We carry our sorrows and wear grief like a coat of arms

"I don't know how to say this, 

I don't know where to stand,

I don't know where to put my feet,

or where to put my hands.

I've got them in my pocket,

My fingers are freezing cold

They're wrapped around a ticket stub

that's four weeks old

And I don't know how to say this..."

(-Sara Groves, from the song, "Conversations.")

I have not been able to put this into words.

There are times when you wish it was a dream and you could wake up.

There are things from which you cannot wake up.  Because you are awake.  Already.  And those things are the hardest to write.  

 Blink 

Blink

Like a deer in the headlights of my own life.

So it has been, so help me, GOD.  

In 2010, I was a stay at home mom to 4 children.  A frazzled and scheduled stay at home mom.  A good mom, but a frazzled one.  I remember feeling very much like a hamster on a spinning wheel...juggling.  And like if I stepped off of the wheel or let one of the balls drop, they all would drop.  I wasn't even fantastic at the things other moms are apparently fantastic at, such as decorating so cutely, and cooking from scratch.  While I had decorative home ideas in my mind, the trick was getting them out from between the walls of my creative skull bones and into the present physical home in which I lived.  

There were very few pictures on the walls.

I did have one cute corner on the mantle in the living room, which I was pleased with.  But that's about it.

     Meals? Often they came from a frozen box or package.  And then only a couple of the people would eat it.  The other kids would eat almost nothing.  I exaggerate but somehow in their pickiness, they still continued to grow.  

     Things I was good at: Knowing each of my children deeply.  Just sitting and being with them. I would sit with each of them and read book after book after book.  I took them to a lot of parks to run around and play.  Getting them out the door every morning fed, dressed, with their teeth and hair brushed.  I never missed a parent teacher conference.  

I was also good at laundry.  I did one large load every day in cold water and folded and put it away that same day.  Therefore it never piled up.  

     One of my daily challenges was that one of my children was high functioning autistic.  He was amazing.  He was brilliant and artistic, and he needed to live his life by a strict schedule to keep himself from basically freaking out.  There were strict ritual routines that needed to be followed, and I was the keeper of said rituals, and they were becoming more and more elaborate and they were taking over our day.  It meant I had to spend more time dealing with this and keeping this child calm than I did with my other three children.  (We did finally get professional help and therapies which worked wonders.  The ritual behaviors died away.  But for a period of time, it was very very intense for me.) 

     So this is where we found me in 2010.  Frazzled stay at home mom and wife.  

     After 11 years of marriage, my husband and I both made some decisions that lead to the destruction of our marriage.  

     There are so many times I have wished I could go back to that time and do it over again, the right way.  I wish I could have yelled at my 2010 self, yelled and told her what I know now.  Pounded it into her to GO LEFT THERE, not RIGHT, but to GO RIGHT THERE, not LEFT.  I want to shake her and wake her up.  But as I cannot do that now, I can only say that I do yes, have deep regrets and bitter sorrows and many of them are of my own doing.  

     I do believe that no marriage is ever truly beyond repair, not if both husband and wife are still breathing.  Where Jesus is, there is always hope.  He is the only hope.  I have known this my entire life, yet somehow I neglected to cling to it's deep truths, rooted in my heart, at critical times.  And the price that cost me was everything.  

      As a stay at home mom, which I had been for ten years, I had not made any money.  I had not advanced in any career.  So the fall out of the marriage left me without funds for a life of taking care of four children, plus myself.  Especially since we were living in one of the most expensive areas in the country.  I got a job, but it was in no way enough money to provide for a family.  

     The four children went to live mostly with their father and his parents.  Since the parents were willing and able to watch the kids while my ex husband worked.  They also had a home large enough to house all of them.  They also lived across the street from the school.  It was a good school, one of the best, in a good neighborhood, one of the best.  

What did I have to offer them?  Nothing.   My SELF, which they had always had, yes.  But as far as material means?  Nothing. My work schedule was also not regular.  I was working full time, yet the days and hours changed every week.  So it was basically impossible to figure out a regular schedule of child swapping.  I also found that when I worked, if the children were in my care, I was paying so much for childcare that it made working not worth my while.  So I let them live mainly with their father.

     By the time I was promoted to a position which would provide regular hours and the same days off every week, the children and their father were so into their schedule that there was not room for them to change it to live half of the time with me.  That is to say that my ex husband was not willing to change anything about the arrangement.  I asked, I begged, I pleaded with my ex husband for shared custody, and at this point, he calmly said to me, "Michelle, we both know that the children are going to live with me."  I was devastated.  

     During this time, the Lord had been working on my heart.  

     When my husband initially left me, I could not face the reality of the situation.  I surrounded myself with escape methods to try and keep my mind from truly understanding the magnitude of the situation, and a for a few months, it worked.  But that all came abruptly to a halt one day.  I remember clearly feeling like I was Rip Van Winkle, and that I had been asleep for several months, and that I was finally awake, and truly seeing my life and my family.  What I saw horrified me.  Inside, everything screamed, "NOOOOOOOOO!!!! This can't be happening!!!!"  I saw that my family had gone on without me, had created a life with a cavity in it where I used to be, and that the door to that cavity had been sealed shut, and that I was no longer welcome there.  The children loved and wanted me around.  But I was no longer wanted.  My ex husband made it clear that HE was in charge, that I was going to see the children when HE said, and on his terms.  

