To Ab, because it's your birthday, and because sometimes, well, the check just isn't in the freakin mail

Today is the day after my little sister Abby's 27th birthday.  She looks 23.  Her hair is like spun gold; fine spun because it's so light in hue and so numerous in strands.  She's strong as an ox...please, if you had been through half the crap this girl has been through you'd have keeled over from the sheer insane heft of it all about 11 months ago...or even earlier, who knows.  If I don't mind saying so she is beautiful as all get out: ladies are jealous (believe me I've seen their eyes light on fire at catching a mere glimpse of her) and the men are stupid with love (STUPID..S-T-U-P--I---D).  The most insane thing about Ab is how insanely capable she is...there is not a thing that she cannot do.  There isn't a place she goes that she isn't coveted for her ability.  There isn't a person who works with her who doesn't think, "that brilliant woman is the most indispensably awesome part of this organization, hands down, and here's a scarf to prove it."

When Abigail and I were young, we were incredibly close.  We were best friends and worst brawlers.   We invented a language together.  We designed haute couture dresses that could rival Cristian Siriano's designs.  We endured a mutual misogyny at the hands of all close males who will deny it to this day, but, caused some deep scars that have required some serious working out.  At least for me.  

Because I only write for about 20-30 minutes at a time, I don't have the time or the discipline to tell you the millions of things that commend Abby over the past two decades.  What I'd like to focus on, is the serendipitous reforging of our friendship in the past two years, like the sword of Elendil into Anduril (yes, I'm a gigantic nerd).  

For whatever reason, WP vs. USAFA, husbands, children, sibling rivalry, apathy, superiority complexes...etc...we drifted apart after (or maybe even whilst in) Maine.  

My divorce and a year later her widowhood have left us the two old maids at the ball.  Or young maids if we are being honest.  Evidently, having had a first go at husbands and chidren (failed though it may have been for whatever reason) renders one a second class citizen.  Or so far and above the other classes of citizen that one is considered an untouchable.  Regardless of the manner in which life has chased us here, Abby and I have arrived  at a closer friendship than we have probably ever had before.  I hope for her it is the same as it is for me.  

For me, I see the open-hearted way in which she accepts the Peter Pan (which is even less tolerable in a lady than a man) period of life upon which I have embarked as a sign of real love.  I don't even like me in this place...and yet, she passes no judgement.  For the past year I felt like I was the one who was there for her in her time of need, but in recent months I have begun to see that the door swings both ways and she is most certainly someone I can lean on in my time of need.  I lost ten years of my life to an impossibly bad marriage to someone who was not my type, whom I may never have loved, whom I will likely never understand.  Sometimes it seems like she's the only one who understands that.  It also seems that though this time of need may have no determinable end, she is willing tostick it out with me.  All the while she has to endure her own widowhood, which is unending, with consequences one could never have foreseen.

I am so happy, and blessed (which seems church ladyish but is not intended in that way at all) to have renewed my friendship with her in these past few years.  I hope that we continue this manner.  I hope that we provide for each other a support like that of Aaron and Miriam back in exodus.  I hope that she feels about me the same way i feel about her.  I hope that I have provided her with some sort of comfort, or support or unconditional love that she can feel and hold onto when she is feeling low. 

Because sometimes the check is not in the mail.  Male.  Sometimes people fail us.  Fale.  Epic.  Fail.  Because fools rush in all headlong like they can handle the awesomeness, and then they buck out, in reverse, pedal to the floor.  Because you can't straight punch these jokers to the throat when they pull a 180 on you.  Because you can't legally knock a motherf--r out (or physically when they outweigh you by half a buck and out-testosterone you by a million) just because they see something and get scurred.  Because being the strongest most courageous lady most people have ever met doesn't get you much more than a high five and a dozen roses from someone who will never (and would never, and ps you would never want them to) like you like that.  

So happy birthday to you Ab.  Happy birthday.  And I love you.  And appreciate you.  And I get that recently, my childish behavior has not overtly said so, but I want to be there for you.  And I intend to be.  Happy freakin birthday.  

To those who failed (fail...will wail) to recognize.  Sucks to your asthmar, piggie.  big time.  

