Dancing in the minefield (part two... or not)

This should start off with acknowledging that there wont be a part two to the dancing in the minefield post. My life has taken a sudden flip upside down and I am busy picking up the ruins and trying to make sense of it all.

I was going to lay it all out on here just to get it out. But Ive decided against it. Mostly because I am still sort of on the fence with my own feelings in the whole situation. I know what Im feeling, I just don't know where they will lead me.

Last night was an eye opener though. Im not a cryer, but last night I came to a point where I couldn't control it. Much like my very first experience with actual prayer, I submitted myself to prayer. It wasn't working for me. Not only could I not catch my breath, but I felt like He couldn't hear me. I needed a direct line. So I pulled myself up and put on a sweater. (Its after midnight by the way...) I got myself down stairs and opened up the front door and stepped out. Right there on my front porch I crumbled to my knees and prayed for a good 20 minutes or so.

I prayed for clarity, direction, support, the ability to surrender my need for control, the ability to forgive, a light, protection of the hearts of my babies, his own clarity for what he truly wants, truth, peace, and reminders to look up.

When I came up, I was still terribly sad, and felt as though a gun had been place on my chest and the trigger was pulled. Repeat. But it was ok, because the message was now His.

I came to the conclusion today that my path is set. I didn't lay the stones, God did. He knows exactly where I am going and how I will get there. All of this is a part of that. Sometimes the excruciating pain is hard to justify, but I feel myself growing and changing, even now. When I hit my knees and lifted my heart and admitted my own role in my new reality, that brutal honesty was cleansing. Of course He already knew, but I needed to bring it to the surface. There is no sense in pointing fingers, my hands were in the pot too.

I cannot control the actions of others. I cannot control the feelings raging through me, including anger. What I can control is what I do with it. And what I am doing, is laying it at the feet of God and asking Him to show me how to deal with it.

Im not out of the woods. Not even close. But I am MILES closer to where I need to be in my faith as a result. Beautiful things come out of the most tragic of circumstances, and this is one of those things.

So my promise is this. No more blame. No more guilt. No more tit for tat. No more begging. No more back and forth. If this is the new future for me, I accept it. It kills me, and my throat gets tight imagining the loneliness ahead of me, but that's not reality. Ill never be lonely. I have my kids, and I have my God. I would have loved to have had my husband, my best friend, right there with me. I don't think anything I do will change it, and nothing I would have done would have made it different.

The pain is still overwhelming and makes me feel like I'm going to be sick most of the time. In those times I feel the love of all of the amazing friends I have just lifting me up. No matter if they are doing that in prayer or just in general thought, they are lifting me up.

The only thing I ask... don't feel sorry for me. I'm being rebuilt from the ground up as a better, stronger and more faith driven person, and its supposed to happen this way. Its not supposed to be easy, its supposed to be a struggle so when I get to my next mile stone, I can realize I learned something and grew. All the sorries in the world wont make things different. While I don't like the way I got here, I'm not sorry. The reasons are still unclear to me, but they wont always be. Until then, I am putting all my faith where is belongs.

God first.

-Me.