November 2019 marked the end of a Life Chapter... my divorce was finalized.
My marriage story spans a time period of two decades; time that brings more memories of sadness, pain and hurt than it does of joy, smiles and laughter. My personal experience with marriage has not been a pleasant one. The journey has felt more like a constant hurricane than one of sailing the calm seas of life.
However....God is not to fault for the destruction of this institution that He created for His children. No...the blame is placed solely on the two that took the vows that November day over years ago. On that day, I was an energetically infused Spiritual Warrior with a bold faith. A faith that He gifted me with as a result of the relationship that He and I had cultivated over time.
I was bold in my faith! In my mind, God could do everything He said He could and I believed in my heart that if He said it...it was as good as done. That faith began to be tested about 6 months into the marriage....and the challenges seemed to never end....until now.
My struggle to simply be who God created me to be has been part of my entire life...until recently.
My marriage story spans a time period of two decades; time that brings more memories of sadness, pain and hurt than it does of joy, smiles and laughter. My personal experience with marriage has not been a pleasant one. The journey has felt more like a constant hurricane than one of sailing the calm seas of life.
However....God is not to fault for the destruction of this institution that He created for His children. No...the blame is placed solely on the two that took the vows that November day over years ago. On that day, I was an energetically infused Spiritual Warrior with a bold faith. A faith that He gifted me with as a result of the relationship that He and I had cultivated over time.
I was bold in my faith! In my mind, God could do everything He said He could and I believed in my heart that if He said it...it was as good as done. That faith began to be tested about 6 months into the marriage....and the challenges seemed to never end....until now.
My struggle to simply be who God created me to be has been part of my entire life...until recently.
God has set me Free! I have divorced my abuser and have been processing the abuse of my childhood as well.
YES! My divorce literally felt as if I had been set Free! Set free from the chains of emotional, verbal, financial, mental, spiritual and sexual abuse. There are some who would argue with me that God does not view divorce as being “set free”, and to those of you who hold that opinion I say.... Come, let us sit and discuss the Truth of His Word over coffee ;)
I welcome the criticisms because it will only give me the opportunity to explain that a decision to leave a marriage is not done without some serious soul searching and seeking God for answers. However, that is a subject for another time.
As I sat at the table before going to court, thoughts swirled in my mind....
Do I have all the information ready?
Can I keep it together long enough to state the facts?
Will I get to emotional and forget what I need to say?
What if....
What if....
What if...
Then I remembered something.... Praise!
I need to offer praises up to my God in Heaven because it is only through Him that I have gotten this far. Literally....He is the only reason I have been able to get to this stage of the process; I was not able to get a lawyer so I had to represent myself. Again, a story for another day.
God had it all figured out.
I welcome the criticisms because it will only give me the opportunity to explain that a decision to leave a marriage is not done without some serious soul searching and seeking God for answers. However, that is a subject for another time.
As I sat at the table before going to court, thoughts swirled in my mind....
Do I have all the information ready?
Can I keep it together long enough to state the facts?
Will I get to emotional and forget what I need to say?
What if....
What if....
What if...
Then I remembered something.... Praise!
I need to offer praises up to my God in Heaven because it is only through Him that I have gotten this far. Literally....He is the only reason I have been able to get to this stage of the process; I was not able to get a lawyer so I had to represent myself. Again, a story for another day.
God had it all figured out.
It was already accomplished.
There was nothing that I could do now that would alter the outcome because God had it orchestrated already. The outcome was not up to me...it was solely up to Him. It was time for me to turn my focus from all the papers...all the words...all the thoughts and simply be in that moment with my Father. Once the preparation for court was finished, it was out of my hands. At that point, I had done all that I could do so now it was time to focus on the One who holds the true power and authority....my Father.
Psalm 120:1
I was desperate for you to help me in my struggles, and you did!
Psalm 121:1
….I realize that our true help and protection come only from the Lord, our Creator who made the heavens and the earth
I listened to songs and sang them to Him and as I did something wonderful began to happen...I began to dance! The weight of that afternoon began to fall away. The pressure of “getting it right” of “saying the right thing” lessened like the seal of a pressure cooker had been released...I welcomed the relief!
After a bit, my focus shifted to having my quiet time with God where I typically do a word study or just read a devotional and the Bible and sometimes pray (I need to get better at regularly including dedicated prayer during these times). I went back to a message that I sent my niece almost a year before that...she asked for my thoughts on an article.
God is so clever! He knows just when to remind us of certain things...below was my response to my niece...
~~~~~~
The Pope mentioned that he wanted to change the wording in the Lord's Prayer from “...lead...” to “...abandon...” and I began to ponder the word choice of “abandon”...how irritated I was that the Pope chose to use that word to replace “lead”...how sly of the enemy to introduce the concept that God would even think of abandoning His child....then He smacked me LOL!
Psalm 120:1
I was desperate for you to help me in my struggles, and you did!
Psalm 121:1
….I realize that our true help and protection come only from the Lord, our Creator who made the heavens and the earth
I listened to songs and sang them to Him and as I did something wonderful began to happen...I began to dance! The weight of that afternoon began to fall away. The pressure of “getting it right” of “saying the right thing” lessened like the seal of a pressure cooker had been released...I welcomed the relief!
After a bit, my focus shifted to having my quiet time with God where I typically do a word study or just read a devotional and the Bible and sometimes pray (I need to get better at regularly including dedicated prayer during these times). I went back to a message that I sent my niece almost a year before that...she asked for my thoughts on an article.
God is so clever! He knows just when to remind us of certain things...below was my response to my niece...
