Posted on by ebbnflow08

Trusting God’s Protection: A Journey of Faith and Healing

How long have I had this? It has just sat here, all alone.

At first I felt I had something to say, something that others would want to listen too. Something. It is the whole reason I started this up. I thought life was okay and had…something. Then life started to get wacky.

Even though I had a lot to say.
I did not know if I needed to say them.

ENF

I still do not know the answer. In fact, I am not even sure why I am here. I am not a writer. I am not sure I even have anything to say that hasn’t already been said. Or that anyone really wants to hear. Does there really need to be yet another voice out there, when there are so many? So many.

But I am here. Had the urge to get on here, for some reason. To write something inspirational, or just where I am at? Maybe it will help someone else…maybe it is just me writing to the universe.

The last year has not been easy. It has been nothing like I expected.

In fact when I started this blog, as stated, I had thought life was about to finally be okay. Little did I know it was all about to start falling apart, little by little. To the point where a year after my first blog, nothing, was what it once was.

Last night, though, I was told something. In that moment, for what seemed almost like the first time in the midst of all that had happened. I could see the protection of God. I could see His goodness.

In the midst of things, we (my husband and I) were not told the truth. For a long time, we could feel things were off but we just never really knew why, we just kept trying to be faithful in what we believed God had told us, and for awhile He was saying, “Keep showing up.” So we did. We kept showing up.

  • Ha, I feel silly now. I had no idea what other people who knew the truth were actually going through and I remember offering up this tidbit of advice. And they knew way more than I did. Man were they ever gracious with me.

Maybe we were naive. Maybe we believed in something that really wasn’t there. Maybe it did lead us down some paths that we are not proud of. But I believe, that God was telling us that. We were to obedient until He said otherwise.

The thing is, is that we never felt like we fit in. We weren’t really asked to peoples home to form deeper relationships and when we asked to do things with people it never “worked out”. I honestly didn’t know why.

We tried to take these moments, and draw closer to God and to work on ourselves. Seek healing where there needed to be, forgiveness. It wasn’t easy. That feeling of being on the outside looking in, but we kept going.

ENF

There was another time in our lives, that this happened too. We always thought it was because we lived a distance away and was never really able to get close to people.

We just decided, my husband and I, that we would work on ourselves. The result is that we seemed to be moving further away from the group. We began to pray a lot more, and find ourselves making more time for things we loved. Asking God for direction as relationships were less. The feeling of moving on to something else, was becoming greater.

There was still a whole lot we didn’t know and even more we didn’t understand. Until finally, we felt like God said it was time. We left.

Anyway, back to the recent conversation. Some of the why was revealed. I think if I had known this information before, it would have helped us make the decision we needed to a lot sooner. We probably wouldn’t have stayed as long. Idk. Even our response probably would have been pissed and left right then.

When a double standard has been created and compromise is okay for others, not you. Something is wrong.

Knowing it now, I look back over this past year, well probably even years, and just realize how much God protected our hearts from things. How He grew us, our family, closer to Him. Seeking Him more than anyone else. How even in the midst of all of that, He started to lead us away. Not with hearts that were angry or offended. But with hearts that were sad, humbled, and broken.

It’s like all those stories you read in the Bible, where you find out what God was doing behind the scenes. You trusted Him but you never got the answer or the understanding you thought you needed. Until one random moment, having a random conversation.

You are able to see that God didn’t let you get drawn into that. God didn’t let others separate you from your family. God didn’t let your marriage fail. God didn’t allow the enemy to come and destroy what He had been working so beautifully on.

He kept you securely wrapped in His arms. Letting you know just enough, to keep you from falling into the trap that others had set.

I wonder too, if we were suppose to leave a long time ago. But we believed more in man or a vision, than what God was telling us to do. Let me make it known, that there are no hard feelings for people. I think there are relationships forming that are new, even though I have known them for awhile. I am just letting God lead on that. I also pray for what we left. I ask God to intervene all the the time, cause it will only be by Him and not by anything I can do.

Even if that is so, and we were suppose to leave. I believe that there is grace for that. I believe that God can redeem that time and that nothing was wasted.

One of the biggest lessons I have learned, is that any of us are one step away from following a different path. I am fully aware that it is only by the grace of God that I am here.

ENF
  • That I myself haven’t gone down another path where I would be right besides others. I do not boast in anything, I am so humbled by this truth that I pray I keep it with me always, when I start to think I am better than anyone else. I pray God will remind me of this always.

I am amazed by His love. By His protection. By the safety of His arms.

I am thankful for His healing.

The tender way He leads. He is always so faithful, and I hope I never lose sight of that.

Posted on by ebbnflow08

Just Thoughts

Been thinking a lot lately. Here is my truth. It may be right. It may be wrong. You may agree. You may disagree. It is okay. It is just what I have been thinking.