   

finished

On this ash Wednesday, wherein I have been rightly repeatedly reminded that I am dust (and what exactly is dust?), I look forward to the end of the Lenten season.  Yesterday, fat Tuesday that it was, I was visited by an echo of the words Christ spoke on his final mortal moment on earth, "it is finished."

Yesterday, I was divorced.  I signed a binding agreement that lacks only a judge's signature, stating my marriage was officially sundered on Feb 12, 2013.  I thought about sacrilegiously writing on my facebook wall "it is finished."  I opted for a less messianic "done."

But the more I think about it, the more I know that this is a part of the redemptive work done by Christ on the cross.  That my freedom from a terrible marriage that religious devotion to tradition espoused by my family had kept me in, was bought by the law-fulfilling, love drenched blood of Jesus Christ.  That, indeed, my marriage, my divorce, it is finished.  Rent like the veil in the temple.  It is small, and myopic, and egocentric, but amazingly, and of course ironically (paradoxically) it draws my attention to the cross.

Remember, you are dust, oh man, and to dust you shall return.  Remember that you are nothing but a collection of molecules, common to all living things, atoms present even in those things that are not alive, taken from the ground.  Remember that if not for the breath of God, breathed into your nostrils upon your molding you would never have been.  Remember that if not for His sustaining hand each and every moment of your vapor of a life, you would cease to be.  Remember that without the redemptive power of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice, physical and spiritual, temporal and eternal, you would remain unchanged, drowning in a sea of consequence of your own sins' making.  Remember that because He Is, you can, too, be whom you were truly meant to be.

Three years ago I was imprisoned in a marriage for a myriad of reasons.  The majority of them were fear centered. I was afraid of living the rest of my life alone. I was afraid of financial ruin.  I was afraid having been a few years out of the work force I would lack the ability, fortitude, skill set needed to return.  I was afraid of the lies that I knew my ex would tell about me. I was afraid that if I divorced, my family would reject me because I had done the one thing that "we just don't do."  I was afraid that without a partner, I would find out how truly incapable I am of raising my four sons.  I was afraid to move.  I was afraid to believe that God could carry me through, because, after all, didn't I really deserve what I had gotten myself into.

But somewhere in that darkness of fear, I heard a song.  It sang to me of freedom.  It sang to me of light.  It sang to me of life.  of Love.  It told me to move.  It told me to run.  It told me to stop believing the lies that played into my human weakness with a tendency toward fear.  I didn't stop.  I didn't look back. I didn't ask whence this song came.  I knew.  Perfect love casts out all fear.  The peace I was feeling, the knowing I was experiencing,  the light I could see at the end of the tunnel.  I knew it was He...the light of the world...Love...the beginning AND the END...He was calling me out of bondage, into freedom.  He was calling me with His sweet, undying love to leave fear and hate behind to truly follow Him.

Remember that thou art dust...and when I remember that, I know I don't have to do anything.  I am only dust.  I am just water and bone.  I am only clay thrown by the Master potter.  He is the breath.  He is the life.  He must do.

I never had to say a word in my defense.  (or very few words)  I never felt like the outcome was dependent on me (or at least not the majority of the time)  I never, even amid my doubts, forgot that it was God who was going to get me to the end of this marriage, and out of it...whole...

I have reentered the work force.  I do a good job at something I thought I would never do in my life.

I have, with the help of amazing people, built a comfortable home for my children.

I am poor.  In debt.

My kids are a bit of an emotional mess.  But they are strong.  And smart.  And so sweet.  And loved by many.

It is finished.  Standing at the beginning and end of time, the one who strides forth out of Bozrah in the greatness of His strength told me, "it is I, mighty to save,"  and brought me through all of this.  I would never have made it on my own.  In the mundanity of my divorce I find a most profound illustration of mystical truth that in my distress, He too, was distressed.  That as I wept, He wept with me.  And when we could take no more, He finished it.  And when the Son has set you free, you are free indeed.  In your circumstances, and despite them.  That is where I stand; though I walk through time-in a world that is still yet not completely redeemed, in a skin that retains its own desires to sin and err-though I linger here, I belong to eternity.  He will finish each moment in my life.  Each lent will end, with a glorious, eternal Easter.  Every mistake, sin, misery, and death is answered with a thunderous, unquenchable, eternal echo of it is finished.

You are dust.  He is not.