~~~~~~
The Pope mentioned that he wanted to change the wording in the Lord's Prayer from “...lead...” to “...abandon...” and I began to ponder the word choice of “abandon”...how irritated I was that the Pope chose to use that word to replace “lead”...how sly of the enemy to introduce the concept that God would even think of abandoning His child....then He smacked me LOL!
He asked why I had allowed myself to believe that He had abandoned me in my current situation.
BAM!! There it was....the lie I embraced that encapsulated my heart with fear and anger.
He unfolded the “Why?” to me in such a way that my bruised heart could see...would acknowledge and then accept.
He showed me how I had misunderstood Him long ago; God told me...”If you don’t continue in the way that you received it, you will lose it.” I always thought it meant the farm....but He didn't. IT was my Faith!!!
I was too focused on the farm and totally missed what He was saying!!! It is my Faith...that radical, risk-taking faith that had been in hibernation for far too long.
He showed me that He is going to restore that faith ... the faith that made me the Warrior I once was. I was in tears when He revealed this to me.
My Father is going to restore my way of communicating with Him...I was overwhelmed!!!!
Today, I can honestly say that He has released me from this prison that I found myself trapped in....I had believed the lie that I was meant to stay in this relationship, this severely unhealthy situation that had systematically eroded that Faith.
This morning He used that article to dispel that untruth! Through you and your obedience, He has gifted me Hope this morning... and you have NO idea what that means to me or how timely it is!
So thank you my dear!!! Thank you for providing me a life jacket in the midst of this current hurricane.
~~~~~
That response to my niece was in December 2018. Almost four weeks later my whole world changed....
A Protection From Abuse Order was filed and my husband was removed from the home.
Six weeks from that day in December, I filed for a divorce.
Eleven months from that date, the divorce judgment was signed by a judge.
God was serious....through the process of those 11 months...
My faith had been restored
Communication with my Father had been restored
I was released from the prison I found myself in
I was set free
However, He also blessed me with something far more important than any of those things...He brought me to a place of overwhelming peace. He not only restored all that had faded away...He gifted me with a deeper understanding of who His is and for that I am forever grateful.
This journey has not been an easy one; there have been many times of deep emotional pain and exhaustion. Oh my word! The exhaustion was relentless...the ups and downs and plot twists seemed to never stop. BUT....God was always there; through it all, He held my hand and was my guide. He navigated the stormy waters and brought me to the eye of the storm.
Dr. Tony Evans describes Biblical Peace in this way:
“In the Bible, Peace means completeness, wholeness, and an inner resting of the soul that never changes despite what else is going on. A person who is at peace is someone who is calm, untroubled, and at rest within....Even though you are experiencing chaos on the outside, God's peace on the inside can keep your spirit and mind calm.”
This space is unbelievably calm!
Chaos churns all around in the distance yet here in this space, there is peace.
This place is my safe space.
In this space, I am hidden in Him.
It is this space, I intend to remain....hidden in Christ.
So come with me as I unfold the pages of my journey and tell the story of how God brought me from a place of … Chaos to Peace.
BAM!! There it was....the lie I embraced that encapsulated my heart with fear and anger.
He unfolded the “Why?” to me in such a way that my bruised heart could see...would acknowledge and then accept.
He showed me how I had misunderstood Him long ago; God told me...”If you don’t continue in the way that you received it, you will lose it.” I always thought it meant the farm....but He didn't. IT was my Faith!!!
I was too focused on the farm and totally missed what He was saying!!! It is my Faith...that radical, risk-taking faith that had been in hibernation for far too long.
He showed me that He is going to restore that faith ... the faith that made me the Warrior I once was. I was in tears when He revealed this to me.
My Father is going to restore my way of communicating with Him...I was overwhelmed!!!!
Today, I can honestly say that He has released me from this prison that I found myself trapped in....I had believed the lie that I was meant to stay in this relationship, this severely unhealthy situation that had systematically eroded that Faith.
This morning He used that article to dispel that untruth! Through you and your obedience, He has gifted me Hope this morning... and you have NO idea what that means to me or how timely it is!
So thank you my dear!!! Thank you for providing me a life jacket in the midst of this current hurricane.
~~~~~
That response to my niece was in December 2018. Almost four weeks later my whole world changed....
A Protection From Abuse Order was filed and my husband was removed from the home.
Six weeks from that day in December, I filed for a divorce.
Eleven months from that date, the divorce judgment was signed by a judge.
God was serious....through the process of those 11 months...
My faith had been restored
Communication with my Father had been restored
I was released from the prison I found myself in
I was set free
However, He also blessed me with something far more important than any of those things...He brought me to a place of overwhelming peace. He not only restored all that had faded away...He gifted me with a deeper understanding of who His is and for that I am forever grateful.
This journey has not been an easy one; there have been many times of deep emotional pain and exhaustion. Oh my word! The exhaustion was relentless...the ups and downs and plot twists seemed to never stop. BUT....God was always there; through it all, He held my hand and was my guide. He navigated the stormy waters and brought me to the eye of the storm.
Dr. Tony Evans describes Biblical Peace in this way:
“In the Bible, Peace means completeness, wholeness, and an inner resting of the soul that never changes despite what else is going on. A person who is at peace is someone who is calm, untroubled, and at rest within....Even though you are experiencing chaos on the outside, God's peace on the inside can keep your spirit and mind calm.”
This space is unbelievably calm!
Chaos churns all around in the distance yet here in this space, there is peace.
This place is my safe space.
In this space, I am hidden in Him.
It is this space, I intend to remain....hidden in Christ.
So come with me as I unfold the pages of my journey and tell the story of how God brought me from a place of … Chaos to Peace.
