Back to Him.

There is something that has been weighing really heavily on me lately. That wedge I placed between me and my relationship with God. I'm not sure when it got there, but I feel it. I've stopped turning to Him first in times of need. I have been trying to deal with everything on my own, and while I'm being honest... that isn't going so well for me. It seems like it has been forever since I have actually felt Him with me, but that is my fault.

This weekend I received a rough reality check.

I went up for an awesome night out with my bestie on Friday night. Saturday morning, I headed out early to make it back home for the Polar Bear Plunge. As soon as I left, something was off. Apparently both of my front tires decided to deflate significantly over night. Not a huge deal right? Just stop off and get some air in them. Well on the way to a gas station, my car was slipping and sliding all over the place after an over night snow. I put it off to the deflation of the front tires and that as soon as I got them refilled, it would be fine.

I pull into a gas station and hop out to check the tires and get the caps off so I can refill them. The caps were frozen on. I had no tools with me to get them off, and apparently you cant get a wrench or pliers at a gas station. I call Mindy and she is able to swing by before going to cheer practice with the tools. I get them off and get them filled up (my PSI is supposed to be 41 and it was less than 20 in both my front tires...) and be on my way.

I was still doing some slipping around, but I know that sometimes side streets aren't attended to as fast as main roads. Surely the highway was going to be better. Wrong.

I made it 25 miles in over 1 hours. The trip in total is 120 miles and usually only takes me 2 hours. I had to pull off the road 3 times because I was actually having panic attacks from all the sliding my car was doing. It seemed like I was the only car having that problem. People were just FLYING past me. I was crying and shaking and I'm pretty sure I surpassed white knuckles into straight up bloody fingers from the death grip I had on the steering wheel.

The last time I pulled off the freeway, I realized that I was trying to do all of this on my own. I wasn't asking God to keep me safe. I gave myself a few more minutes of breathing time before I sucked it up and went back to the freeway. I was still sliding a little, but not nearly as much. About 10 miles in, the roads cleared up it seemed and it was smooth sailing. Any time I felt the sway of the car start, I just pressed on, confident I would be fine.

Soon I began to see what it was I was so afraid of. A little bit before I reached Milwaukee, I began to see accident after accident. 8 in total. Not just minor fender benders either. I'm talking about major accidents, of which some I am sure were fatal. One vans entire back end was gone. Then there was the blue pick up truck that was on its side. After I passed the 5th or 6th accident, I realized I had stopped praying for myself, and I was praying for the people in these cars and their families. I don't even think it was right until that moment that I realized how much I had shut myself off from God. I'm not sure why it happened, but I can see now that it did. All I can do is work on changing that everyday. Make a conscious effort to look to Him more often... not just at a time when I feel desperate.

Slowly but surely... I'll get there. The hard lesson I am learning now is that everything really does happen for a reason. Situations that seem impossible right now will turn out to be great things. I'm never in total darkness.

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.