You Can Overcome: Part 1

Let me tell you a story. About me.

It's pretty depressing and scary actually. But I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm not the only one who's been there.

In a heap...

Helpless...

Curled up on the bathroom floor...

Really scared...

I KNOW I'm not the only one, because many of you have shared with me instances when you've been there too. And I'm so very thankful for those courageous and caring people who, very early on in my separation from my husband of 17 years, recognized that something wasn't right and reached out to me. A lot of them knew from first hand experience what I was going through and gladly offered up encouragement and prayers. It did wonders for my healing to know I wasn't the only one. That's why I feel so very passionate about being real and sharing with someone else that....

THERE IS HOPE! There really is.

I didn't believe it either...didn't believe it for a long time actually.

I think we do an injustice to one another when we glaze over our pain like everything is okay, because we all know that it's not. We all know! So why do we pretend? Some people are just so very desperate for a listening ear and for someone to look them in the eye, and with all sincerity confess, "Me too."

That night, the night he said,

and said...

and said...all those awful words...words that didn't even seem like his own...

that seem locked in tight in the deep crevices of my soul...

"Divorce...I'm not happy...I don't love you...I haven't for years...."

The abrasiveness of those words and their bindings still rub raw places on my heart.

I've learned not to let my mind wander back to that night very often, if ever. The pain there is too visceral...still. And I don't like to feel pain.

I remember walking away, my feet like cinder blocks trudging up the two flights of stairs to my bathroom where I collapsed over the toilet to vomit, heaving from the uncontrollable sobs and from the nausea of the sick reality that had forcefully and unexpectedly just punched me in the gut. And there I lay...on the bathroom floor, longing for my husband to come to me...but he never came.

I was alone, feeling like the ugliest, most unloved, rejected person in the world.

I so needed him...

but he never came.

I don't know how I managed it that night, but I got up and I went to bed. I didn't know what to do. Should I stay? Should I go? What do I do with my daughter? She had school the next day. I had school the next day! How was I going to stand up in front of 20 five-year-olds and keep it together? How was I going to face my own 5 year old and keep it together?

I prayed all night.

And the promise, as all of His promises do, rang true like the calm in the middle of the hurricane...

"...His mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning." Lamentations 3:22-23

 



The next morning I had clarity. I knew what I had to do, and from deep down mustered the strength to do it.

I left.

I called in to my work for the next few days, packed our clothes and a few belongings, I signed my daughter out of school, said goodbye to him and we left. So many things were uncertain. But as I drove away from the town where we lived, I knew it was over for good. I hoped it wasn't...but I just knew.

So, my daughter and I moved in with my parents an hour away from my job and I enrolled her in school there so that they could help me, and I commuted...2 hours every day.

And let me just say, His mercies were indeed new every morning or I could not have done it. How do I know God is real? How do I know that He's alive and working today? Because I cried out to him and He answered! He gave me 3 instructions, which, in His kindness, He knew was all I had the energy for. And that was to keep working, to take care of my daughter and to leave my husband alone. I failed miserably at all three at times (especially the last one) but I tried. And in my weakness I found myself on the bathroom floor many, many more times but He always met me there.

My husband never came.

...but Jesus did.

Jesus came.

I so needed Him and He came. In fact, He never left my side. Not once. He's with me even now, giving me the strength to write this as tears stream down my face.

He knows.

He was rejected too. He was unloved and despised and resented too.

Jesus knows pain. And He's a master at healing it.

With one word, He can change the whole trajectory of your healing with ONE WORD.

He did it for me!

Stay tuned.