     I could do nothing but sorrowfully seek the LORD, beg, plead.  And I did this, oh I did this.  

     I was also repentant to my husband for my part in the down fall of the marriage.  Everything in me was repentant and begging for repair.  I longed for the marriage to be fixed, the family to be restored.  But all of my weeping and confessing were met with emotional silence.  

     I say this not to make anyone feel sorry for me.  I do not deserve anyone's pity.  I am sure that if my ex husband were to tell this story, he would tell it from a different perspective. I see it from various perspectives at different times, as well.  And what I see, through the eyes of time and grace and the shiny newness having been washed off of the edges of the memory, is that two people felt they were in between a rock and a hard place, and made decisions the best way they knew how.  When everything in front of you looks like impossibly different than anything you ever were expecting or even anything you believe to be possible, what do you do?

  What would you do?

   Don't answer that.

   Because whatever you think you would answer, it would be the wrong answer.

   You will never know what you would have done until you are ever in that exact situation

    And until you are, hold off your judgement.  

     But I pray that you never ever ever have to find out.

It is now 2014.  The past four years, I have learned to cling to Jesus more than ever before.  I found that when my heart was broken, open, laid bare, shattered before Him like never before, when my entire life had been pulled out from under me like a cheap rug, that HE was the foundation underneath it that kept me alive.  Literally.

I found deep forgiveness from Him.

There were many times you would have found me sprawled out on the floor, facing down, wishing to die, feeling my life was over, and so embarrassed of the way I had grieved the heart of God.  Not just in this situation with the downfall of my family, but over the course of my entire life.  The gravity of my sin felt like too much of a grievous weight to ever stand up under, and I cried in sorrow, "Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me," and I asked the Lord, "How can I ever get up off of this ground again, knowing what my sin has done to your son."  

(It was more of a statement than a question)

(But God answered it.) 

(And what He said to my heart in that moment was profound.)

He said to my spirit,

"You will get up and love whoever I put in front of you to love, because now you know the depths from which you have been forgiven and saved."

I will NEVER forget those words.

They were exactly that clear.

Thank you, Jesus.

From now on, that is all I can say.

Thank you, Jesus.

Incredibly, this is not the end of the story of my life.  It was a stepping stone to a different beginning. A painful and scar filled new beginning yes, but a beginning just the same.

I could tell you the story of how my relationships with my children are closer than they ever could have been, "before."

I could tell you how I told God I would never remarry, unless I knew beyond a doubt that He had brought me someone to marry, and how God did indeed do just that, exactly that, almost two years after my first husband walked out.

About how that courtship was so brief; we talked one day after not having said a word to each other in a decade, and were literally married six weeks later.

About how obeying God's call in my life and marrying my current husband required me to move 4 hours north of where my ex husband still lives with my four oldest children

but that I also know that I heard and felt God leading in every step along the way,

as funny and strange as that may seem, to our conventional linear minds.

And I could tell you the story of how God has allowed this physical distance to redeem things I do not understand, in ways I wish He would not, but that since He is God, I have chosen to trust Him in it.

I could go on to tell you the story of how God is using the fact that we cannot afford to live in the same city as my oldest four children to rescue a very small child, to mother her.  About how God placed her in my care, and I never saw it coming.  About how when I was grieving the loss of my oldest children, God did not immediately give them back to me, but he brought me new children.  One to rescue, (Oh how we have had to fight for her, and the battle is still waging)

and one I birthed last year.
(Oh baby Rocco, with your name meaning both "Battlecry," and "Rest," you are such a deep, deep comfort to the hearts of your father and myself.)
About how I am able to appreciate what I have now, having little ones underfoot,
in ways that one only can after having had her motherhood taken away.
IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: Our two littlest children were never, and will never be a replacement of my oldest four children;  my heart grieves for the loss of those four EVERY SINGLE DAY, and I pray we can all live in the same city again SOON...but until that happens, I know not to take my youngest two for granted...as I wait for The LORD to restore us to our oldest four.)

In all, a mom who thought she was done having children at age 30, when she had had four and her cup was overwhelmingly full, 

and then again who thought her entire LIFE was over less than four years later,

to now being a wife again, and a mother to SIX children,

four of whom she does not see nearly as much as she wishes she could,

and two of whom are with her all the time...

...but those would be stories entirely of themselves, 

and those are all stories that will I pray have a very specific ending, 

which I do not yet know.

What I do know

What my whole being knows

Is that GOD is the one who directs my path

He is the one who redeems my life

And the lives of those I love

HE is the mender, restorer,

and HIS way of redeeming and restoring are different than I often wish they were,

the story HE is writing is much longer than I always wish it was,

BUT I TRUST HIM.

And so if you do not like the way I have lived my life for the past four years, 

you'll have to take it up with my Heavenly Father,

because He is the one who has brought me here, 

and 

I TRUST HIM,
I TRUST HIM,
I PLACE ALL OF MY TRUST IN HIM
JESUS CHRIST MY SAVIOR,

And that is the only safe place on this earth.

Praise be to God.

Amen.