Christmas Vengeance

These days I have been thinking a lot about vengeance.  We all, it seems, have something(s?) that has happened to us for which we would like recompense.  We want to see those who have seriously wronged us to be punished in a way befitting the crime committed against ourselves.  Their body, mind, preferably eternal soul, ought to suffer at least as much as we perceive we have at their hand.

I have been allowing my mind to drift ever so slowly to the other side of this argument.  And peaking around that corner I found someone who was hoping and praying for the same thing.  Vengeance.

Christians like to satiate the murderous desire for revenge by clinging to the verse in the bible that says "'vengeance is mine, I will repay' saith the Lord."  Imagining a wrathful God pouring famine, pestilence and eternal damnation upon our offenders' heads.

But what if what is meant by this is that He is both the avenger (I will repay) and the recipient of that revenge (vengeance is MINE).  What if what Christ did on Calvary was to receive all the vengeance for all the wrongs done as the Father trampled Him in His wrath.  What if God only metes out his vengeance to also receive it.  What if this is the image of vengeance and redemption: that they are one, two sides of the same coin, two characteristics of the same person-the ultimate, infinite image of grace.

Isaiah 63 says:

Who is this coming from Edom, 
    from Bozrah, with his garments stained crimson? 
Who is this, robed in splendor,
    striding forward in the greatness of his strength?

“It is I, proclaiming victory,
    mighty to save.”

² Why are your garments red,
    like those of one treading the winepress?

³ “I have trodden the winepress alone;
    from the nations no one was with me.
I trampled them in my anger
    and trod them down in my wrath; 
their blood spattered my garments, 
    and I stained all my clothing.
⁴ It was for me the day of vengeance; 
    the year for me to redeem had come.
⁵ I looked, but there was no one to help,
    I was appalled that no one gave support;
so my own arm achieved salvation for me,
    and my own wrath sustained me. 
⁶ I trampled the nations in my anger;
    in my wrath I made them drunk 
    and poured their blood on the ground.”'

 he who has ears to hear...What if receiving the vengeance of the Father is exactly what the Son was born in this world to do.  So that there is no vengeance to be taken on murderers, mass or singular. So that there is no recompense for the rapist and the abuser.

What if ALL is Grace?  What if God is truly Love... For all?  Can you bear it?  Because, I am sure that is the God I have come to know; Jesus paid it all.  ALL.  all. unfathomable.  

If only could...

Make a deal with God, and get him to swap our places...

I think of this as the beginning of the dark ages-somewhere in the not quite middle of November.

My brother Ben, youngest of 9 born to my parents, ostensible bearer of a 3rd chromosome 21, was born on this day.  November 18th, 1983.  He'd be 29, if one can imagine that being a possibility. He died, suddenly, dramatically, insanely, just over a month after his 6th birthday.

I love writing.  I think I first started loving writing (and  loving writing for the reason of having a place to put my constant inner monologue, in particular) in response to his death.  I kept notes in a three subject spiral binder with a red cover about him and my feelings in relation to his death in the immediate years following.  So it seems only write, that i would right (yes i meant to misappropriate the spelling of the words that way) about all that on this day...23 years (almost) later.

There are moments that define your life so clearly, that no amount of time or distance or degradation of memory will ever put any distance between yourself and those moments.  The moment I knew my brother was dead, is just such a moment.

He was sweet, and adorable.  He had white blonde hair, and a beer belly and crazy dark blue eyes.  His fingers were short and pudgy and he was about 3 years behind the learning curve.  And he was sweet without equal, could work a VCR better than my mom, was up at dawn in his swimsuit/inner-tube and in the pool regardless of the ambient temperature.  He had you wrapped around his sweet, fat, wrinkle-less finger before you knew what was happening.

Each of my sons has reminded me of him, in their own way, at different times.  The subtle ways that nature can win out over nurture (or lack thereof, because certainly my ability to nurture is a shade compared to my mother-and her skills in this area may have been called into question by certain observers).

Happy Birthday to one who would be 29 this year, but is forever young in a way no mind of man can imagine.

