cry and watched them suckle at our breast that they would hurt us. We knew that they would disobey, lie, steal, cheat and temporarily hate us but we still anxiously awaited their arrival. How much more so did the God of the universe anticipate our arrival. How much more did he anticipate when we wake up every day to fellowship with Him? Remember how you used to watch your kids sleep in the morning and couldn't wait til they woke up because you missed them so much? I so did that! I remember when I looked at the face of my children for the first time and could see my own self in them. Can you imagine that God feels the same about us? When I say how hard it is to trust, it sounds so silly in light of all of that. How can I not trust a God such as that? I don't understand but I do trust even in the things that I struggle with almost daily that there is a greater plan that I cannot see yet. I will trust that He will make my path plain to me when I come to that point in my journey.
  Trusting someone isn't easy for me but God isn't just anyone. God is my Father that has never chosen anyone over me, loved me "as is" and only wants the best for me. Jesus put Himself out of His "comfort zone" in order to show me how much love He really had for me. He gave up His home and came to a place that He knew He would be hated and mistreated. He has never believed a word of gossip or judge me by someone else's sins. He loves me because of who I am not in spite of who I am. I may not understand but I can trust in a God like that.