Thank you so much for sharing. I indeed feel your pain. During the darkest hours of my divorce the late Jerry Falwell took me in his Suburban and we drove around Lynchburg. He told me "life moves on." I didn't believe him. Well maybe life moves on, but I will be an emotional cripple for the rest of my life. Well it took time, faith and God's restoration for me to finally get what he was trying to say. God will use this opportunity of your aloneness to fill you with His spirit. Take the time to be alone with God when you are alone. Worship even though your don't feel like worshipping. Listen to as many online sermons from Charles Stanley and Joel Osteen as you can. Read the Bible, Seek God.
You can be alone, but you don't have to be lonely. Life for you, and everyone really, is quite simple. "Seek God First...and all these things will be added unto." So whenever you are frightened, lonely, angry, depressed, happy, joyful, or peaceful seek God. It is his desire for you to have peace no matter what the circumstances are around you. It really defies logic, but your entire house could be burning and falling all around you while you are safely tucked inside a fire proof room in the center of the house. Picture Shadrach Meshack and Abendego in the Babylonian Furnace or Daniel in the lion's Den. God knows what you need. He will provide. Another very important thing to consider during this dark time is to love yourself. Divorce cripples a person in the esteem department. If you rush into a relationship too quickly, your esteem will be boosted as you are temporarily affirmed, but it will be short-lived. You have to love yourself before anyone else can properly love you. If not, its a co-dependent love and doomed to fail.
Also you indicated that you have children. Love them, even if they are grown they are hurting. Never ever bad mouth your former spouse or say anything negative. They will figure it out for themselves eventually. Also don't look to them for affirmation, that is backwards and puts too much pressure on them. Look to God for your affirmation.
So hang in there. I hope you will see that my life is a testimony to how this works. Don't dwell on the past and what you don't have...consider the present at what you have and by faith the future to what you will have. God is great, and abundantly faithful. Thank you for writing.
2 comments:
I thank you for your response.
I feel that God led me to your blog. One reason is the remind myself of what is important to keep foremost in my mind. I know you are not a spiritual leader, but at this point in time, you are mine. Please accept this resonsibility and help me. I need to know what to read in the Bible to help me through this.
You Say:
"Seek God First...and all these things will be added unto." So whenever you are frightened, lonely, angry, depressed, happy, joyful, or peaceful seek God."
Tell me how to seek God to be peaceful.
God spoke to me when I discovered that I had breast cancer. After an appointment with my surgeon, God placed his hand on my shoulder (I actually felt these hands.) and His voice whispered in my head, "You're going to be alright." And a calming peace came over me....I had never felt so at peace since the diagnosis of cancer entered into my life.
After that time, I spent many days reading the New Testament, along the St. John's River in Jacksonville. It gave me so much comfort to do this.
I hope you will be more specific as to what I should read about in the Bible. I am sorry if I am placing a burden upon yourself, since you never meant minister to me personally.
I thank you again for your response, and I look forward to your writings on this blog.
Yes, I believe that God did lead you to my blog. He works in strange and mysterious ways. It does not surprise me as just last week I was praying for God to allow me to have more ministry opportunities.
Seeking God First is kind of easy. Just make him the number one priority. You already know how to hear his voice by going through your breast cancer healing. Now that you can recognize the voice its time to have conversations. God created us in his image for relationship. How many relationships do you have where one person does 100% of the talking. We all have those annoying friends that never seem to stop talking, except to take breaths. We do that with God. God give me this, deliver me that, help me here. We seldom take the time to hear what he has to say. Sometimes we just need to stop and let God speak to us. But since its usually that still small voice, we have to be extremely focused and quiet. God has you alone for this season in your life to feed his spirit into you. You need to redefine yourself as a Child of the King. That makes you pretty darn important. Seeking God first can entail just striving for the intimacy with him. My routine, is that I get up and have breakfast and read my Bible and do devotions. Then I spend about 15-30 minutes on my patio just being quiet. This is my prayer closet, my time with God. I don’t say anything I just wait for his spirit to speak to my spirit then we have a conversation. Another way to hear God’s voice is by simply looking in a mirror. God cannot communicate with us if there is sin in our lives. So looking in a mirror is a tangible way to internally self-reflect. If there is any sin/guilt it is really hard to face ourselves. So this is a tool that people can use to self-actualize. Another thing it does is focus us from distractions and lastly if the eyes are the window to the soul and God lives inside of you then when you look at yourself essentially you are looking at God.
In terms of seeking God Divorce Care is a great place to be. The best place to heal is to be a source of strength for other hurting people. There is so much healing that happens when you minister to someone else’s needs. It gets the focus off of yourself and that is the key to healing. Don’t bemoan your situation, accept it, recognize your role in the destruction of the marriage and most importantly forgive. Forgiveness just doesn’t automatically happen. Forgiveness is a process/choice that sometimes takes a lifetime.
Two really great books to read are The Fire of Delayed Answers by Bob Sorge, and When the Enemy Strikes by Charles Stanley. As far as reading in the Bible, start with Job, Psalms and Proverbs. There are plenty of identifiable traits you will probably feel with Job. But the key to the entire book of Job is found in the last chapter. Job had everything taken from him (probably how you must feel). Job 42:10, “God restored everything to Job after he prayed for his friends.” You see Job had to stop feeling feeling sorry for himself. Once he got the focus off of himself and onto others God opened up the door to blessing. So pick yourself up and count your blessings whenever you feel down. Don’t think about what you don’t have, think about what you do have. Just have lots of intimate chats with your creator. Remember you are a child of the king.
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