Surprise

At my place of work there is a holiday tradition much like the one at your place of work: Secret Santa.  Last year, I chose not to participate.  Blame it on being new, or poor, or completely antisocial due to the mound of personal stress under which I was smothering.  Blame it on the Rain (lip-synched, of course).  This year, I have thrown my elf hat into the ring, and am singing loud for all to hear whilst spreading some serious Christmas cheer (even though it is not yet Thanksgiving).  Let's be honest, it only makes sense for me to participate, because if we're reducing ourselves to the oversimplimplified, somewhat dogmatic, love languages as set forth by the love guru and taken as gospel by most of the western christian church, you can keep your platitudinous terms of endearment and leave me to myself and most Certainly do not touch me... What I really LOVE are gifts and acts of service.  Enter: Secret Santa.

I was discussing Secret Santa last week with my planning period partner in grading and crime and mother/teacher/badass-hood.  We agreed that the best gift secret santa could bring us was a maid to deep clean our humble abodes. Just thinking about it, was sort of heavenly.  Hours later, I went home to my filthy house, ran my kids to 3 hours of soccer practice and woke up the next morning to a sink full of rotten dishes and thought, "yep, I would kill for a house cleaning service right about now."

Fast forward to this Tuesday.  I got a call from preschool telling me my 2.5 year old was sick, he had to picked up ASAP.  He was running a 102.7 fever and had puked all over one of the extended day teachers.  He would not be able to return to preschool until he was symptom free for at least 24 hours...and even tonight, 5 days later, he has the same fever.  Unable to immediately secure a sub, and too exhausted to dig deeper and find the names of other subs I didn't' have right at my fingertips, I turned to my friend Sarah (mother of 4) to see if she wouldn't mind watching one more.  She didn't (because that's just the kind of friend she is) but her in-laws were in town and she didn't want to expose them to whatever the little puker had.  So she asked if it would be OK by me if she watched little Liam at my place.  Of course it was!  I was just thrilled to have solved this problem so easily.

Wednesday, I left Sarah with Liam, in a pretty filthy apartment-dishes from breakfast on the table, pans from last night's dinner "soaking" in the sink, toys and clothes strewn about, I could go on, but you get the picture.  The (almost) ex picked Liam up from my apartment in the afternoon and three hours later I returned home.

I unlocked the door and walked in, turned the lights on and saw a vase full of flowers on the counter in the kitchen. A split second later, it registered in my brain that the place was really clean, and I burst into tears of joy.  Sarah had cleaned the house, cleaner than it had probably been in an entire year.  I walked in  and saw not only a clean kitchen, dining and living room, but a table full of clean clothes, neatly folded and put into piles.  This sent me to the laundry room, which I found empty (formerly full to overflowing with unwashed clothing).  Actually, it wasn't empty, there was a brand new bottle of Tide and everything that had been haphazardly dashed about the room was now neatly organized.  

Sarah had single handedly brought God's answer to a prayer that I hadn't even made into a serious prayer, as I left it on the drawing board as a hilarious wish-joke.  I get so caught up with questioning where God is when I want Him to show up that it is almost shocking when He pens me a love letter using a willing member of His own body.  This woman, whom I had known in college over 15 years ago for less than a year before we reconnected this year in Florida, cleaned my house and left me gifts that days later I am still discovering.  Toilet paper.  Cereal.  Oreo cookies and snack size chips (found by the kids to the tune of "SHE IS THE BEST EVER!!!").  Utensils-because we are famous for leaving them at school or throwing them in the trash and were a few shy of a full set.  Organized closets and drawers.  Shampoo in the boys' bathroom.  

Thank you Sarah.  Thank you for watching my sick son.  Thank you for cleaning my place.  Thank you for all the gifts that you scattered throughout the apartment.  Thank you for making the rest of my week so much easier.  Thank you for being my friend.  Thank you for showing me through your love, the love of God.

P.S. Sarah is hilarious and fun and if you don't know her, you're missing out on a great friend!

Oceans Never Fill

I've always had a connection to the ocean.  Most of my earliest memories revolve around the ocean.  The earliest memories I have of dreams and nightmares alike are about the ocean.  Dreams of "flying through the ocean" and terrific nightmares of being tumbled til I can't breathe, waking myself in a breathless cold sweat, nightmares that heralded the beginning of summer, and sweet dreams that savored its end.  To this day I when I am in the ocean, time loses meaning, and I can spend untiring eons diving, jumping, swimming through the waves.

