Standing.

Feeling so much better this morning!  Thank you for your prayers… just nervous about hitting publish on this post… hope it encourages…

This post comes to you from my heart… and I feel like it really puts my heart out on a limb… you very well may not agree with me in this, but I pray that you will understand my heart in this one… You have no idea how much I’d like to just pretend like this isn’t what I feel led to post today and go on to something fun… but… here it is… 

There is something that I keep trying to put down… and God won’t let me.  There is something that I really want to let go of… and God isn’t ready for me to.  There is something that makes me feel like a crazy person when I write about it, or confess my belief in it… and God just smiles at me.  There is something that I really don't want to write about on here... But God says it is time. 

Recently, God has brought me three, countem’, three, new blogging friends.  THREE!  Big deal, you say… new friends show up on your site daily… yes, but these three new friends are all walking in the same path I am in… Sheryl was the first one that I "met"... We've been chatting and she asks me some hard questions.  Then came Paula, she asked me some even harder questions... And they sent me digging in my Bible and my Journals... Next, came Linda, when I stumbled onto her site recently, I read one post, that didn’t mention anything at all about her past, I felt an immediate connection to her.  I told her so in a comment, and she replied to me that she is indeed a divorced-single mom…

One of these ladies pointed out an online support group for people called to “stand” for their marriages throughout trials.  The ministry is called, Rejoice Ministries. My whole body was tingling when I saw their website, and read their mission statement, their testimony, their prayers, and  encouraging words.  They have even set up daily E-mails that I can receive and be encouraged in the calling that I have on my life to stand for my marriage.

Let me say a couple things… I have added a couple links to the sidebar of my blog to this ministry.  I have read very encouraging words on their site.  But, I can’t say I agree with everything they are saying.  I have found that most of the time there is something about every book, teaching, and ministry that may not completely line up with all that I believe.  I have realized that, that is actually a good thing… it's discernment.  We are all just human, trying to make sense of an inhuman God… Sometimes we just don’t understand things.  Sometimes we are blinded.  Sometimes we are confused.  But, always we must be discerning, and never take everything any human says as all truth… only God’s Word can be that to us. 

So, what do I not agree with?  I don’t agree that this stand applies to every person in every relationship.  I believe that there are times when people are released of their marriage commitments.  And there are times when God is asking more of us in a commitment. 

When God’s Word speaks of remarriage & divorce, it is an inconsistent, gray area.  It leaves many confused.  It leaves many going to the side of caution.  This is my opinion, based on my experience, and based on my peace… God is gray in this area for a reason.  He calls us to do different things at different times with different circumstances.  I’ve walked this road called “divorce” for over three years now… before that I walked it with my sister… much is learned when you walk the road.  I’ve learned that many times I must trust my peace over a situation.  And even though I can't make sense of it... The peace is what I must rely on.

I have hesitated to address this topic.  It is controversial.  I am not asking for controversy.  In fact I hate controversy.  Maybe I am asking for it in this post, but I still have to address it.

I struggled when I first realized what God was asking of me, with feeling like if this is what I was being asked to do in my marriage, then this is what everyone else must be supposed to do too.  Interesting how we are like that… many times when we become convicted that we need to do something, someway, we decide that anyone who is not doing things like we are must be wrong.  When we are really the ones who are wrong, acting judgmentally, and ignorant.

I’ve learned that I was wrong in my thoughts.  I’ve learned that many times we walk a road for awhile and then God takes us down a turn that we don’t understand, or He releases us of a burden that we felt was ours to carry forever… or He brings a surprise into our lives that we could never have asked for or imagined in our wildest imagination…  Because His ways and thoughts are not ours, and are so far above us. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

So, that’s a long explanation of that… All to say, I have a new term to use for what I feel God is asking me to continue to do, today, for my dead, stomped on, stinking, ugly, disgusting, mess of a marriage.  The term is “standing”.  God is asking me to continue to stand for what was lost.  It makes no sense.  It has no logic.  I don’t get it.  I want to stop standing for it.  But, He shows me that I am not to do that.

So, as my new found friend, Paula and I are writing to each other about our dead marriages, she asks me some questions that bring up lots of memories that make me really think.  They make me think about the promises that God has given me about my life, my marriage, and my family.  They make me remember.  They take me back into my journals… they make me search things out… they make me realize that nothing has changed since those promises were given to me.  Nothing but me.

Nothing has changed with HSSH.  Okay, maybe it has.  It’s gotten worse.

I realize that I have been trying to pretend that I never heard these things, and they weren't really from God.  I have been trying to pretend that I had moved past all this “nonsense” of standing.  And that somehow I had changed into a “normal” person, who doesn’t think such crazy, impossible things.

There is a battle in my mind… part of me wants to just be that “normal” person, who was married, is divorced, is a single parent, and is past all that… and part of me still wants to believe that God can still do what He told me wanted to do with this catastrophe…

Tomorrow I will tell you the things that I found when I went back into my journals... 

Pam