As The Credits Roll Past…

My marriage ended legally today.  At least, I think it did.  I’ll confess, I haven’t been paying very close attention to the way the process has unfolded.  There may be some appeal period now or something, but neither of us is going to appeal.  All I know is, today we went to the court house and answered the judge’s questions, and then gave each other a hug before we parted ways.  Oh, and she had a date last night and another tonight, thanks to a membership with eHarmony.  I’m really not sure when that took place, exactly, but it makes sense in a “hey, it’s way too early to do that” sort of way.

It did make it easier to be okay with the whole thing, though.  Truth be told, I’m probably feeling better about myself and about my life right now than I have in a long, long time.

A Reading from Lamentations, the Third Chapter

I am the man who has seen affliction
by the rod of his wrath.
He has driven me away
and made me walk in darkness rather than light;
indeed, he has turned his hand against me
again and again, all day long.
He has made my skin and my flesh grow old
and has broken my bones.
He has besieged me and surrounded me
with bitterness and hardship.
He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead.
He has walled me in so I cannot escape;
he has weighed me down with chains.
Even when I call out or cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer.
He has barred my way with blocks of stone;
he has made my paths crooked.
Like a bear lying in wait, like a lion in hiding,
he dragged me from the path and mangled me
and left me without help.
He drew his bow and made me the target for his arrows.
He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver.
He has filled me with bitter herbs and sated me with gall.
He has broken my teeth with gravel;
he has trampled me in the dust.
I have been deprived of peace;
I have forgotten what prosperity is.
So I say, “My splendor is gone
and all that I had hoped from the LORD.”
I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”
The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.
Let him sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on him.
Let him bury his face in the dust—there may yet be hope.
Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him,
and let him be filled with disgrace.

For men are not cast off by the Lord forever.
Though he brings grief,
he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.
For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.

My eyes will flow unceasingly, without relief,
until the LORD looks down from heaven and sees.

I called on your name, O LORD,
from the depths of the pit.
You heard my plea:
“Do not close your ears to my cry for relief.”

You came near when I called you, and you said,

“Do not fear.”

The Road To Hell And All That

Well, so much for this year’s New Year’s Resolutions.

Briefly:

My marriage will be over legally probably within a month.

My children continue to bring me joy, even on the hard days when I don’t get to see them.

I am feeling hope for the future, thanks to some helpful revelations recently.

My regrets are slowly being washed away by the blood of Jesus.

Amen.

Power Struggle

I find myself recently struggling with the temptation to just let things go that I shouldn’t and to “major in the minors” on things that really don’t matter that much. 

I feel lonely.

I feel sad.

I want to feel wild, powerful, in control.

I feel none of those.

A friend told me that sometimes you have to make decisions irrespective of the way you feel, or even when you have no clue what the right thing to do is.  Sometimes you just make a decision and live with it.  I honestly have done that so rarely in my life that I can barely remember just living with a decision without constantly looking over my shoulder.

Tonight, I am making a decision.  And no, I’m not telling you what it is.

Crawling When Necessary

Though I resolved to get up and try…to keep going…I have been in a fog for days.

Yesterday my life officially began to fall apart, on paper and in the legal system.

Warring With My Past

Everyone that I talk with from my past seems to want to talk me out of the direction my life is going.  Sometimes I wish I had their confidence in my own position, especially when I am trying to talk to them about things.

All the Works and Days of Hands

Still really tired.

Feeling like a constant failure can make you feel that way.

Voltaire once noted that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” 

This sums up much of the current frustration, I think.

In Which Our Hero Continues to Try Again

In the midst of watching my life fall apart around me, I am comforted by Martin Luther’s explanation of what “thy kingdom come” means:

“…the Kingdom of God comes by itself without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it would also come to us…”

I am such a complete failure at life so many times.  More recently I’ve gotten in touch with that, but it’s been a recurring theme since early on.  The Holiness version of Methodism that I grew up in had little room for someone like me in it–though I openly acknowledge sin that I fall into, I am not improving in love for God or for my neighbor.  If anything, I feel a greater despair at truly seeing my frailty than I ever felt in imagining it.  At some point while I was attending the Holiness college where I spent three years, I remember finally resigning myself to the fact that no number of trots down to the altar was going to finally cure me.  I kept falling (diving?) in the same ways I always had.  I chose sin more often than not, because I liked sin.  Sin was easier.  Sin was sexier.  Repentance was hard work with no end in sight.  A whole lot of trying really really really REALLY hard.  I liked the appearance of being holy, but that was a similar payoff–a way of having one’s cake and eating it too.  I was in bondage to sin and could not free myself.  I wouldn’t have lasted through the opening minutes of one of John Wesley’s Holy Club meetings.  Still wouldn’t today, I’d imagine.

If you’re of that persuasion and are reading this, you may be disappointed in me–and I welcome you to get in line behind me if you are.  Perhaps it is a tragedy that my sights are set significantly lower today than they were in those days.  A friend once stated to me “I ought to be at least trying to become holy,” and while I understand his enthusiasm and desire to please God as good things, I imagine that at best, God chuckles at even our finest attempts, as a father chuckles at the “representational art” his toddler draws for him with such great care.  I’ve become, as one of my seminary professors once named it, a “do-nothing Lutheran, whose holiness is only a matter of Jesus and not something he even tries to work on himself.”  Because that sounds like the kind of Jesus who might actually be able to make something out of the mess of my life.

So today, all I ask from you, Lord, is that you would remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Today

was one of the longest short days I’ve ever experienced. My life is about to change a great deal, in ways I never anticipated.

God give me peace in this time.

Therapy

Wasn’t able to get an appointment with my therapist, and won’t until I have paid off a balance I owe with her office.

I was able to get some good percussion therapy yesterday.

Only went on a mini-bender. Started to feel sick and feverish later and am now spread out on the couch in agony. Mostly emotional that has turned psychosomatic, but still.