Where are you God?
What is the plan LORD?
Where do you need me to be God?
So much has happened in my life in the past 4 years since I really began walking down that path toward you. It has been 4 years but some days it feels like it was just yesterday that I wrote on the communication card “please pray, I have issues.” I remember that day so well. I remember wanting to chase down my card out of the basket and pull it out after I let it go. I remember the fear inside of me because I had just done the unthinkable. I let someone know that life at home was not good. At least in my mind that is what just happened. All it said was “I” had issues, there was nothing said about home.
God you knew what was about to take place because you orchestrated it all! You took someone who I noticed 2 ½ years prior, someone who I only knew in passing as someone very pleasant and full of love for you. You brought her into my life through the use of this communication card. You were going to use Roni to bring me back to you. I was so incredibly lost and alone. I was so scared and intimidated. I thought I could fix it all on my own but that day in January 2008, there was something inside of me that made me realize I could not do it. Not by myself. There was a small part of me that knew I needed you and I thought that if I told David to pray for me I would feel better knowing someone knew ‘something’ even though I didn’t really say anything. You knew who I needed.
It’s been 4 years ago this week since that first call from Roni. I can almost hear her message in my mind. I remember standing at the counter listening. I remember the panic I felt because what if Eric had listened to the messages? What would he say to me? How much worse would it get if he knew I said anything at all? I remember going to the church website to get her email address so I could tell her thanks for calling but don’t call home again. I had no idea she would return the email and I was afraid to run into her at church because I didn’t know what she would say to me. I was afraid to be confronted.
Thank you God for choosing Roni to pray for me when she saw my request. I can’t even begin to think about where I would be today if she would not have called me. Thank you God, for pushing me to contact her again, a few months later. I wanted to get to know her better but I really didn’t understand why.
So many things have happened since then that make me just shake my head. I have come so far from that Sunday in January and I know it’s all because of you. I remember sitting in Panera Bread on Colerain in April 2008 waiting on Roni to show up. She told me ahead of time that what we talked about was up to me. I had no intent of telling her my life story that day. But as I have said before, you were sitting there too and you knew that would be a life changing conversation for me. I remember telling her my story could keep Jerry Springer on the air without any re-runs for many years! I just knew I was the only one with a story like mine. No one else could have as much dysfunction in their life as I had in mine. When I left there and she gave me a hug, I knew ‘my secrets’ were safe with her. I felt about 10 pounds lighter that afternoon even though I was in shock that I had just told her so much stuff about me. She didn’t make me feel like a freak for being so dysfunctional.
Today, I feel like that part of my life that was so secretive to me back then doesn’t belong to me any longer. It’s as if it’s someone else’s story. I no longer look back on my life and wish it were different. It is what it is, the past. Unchangeable. It was a different lifetime. Before I knew you God. It’s strange to me that I can now truly differentiate the two lives. Before I knew you and after I came back you. I can look back now and I can see where you were back then. Growing up you was always near me. You put us 2 doors down from the Howard’s because they would look out for us and took me to church. I remember loving you then. I remember having so much fun in church for a few years. You showed me love from a family who really cared. You watched over me on so many occasions.
My teen to early twenty years I felt alone in so many ways. I wish now I would have stayed close to you but I realize I can never go back and change anything. I don’t believe it was part of your plan for me to wander so far away from you. That was my own choice. However, I do believe that you knew I would come back. You were with me all along, keeping me safe, so many many times. I would acknowledge you mostly in anger when I blamed you for all the bad things that happened to me. I remember blaming you when I had my miscarriage and I truly could not understand why you would take my child from me when I wanted a child so badly. I needed someone to love and someone to love me unconditionally and I thought I had finally found that with this unborn child. It took me many many years to overcome that and realize that my life would have taken a much different road if I would have had that child. That time was my first true battle with depression.
This past year has been interesting to me. I look back over the past 12-14 months and I see so much growth in me. I do not need to write Roni every time something in my world is shaken. Well, maybe I do still write her each time I am rattled by something but those things are not happening multiple times a day! I’ve stepped out of my comfort zone so many times this year that it boggles my mind. And I stepped out without Roni standing beside me but the only time I thought she wasn’t there was with the Not a Fan testimony. It didn’t occur to me that she wasn’t beside me the other times. I’m not sure why I didn’t recognize that with the others. I guess because she was close enough for me to be comfortable, but that doesn’t make sense since she was not in Joplin with me! My anxiety is not gone but it is under control without medications and does not control me. My depression is gone even though I do have moments of sadness. It doesn’t paralyze me any longer. I have determination and drive again. I feel like smiling and no longer want to climb into a hole never to surface again! I am interested in living life again and not watching it pass me by like it did for years. I am no longer just simply surviving this life. I am participating again.
I do feel like something is missing from my life. I am happy to be where I am in my life right now but God; I want to be a part of someone’s life. I want someone to be a part of my life. I feel like I am finally ready to share my life with someone again. I see my friends around me and I am surrounded by people who have loving, respectful marriages centered on you. Something I never saw growing up or when I was married. I love looking around and seeing my friends and even those people I do not know worshiping together. I love hearing them talk to one another and wish I could be a fly on the wall in their home to see how things function on a day to day basis. How do they make their marriages work? How do they communicate when no one is around? How do they include you in their daily lives? Most of these people have been married 20 years or longer and I understand it’s not all peaches and cream. They have had struggles, may still have struggles, and didn’t get to this point in their marriages overnight. It’s how they got through all those struggles that I am interested in learning about but I want to learn those things with the right man in my life. So we can learn together. I want to share my life with a man who wants to know about me and why I am the way I am. I want to know about the man I am with too. I want to be the person he comes to with problems, issues, concerns, and successes. I want to pray with him every day. I want to learn about you together with him. I want to work for you with him. I know this exists God. I see it in my friends. I have to believe they did not take the last few good men! There is someone out there for me and you know who he is and where he is.
I miss being touched God. It’s not just sex. I miss being touched on the arm. I miss having his arm around my shoulder or my waist. His hand on the small of my back just letting me know that he is beside me. I miss being kissed just because he passed me by. I do not want to be touched and kissed because it means sex is to follow. I don’t want that. I just want affection, intimacy, and tenderness just because I am special to him. It doesn’t have to lead to anything else. In my mind I know this can happen but I also know me, or at least who I used to be. I didn’t live like this before. Everything always ended with sex, I didn’t stop it. I do wonder sometimes if maybe I’ve not met anyone yet because I am not ready for this in my life. I might think I am but you of course know me better. Maybe I’m truly not ready for this type of life yet. Yes, I miss sex. I would love to make love with a man who truly loves me but I know that cannot happen until I get married again. That is what I want for me. That is what I want to teach my daughter and my son. This is what is right in your eyes. I have so much to learn between now and this happening again in my life and I wonder if it’s easier for me to learn if I am not in a relationship. For now, I will keep waiting for you God to point me in the right direction. I know you have a plan for me. I will keep praying that you will put the right man in my life at the right time. I will keep praying for that man to want the same things in a relationship as I do. I will keep praying that you will show me what needs to change in me and where I need to grow before I get into a relationship with a man so that I do not make the same mistakes I’ve made in the past.
More than any touching, intimacy, affection, or sex, I want to hear the words I love you spoken to me from the man in my life. I want to believe them to be true without a shred of doubt in my heart. I want to be able to say them back to him with the same conviction so that he knows without a doubt I mean each and every word.
I know this is not too big God to handle. He will make it happen if it is in his plan for my life. I do not believe his plan is for me to be alone the rest of my life and in time he will give me so much more than I can imagine right now.
