True Freedom?

We often tend to focus on wanting the truth to set us free.  But how does the truth set us free?

Is it simply stating all the things that took place in dark corner of time?  Or is it even in confronting those who were involved with those dark actions?  I wish I could give you or anyone an easy answer, but when I don't have a single answer it becomes impossible to offer advice.  But truth in many ways has changed my own life.  It was speaking the truth of a dark day that took my husband ultimately to jail.  A truth that lead to a world that I never could have imagined.  

Yet in the roller coaster of life, I find that truth has many ways to be viewed.  It is often like changing the color of the lenses in your glasses.  It can seem rosy if you have a red lens.  And it can look crazy if you are wearing rainbow lenses...

In my world I am starting to understand that the truth of Domestic Violence.  It is still not something that you can blame or question why someone stayed.  And yet, it was my choice to allow many years ago a pushing of myself out of my comfort zone.  We didn't just get married and then wake up the next morning with him trying to kill me.

In many ways it was the simple challenges to my comfort that started the slide to our path.  The simple jokes of store clerks who I saw frequently became called boyfriends.  And the simple thing of joking when I was going to date them instead of the man who became my husband...  It also was followed by a whole list of things that in time eventually did lead to that night, but each thing was a little step or push away from the things I knew to be true.

And yet, in reading a book recently a comment struck me.  "True freedom: it was something inside.  Something beautiful."*  And maybe now in these past few years I am beginning to see that freedom within me.

*Quote from The Promise Box by Tricia Goyer

How shall I live my faith?

Faith to me is as important as breathing is to most people.  And yet, in the midst of a divorce... it can be the easiest thing to walk away from.  In this desire to move forward we can focus on revenge instead of the will of God.  And yet, I have moved closer to God in these days of waiting.  And that is what a divorce is, many days of waiting and facing each day with the challenge to remind yourself that you might be physically without your spouse, but with God you are never alone.  

And yet, in the process of divorce, you have to learn so much more about what God means to you.  And come to terms what your faith means to you and the path you will walk forward.  Because in this world divorce is treated like changing our underwear, but in God's world divorce is breaking a promise to God.  And yet, God does allow a very few reasons to leave a marriage.  It is not a free pass, but a very narrow line in continuing to honor God and yet be let go from the promise you have made to God.

I wish I could tell you that divorce is a free pass to move forward and marry again.  Yet, even three years into this divorce process I am still unclear about what it will mean.  It is a challenge of faith.  A reason to pray, to search God's word, and to find peace in your heart for each step.  I am struggling to figure out the path that is being laid in front of me, but know that I must constantly answer the question of how shall I live my faith...  because without my faith and God, I am nothing.

So, I do my best each day...  I spend time in God's word.  I pray, sometimes as much as I breathe.  And in this process I am also finding time to place importance on worship (church).  It has not meant a walk in the park, but a constant testing of trust.  And in that a learning process of how we are all to live our faith.  The list of my church goes beyond these basics, and yet I am still learning to walk forward in faith and find peace with communion, family prayer, and even fasting or abstinence.  I am finding my faith, and in each step I learn a little more about myself and God.  

I still wish for answers...  I got married with the idea of till death do us part, and I didn't expect to face death at the hands of my husband.  And yet, even a divorce in court does not change the promise I made to God.  Time will show me what God has planned with this challenge...  and I know in many ways God wants good to come out of this darkness.  I just have to learn how to live my faith...  and I pray that you can also live your faith thru your darkest hours.

Each small challenge is another death.

Yesterday in the process of this dissolvement of marriage that we call divorce, I faced the death of another part of our lives together.  This time it was the car.  And for some reason the death of the car brought forth a flood of emotions.

I can remember the process of picking the car out.  He wanted a much bigger car, and when I looked at the cost of car insurance I fought for something less costly.  A car with a $200.00 a month insurance payment, is like an albatross.  And lately even this car without the higher insurance payment has begun to feel like an albatross.  

My day started out like a normal day.  I was walking thru my list of things that required our presence.  And while I managed to get thru the start of the list.  I found myself sitting in the car.  Here I was a few blocks from the meeting spot, and my car would turn on, and even purr... but travel in any direction... Nope.  And this has not been the first time that this has happened.  Within months of walking out the door...  the car had stopped dead on the road.  And that time required several weeks to correct.  