I was having just such a day today.  Reading Perelandra by C.S. Lewis for an hour, then swimming, then returning to tanning (flipped over on the other side, of course) and the ocean-like planet described in our dear C.S.'s book.  I'm afraid that I don't have the patience, nor the command of even English to properly describe what happened today.  I'm also afraid that it won't interest any of you-which would be such an immense disappointment because it was so poignant and perfect for me, today, where and when I am in my life.  So, I could do one of two things.  I could (and part of me feels like I should) be like Mary and store these things up in my heart.  Or I could write it down.  Seeing as I'm me, and not Mary, I write.

The past month has been a wild one for me, to say the least.  To be honest, this whole life has been a wild ride.  But particularly, this month.  My life is full of the smaller (or seemingly smaller) every day ups and downs.  And above that din, is a larger more menacing, darker, furious ebb and flow of my ex.  Things seem fine.  Situations explode.  Said situations resolve, almost always in my favor, with less effort on my part than my worry would have led me to believe in the first place.  I barely catch my breath and something even more incredible than the last something is hurled in my direction.  I am not just being a complaining (soon to be) ex-wife.  These slanders, libels, insinuations, threats and accusations are heavy, damning, and completely untrue.  But he persists.  It hurts.  Sometimes it is difficult to see the truth through all the lies.  Sometimes it is nearly impossible to quiet my constant inner monologue as it pertains to him.  I get caught up in a panic of needing to figure it all out, work hard enough, be smart enough and persistent enough to properly defeat the attacks of my ex.  That's the manner in which my mind was occupied while trying to read my book on the beach and enjoy the beautiful day.

After about an hour of sitting on the beach in the high afternoon Florida sun, I decided it was time to jump in and cool down.  It was just after high tide, so the waves were large and the rip tide was strong, made more-so by the sand bars which caused small outflows of rivulets to cut perpendicular to the general in and out crash of the waves.  There were people in front of me and to the left of me and I didn't want to be near anyone.  Even further to the left were surfers and as a swimmer, I don't really ever like to be near surfers, they seem like they need their own space.  I walked along the bottom of the ocean, further in to where I could easily stand but the waves would crash over my head as about every third once was a couple feet taller than I.  The tide was rushing out and pulling me further into the ocean, while the rip current was knocking me sideways toward the people and then eventually the surfers to my left.  I just wanted to swim in the ocean without worrying about everything, everyone else that was there.

The sun went behind the clouds, and the wind picked up.  The waves became increasingly more frequent and quite a bit taller in a matter of seconds.  I continued to walk in the ocean, struggling to maintain some sense of control.  At least with my feet on the ground, it felt like I was in charge of my destiny and could navigate where I wanted to go.  It was an illusion I was feeding myself because I just kept going in deeper and further to the left. I wasn't afraid, I just felt "safer" with my feet on the ground.

"Just, stop.  You can't control the ocean.  Give in to the ocean.  Let it carry you.  Just float."  It was one of those moments where you aren't sure if it's just your ridiculous need to narrate every moment of your life or if it's the voice of God whispering deep into your heart.  I'm sure it was a mixture of both.  There was a knowing in my heart that He was telling me something about my life through this moment.
And, certainly, there was my brain, adding a layer of words, that didn't exactly do justice to the sentiment that lay beneath the swaddling.

I went back and forth about it in my head.  I picked up my feet and floated on my back.  The ocean is amazing.  Because it is salt water it is more buoyant than fresh water.  You can float so easily in it. The ocean will lift you up and carry you over the waves...as if the waves weren't even there.  If you allow it to, the ocean will pick you up and gently carry you and deposit you safely back on land.  The place you really run into trouble with the ocean is when you try to do things in your own strength. Try to stand in the ocean, in one place.  You can't.  Try to face large, breaking waves.  You can't they will break over you and tumble you for trying.  Pick your feet up off the bottom of the ocean and relax and - I don't know how to say it - you are weightless and worry-less and free.......light, and somehow smarter and stronger, more aware of everything and melting into the background so that nothing really matters.

"You see, you're never going to have more of a say in what's happening in your life, than when you just let go."