There has been a struggle lately in my mind. The hardest part is that is has brought me some very deep depression. As a Christian, it is hard to know if I can actually say that. Will I be condemned because I am depressed? Will there be judgment telling me that I have given God authority over it? But as a Christian, I have been depressed. I was thinking today, if we would change the verbiage from depression to lamenting. Would that change how we look at it? I really don’t know.

Honestly, I was even wondering if that was possible. Could what I have been feeling more of a lamenting then a depression? Because it has been more of a deep ache, a mourning of sorts. A sadness for something that was, that is now potentially gone. Is that even the definition of lament? I should probably look that up. Can you continue to keep your trust in God, to look at his face, and still feel what I have been feeling? I don’t know, but I have been.

One day, I found myself so much in tears that it came from the pit of my stomach. Like I had for so long been holding it all in that it all just came out with just force, almost like a panic attack. But they were tears. A wailing. A deep cry, mourning. My whole body shook. And the words that I was putting on myself were nothing truthful but I couldn’t help but say them. “All of this is my fault. I am the problem. I am the problem. Everyone would be so much better if I were no longer here.”

Mind you, I do not take those words lightly, but I do not believe that I would be one to carry out such a sentence on myself, as well as my family. However, those heavy words were out of my mouth. They floated in the air, until the weight of them made them fall to the floor.

Soon after this, I started to think about why I had said them. What was making me feel this way, and I said another thing I am not sure Christians are suppose to talk about. Feelings. Emotions. Why is it that one moment it is okay to feel and have them. Then the next we are being chastised for having them. It is a crazy thing.

I begin to look at what was making me feel like this, and one of the first things that came up was that I am constantly trying to convince myself that everything is okay. I am okay, this situation or that situation is okay. When in reality, it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay or even normal as to what I was feeling. I wasn’t okay that the situations. I was not okay. So why did I keep trying to convince myself that it was okay? Why was being ignored, always looked down, or being told I am not doing things right most of the time, okay? Why did I have to keep this up? I have no idea.

Except, when I would talk to people this would happen. I would be ignored and told I was doing something wrong. There was never any help to work through it or anything. In fact, in one meeting that had me in tears the whole time, I was told I was unsafe to be around. I had never in my life been told that and had no idea that it was how people saw me. Or did they just say so I would back down and be quiet? Because that is exactly what I did.

Yet, everything was suppose to be normal. They had won. I was just suppose to once again go back to chanting “It’s okay. It’s okay.” When it was obviously not okay. Even though I thought maybe it could be.

But slowly, people have started to creep out of my life. People I thought loved me no matter what. People who I thought I could share anything with, only to find out later they have talked with others and not even told the whole truth. I was dealing with the consequences of it all. Maybe I really wasn’t a safe place like that person had said. Maybe I deserved to be ignored. You start to tell yourself these things. Agreeing little by little with lies that people have said over you. You just get smaller and smaller.

This is where it began. Bending over to the whim of others. Trying to please everyone. Hearing over and over how I was the only one in the wrong and it seems I would not ever be out of this. I began to see the same thing happening to my husband, and my kids. I thought well if I wasn’t here, if I was a safer person.

This is where the depression came from. My own character was attacked and began to believe that if I just did everything right, I would be loved. But I wasn’t. As I said, people began to leave. Oh it still looked good on Facebook. Every once in a while a string was dangled in front of me and like a circus cat I would cling to it until the next string.

Until one day, it hit me that I no longer what to live this way.

That pleasing people is no way to live a life, and clinging to bread crumbs do not satisfy anything.

I am tired of trying. You can’t make someone treat you better. You can’t make someone change their opinion of you. I can’t fix anything. You cannot force a relationship, friendship. You can’t making yourself someone you aren’t in hopes to be liked.

Which this realization, it has made things easier. I know to some it probably sounds simple and even like duh, but for me. It has been a painful, tear filled journey of letting things go. Letting God have a lot it, and keeping my eyes on Him. I don’t really feel like I took my gaze off of him but with trying to please everyone else, I really wasn’t looking at him fully. He was always kind of to the side, while everyone else was in front.

I think you can be depressed. I think you can feel your emotions. They were given to us for a reason, however, we must always settle them at the feet of Jesus. We must always be praying to God, asking Him to keep them in check and to not let them control who we are. I wish we could talk more about this, and not be so discounting of them.

I am not sure I have said all I wanted to say. Or if I have not made sense, I am sorry. I feel I am just writing to be writing. Though it sounds good as I am writing it, who really knows.

As I said at the beginning. It is okay if you disagree. All I know is that this what I am going through at this moment, and may God show me where I am wrong if I am so. I just keep praying that He keeps showing up, I keep praying that I keep showing up. Looking at Him, and trusting that He is doing something even if I cannot yet see what it is.

That is what I hold to.