And while I was sitting in the car... waiting for the insurance agent to pick up the phone and send help... all these cars with drivers were upset with me.  Upset that here I was sitting on the off ramp, where I had stopped for a red light, stuck.  The honks and gestures were something that I wished that I didn't have to witness, let alone witness with my own daughter in the car.  



As the minutes ticked by... the panic level inside of me grew.  As a single mother, a car seemed to be a life line when I first walked out the door.  And yet, with the car dead for the God knows how many times... it suddenly felt like this huge weight pushing me down into the abyss of death.  Yet again I have to figure out how to afford to fix the car that he wanted.  And at the same time I needed to figure out how to get to the meeting and then get us home.

I am trying to navigate thru the divorce that I have been served.  And it seems like the simple everyday things that create the challenges.  And these challenges really do feel like deaths.  Things that normally would have been taken care of by your spouse seem to be the biggest roadblocks.  And in my life, the car is one of those roadblocks... as a kid, I lived with the if it was broken, daddy please fix it life.  And then in marriage, my husband took that role.  Now, I just don't know what is next...  and while most people would figure out how to just take care of this thing.  I am finding that the death of the car, is also a death of another part of the relationship that use to exist with my husband. 

Each task that I have to take over that my husband use to take care of...  is a vivid reminder of what I don't have support over.  And it is a knife to me, knowing that I am being replaced in his world, because I am required to fill the shoes and take care of each and ever task he did for me.  And eventually these little deaths will eliminate my husband from my life... but how do I eliminate him from my heart?  Sigh... maybe more time will answer that question.

Tick-Tock, Divorce?

I have watched the last few years tick by at a record pace.  I am really trying to focus on what is to come, and not what has been.  And yet, the words that seem to bring the freedom from that past tend to get stuck in my throat.  Words given voice instead of held inside...

How do you give words to the secrets that drove you away from your husband?  I find it a challenge since I am not sure that I really was driven away.  I still deep inside love him.  Even with that, I am not sure what it would take to even begin to rebuild the trust that use to exist between us.

Which brings me to the fact that I am still feeling the ticking of the clock.  A clock that has grown louder inside knowing that the divorce will come to pass.  At one point in time, I will go from being separated from my husband, to the world of a divorced woman.  It is amazing that I am still considering how to rebuild trust... even with the fact that he wanted me dead.  Never mind the other things that I listened to him tell me that he wanted to try...

Somewhere along the way I came to cherish love within the bounds of faith.  And the words of becoming one...  became a point of focus with in me.  As I listened to all the things beyond the line of just him and I... I found that within me I wanted to vomit.  Not sure of what I was hoping for in all the days of willingly submitting to each idea.  How I would keep the challenge of doing what he desired... yet, I felt worse and worse.  It always seemed like I was never enough... 

And I still wonder, did he ever love me?  Or did he just love the fact that I was submissive, doing what he asked of me to make him happy.  At some point, I felt that even the family dog was worth more to him than me...  And while I still have questions.  I wonder about love and trust moving forward...

All I can hear inside is the tick-tock of the clock to divorce.

Abuse to self?

I have just spent a night awake... and many people would say that it was a form of abuse to self.  And yet, last night it wasn't about me, it was about others and the lack of sleep was an act of love.  

In that time of staying awake, I had a lot of time to read...  and what I have been reading about is self-injury.  It is an issue that I have spent years struggling with.  The temptation is always so great to find the knife and slowly run it along my wrists.  The need to continue that motion until I draw blood and feel a physical pain eats at me, until I give into it.  And in that giving into the temptation, I find a sense of peace.  For me it seems that in the physical pain that I have caused myself all the emotions and stress seem to have a focus that removes me from the forces that are inside of me.  

I have been facing this struggle for a long time, but not as long as I have been abused.  In high school, after years of moving, I found this simple act that moved me to a place beyond the day to day problems of life, especially those faced as a new student in high school.  In those days I found that I was always seeing the negative in my life.  I was the walking and talking failure in so many ways.  I could see it in the simple looks from my mother, and hear it louder in her voice.  I felt like I was sinking so fast, because my mother felt that my actions were the reason that she could make the choice to walk out on my father.  And in her desire to walk away, she made it clear that I would not ever be allowed to follow or even go with her.  It was my place to remain by my father's side and to take her place in every way that he might ask me to fill.