It is easy to surrender to the ocean.  I see the water, I feel it against my skin, I let go of control in the ocean and the ocean itself does the work.  I know how to float.  My physical body is familiar with how to do that, and I've had a lot of practice. It is easy to see that I am not in control of my situation and that I need to surrender to God, so that He can do what I cannot.  So that He can do again, what he has done so many times in the past.  And I have just as frequently forgotten, and begun to dis-believe. It is the HOW of such a commitment that is puzzling to me.  I am willing, and I know He is there-here-everywhere....but how do I let Him carry me through life?  How do I fall into invisible arms? I like to think of myself as a bit of a mystic, but this is so mystical that I can't get a grasp on it.   I don't even have a starting point.

OK maybe I have a starting point: I think it starts with my thought life.  I think it starts with laying down my thoughts.  I think it has something to do with me not having to think that I can figure it all out and thereby solve all the problems that beset my life.  If my constant inner monologue would just shut her big, fat, mouth. I think this is an ironic, catch-22, conundrum, charlie-foxtrot.

And this makes me think of a Jars of Clay song "Mirrors and Smoke."  Though it only touches the topic here tangentially.  It somehow fits perfectly:


I'm feeling older than my years
I'm feeling pain inside my chest
It's love that keeps me silent
It's my silence that you detest
Rivers flow into the oceans
And oceans never fill
I want to kiss your lips, but I know I never will

Love's a hard decision to risk impending choke
But love will keep you wishing
And my heart will keep me broke

I blew flowers, gave you candy to even out the guilt
I sent you greeting cards with messages that I could never write
Rivers flow into the oceans
And oceans never fill
I want to let you know me
But I know I never will

Love's a contradiction
Made of mirrors and smoke
The Love that keeps you wishing
My heart that makes me broke

You will always want me
And I'll always want to leave
Even though I cut your wounds
You still deny they're real
Rivers flow into the ocean
Oceans never fill
I want to lay my life down
But I know you never will

Love's a strange condition
With all the doubts it can invoke
Your love keeps me wishing
My heart keeps me broke

Baby, don't you cry, 'cause I got it all figured out
You always make me sad
But that's what true love is all about
Rivers never fill the oceans
But oceans always feel
The waters reaching deep inside them
I guess they always will

Love's a constant mission to a world you never spoke
Love, it keeps you wishing
My heart, it keeps me broke...

Keeps me wishing
My heart keeps me broke

Mirrors and Smoke

Always by your side

Married or divorced or even in the process of divorce, it seems like this guy will always be the thorn in my side. Constant needling, whining, attempting to control every situation. The drip drop of his drivel of words 99% of which are extraneous to the point and in the end the point has no real weight or merit.  The steady whittling away at boundaries which offend him by their very existence.  He is always there, my own private chinese water torture practitioner with his subtle lies, tangential to the truth so as to be grounded in something believable and then hyberbolically stretching out to infinity in their sheer ridiculousness.

Last night I got a flurry of emails from him.  Conveniently, he had failed to address any of my concerns-insurance for the children, potty training, child care for the coming school year...you know the real meat and potatoes of parenting.  I guess he's more a dessert guy anyway.  He wanted to, by way of asking me to please obey they court order and inform him of Dr.s appointments (which we haven't had any of thanks to father of the year discontinuing coverage, failing to inform me, and continuing failing to provide a certificate of coverage so I can get an exception to policy and put them on my insurance in the middle of the year) school events (which he was at yesterday because I had the 9 year old call him and invite him) and other major life events in a timely manner, suggest that I was in violation of the orders governing our joint legal custody of the children.  It just wasn't acceptable to him that he "wasn't afforded equal access to appointments and information regarding the children." The ludicrous nature of the statements should have been laughable. But I wasn't laughing.

In another email, this control addict wanted me to provide him with a moment by moment itinerary and travel route for my upcoming road trip with the children.  It was a long winded cleverly passive aggressive attempt to insert himself into something that was making him feel left out :(  poor baby.  The inappropriately juvenile spirit in which the email was written should have made me feel sorry for the author.  But I did not feel sorry for him.

What I did feel was white hot anger creeping up my shoulders and burning through my carotid, lighting my ears on fire and melting my brain into a non-functioning mess.  I will never be free of this guy.  He will always be bothering me.  He talks about coparenting and getting along for the sake of the kids, all the while talking trash about me to them, causing confusion and embarrassment to them and quibbling over every little decision made, though they make perfect sense and he would indeed agree if he was looking from the outside in as a sane observer.