This conversation was not a new one to me.  I can recall it starting when I was in elementary school.  We were living in a small town, and even the simple acts of love my father did to correct his mistakes never was enough.  Thinking back, one of her birthdays was forgotten, and we (my father, brother, and myself) walked into town to find cake to make the issue disappear.  Well, we came back with cake.  It just happened to be in the form of cupcakes.  Now, in my world the Tasty Cake Chocolate Cupcakes with a single birthday candle and us singing to her...  that is a memory I cherish.   But even now, with her gone, I know that our devotion to her for her birthday was a failure to her.  Another forgotten day in a series of things that always seemed to slip my own father's mind.  

There were other birthdays that my mother celebrated with me making a decorating a cake for her.  And while she would always seem to enjoy the attention, I always felt that she wasn't happy that it was me thinking of her.  That my attention never mattered, and the one person who she wanted to have their undivided attention... well that attention was shared with me.  So, all these years later, I can still recall the love that I saw in my father's eyes as we walked together from the house towards the center of town in search of cake for my mother's birthday.  Yes, it was last minute.  Of course it wasn't the magical world that I think my mother wanted.  And yet, it is a simple act of love that my father did with a pure heart for the woman he loved.  And that is still something that I held as a standard for the man I would eventually marry.

Somewhere between that act of love and the first few months of high school, I found the world of cutting.   And last night for the first time I found a book that actually had a in its pages the very words that my voice can't form that explains why I am drawn to cutting.  The desire to stop all the feelings that swirl inside of me with one simple motion that allows me to see that I am alive still.  And that motion, brought everything into focus.  Now, to see all the reasons that my voice could never find worlds to explain in print...  just about took my breathe away.

I have not finished the book yet... but do know that I will.  Right now, it is enough to know that someone has understood how my mind works to bring my desire to find the correct words to print.  This allows me the chance to breathe a bit right now...  Just praying that in my breathe I find the courage to finish reading the book and within those pages of print find a way to step away from this temptation that has threatened to control my life for so many years.

And I am sharing this cover of the book, so that if you wonder what might be abuse to self... you might seek it out and find words that you have struggled to find to voice...

A New Beginning...

Each day we have a chance for a brand new start, but most of us look at the change of year as the point in which we have that new start.  And yet, for me that seeking of the brand new start began on November 30, 2014, with the start of Advent.  I wanted to seek not just the changes in this world, but also to better know the God I worship.

In this past year... I have come to start a process that I never expected.  And maybe the chance of moving forward, finally three years after I walked out the door.  I can remember that night, as clearly as anyone can look out their window and see the night sky.  It was a chilly night, but it also was the night just before the world started to ring in the New Year.  And here I am three years later, in many ways counting down the days until the simple piece of paper that we rely on to keep us separate from my husband... to expire.  And I have come to a very different understanding of what that piece of paper really has meant.

Three years ago, I lived in a level of fear.  I tired to view the order of protection from abuse (PFA) as a kind of shield.  A covering that would keep me alive and hide me from the very man I loved and was married to.  It is far from the shield that I could imagine it to be.  You see, a piece of paper is nothing against a bullet.  And that was what I was dealing with.  A man who thought he was above the law and nothing could keep him from owning a weapon, not even the PFA.  The court system, and law enforcement are left with the legal record of what weapons my husband owned.  And in this world of friends, and people thinking that they are above the law...  It is all too easy to provide someone who has proven that they are not in a position to own a weapon a weapon.

The legal system which protects our rights, also protects the rights of those who want to harm us.  And I am not saying that it necessarily bad or good... It is just a fact.  And yet, what wife in seeking a PFA doesn't want to know that with the order the person who seeks us harm is isolated from all weapons?  And yet, legally we are required to trust the word of the person who desires to harm us.  There is no legal recourse for us when we know they have firearms, and they choose to say that they don't.  It is a double edged sword that I have no answer with which we can solve the issue... just more questions than answers.  
 

And yet, now three years later...  I do know one small thing.  That we as women and men need to have the constant discussion on how can we begin to protect those who are being hurt by the very people who claim to love them and desire to protect them.  And maybe, with discussion we can find a way to provide a level of protection that is much more like the shield that I dreamed the PFA to be, instead of the simple pieces of paper that will never stop a bullet.  Then we can create a PFA, and a system for dealing with both sides that will provide a higher level of protection that we can even imagine now... A way to make victims of abuse feel safe enough to start to see themselves as survivors.