The anger burned through me and disintegrated all the joy and gratefulness I had been learning to have through this slow, arduous, thankless process. All the lessons of self control and emotional discipline lay in an ash heap left behind by the angry fire; ashes that I promptly picked up, showered myself with and rolled around in til I was REALLY FEELING my fully rightly deserved self-pity.  As the offspring of this ill-fated union entered the witching hour of late evening and had a sudden second (or twentieth?) wind of energy for the day, I felt like it was just TOO hard to take care of these kids and respond to their dad and think about what this genius was laying the foundation for with these emails and how was I going to combat it and HOW was I going to afford combating this.  So I thought about it, incessantly, and didn't do anything about it, and got annoyed at the kids for being kids, especially seeing as they were his kids.

There I was, figuratively, on the ground, kicking my legs like a two year old.  I'll never be divorced.  I'll always have him to deal with even if this divorce gets finalized.  I don't believe God gives a care enough about my situation to do anything about it.  And even if He did, humans don't always cooperate.

One of my sisters suggested that maybe this could be like the story of Ruth. Ruth? I thought I would check it out.  THIS BOOK HAS NOTHING to do with my life story.  These ladies' husbands are DEAD.
This book is more for Abby, who actually has a dead husband and could relate.  Not for me. I kept reading though.  I read the whole book-it is four short chapters.  I got nothing.  I was soooooooooooo pissed.

I'm unaware of how or when the change in my mind happened.  But I just know sometime between last night and this morning I knew what the book of Ruth had to do with me.  Ruth had to go to the fields every day and glean.  It was hard work in the hot son and she had to do it every day.  Here's the message, Jessica, get off your butt, put one foot in front of the other and glean in the fields.  Whatever work is put in front of you-do that.  Whatever task is required of you, focus on that.  Regardless of what you are feeling, do what you must do.

The idea began to crystallize in my mind as my two year old went #2 all by himself this morning in the potty.  A week ago it FELT like he would never be potty trained.  I chased him to the potty 100 times the first as he yelled "i have to pee, i have to pee"  and didn't pee.  I cleaned his butt crack and several pairs of undies when he would claim to have to go poop, run to the potty, sit there, say "i can't do it" and 30 seconds later be in a corner proving that indeed he COULD.  It felt like an endlessly futile exercise.  I felt like giving up.  Then the next day brought more pee on the ground and crap in the laundry.  But the third day he peed in the potty and in days 6, 7 and 8 has not had a urine accident.  And this morning after two days of holding it, the potty training was complete.  How silly it was for me to buy into the feelings of hopelessness and uselessness.  I had potty trained three boys before this and not a one of them didn't come out the other side a fully functioning toilet using member of society.

I will be divorced in a year or two or however long this thing drags out.  And with each interaction with the person I once saw fit to marry, I am a little less perturbed and the emotional fallout lasts a slightly shorter time. If only my "soul amnesia" as Ann author of One Thousand Gifts puts it wouldn't kick in so hard next time.

Sometimes our feelings are valid and aligned with the truth.  But more often than not, they are in collusion with a lie that is being whispered in our ear, blinding us to the truth of the love of God. And instead of having an emotionally induced temper tantrum, maybe we need to do the work that is required of us.  Go to the fields and glean.  Naomi will whip up a plan, Boaz will provide and redeem.  I just need to be Ruth.  Write a simple email in response to the (one day) ex, state the truth, press send.  Get up and take my son to the potty 100 times because one of those times is gonna produce results.  And NO emotional romance novel addict, this doesn't necessarily mean that you will get a literal Boaz (rich, handsome guy that falls in love with you at first sight and vice versa despite your insane baggage).  Nope, the Boaz in your story is the great I AM.  I am who is always by your side, sustaining you.  It is God who whispers in your ear  "Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge" Your Boaz provides you, not necessarily with grain, but, with whatever it is YOU need for today.  He spreads out the corner of His garment to cover you in His peace and righteousness, to comfort you with His warmth and protect you from ridicule and slander. Your Boaz   is the one who, as the Hebrew meaning of the name implies, is your strength.   Go work in His fields.  Watch and wait and work.