Measure of Faith.....A Journey

I was challenged recently on my measure of faith.

People close to me were asking me about why I was angry and talking about faith.  Did I have any?
I began a long journey back from a long journey that took my faith away.  I hope others can be healed or helped by my story.

I have been through a year and a half of major life changes and stresses and have not succeeded in allowing God to handle it all for me.  It is so easy to fall into the old bad habits of trying to handle everything on my own.  There are consequences to lacking faith.  I was feeling the tug of the holy spirit at my heart. 



  

2 and a half years ago I finally felt I was getting to a point of allowing God to heal my emotional and physical pain from a traumatic second marriage and divorce experience when I was blind sighted by another extremely stressful situation that I never saw coming.  My mother's sister, my 96 year old aunt had fallen again and my mother was not able to keep going to see her out of state. 

This was the 6th fall in a span of several years. 

Each time involved rehab and my mother spending more and more time there and sometimes coming home to catch up on her responsibilities and life and then going back.  She is 83 and has had numerous health issues herself.  Physically she is worse off than my aunt.  But she always rallied and I am with her to help. 

My aunt had no one living with her to help.  So before we all thought about the ramifications of a decision we would make hastily my aunt was living with us. 
We brought her here, made all the arrangements to put her house on the market so the money from the sale could pay for care for her.  My mother went and packed her house, dividing it up into piles:

One for relatives to have.
One to go to consignment .
One for friends.
One for shipping to Atlanta.
One for donating.
One for trash.

This in itself took its toll on my mother's health.  Her decline began.  My brothers and I helped but she did most of the hard work.  No one locally helped her in the house.  It was a sad story that doesn't need to be told here.

Once all that was done I found myself caring for 2 sick old women!  I know that sounds bad but it was just that.  

The toll this took on me escalated very quickly.  Before I knew it I had stopped journaling.  I was consumed with my aunt's needs.  Every minute seemed to revolve around her.

My aunt became very bitter, angry and abusive.  She blamed us for her losses and her pain.  She needed someone to blame.  She wanted everyone around her to be angry and bitter.  Misery loves company and she was bound and determined that everyone around her paid for her pain. Then she would be sorry and I began to see a pattern forming in our home. 

It was toxic and very difficult to be around her.  There is something about the women in my family.  They treat each other badly and worship the men in it.  Dysfunction at its best.

It scared me because it was abusive and I had just healed from a 5 year marriage that was emotionally abusive.  The triggers made me so sick.  I could barely stand what I was watching because I knew what it was.  My mother didn't seem to know what it was.  She just took it.  She became the abused and played the part so well that after my aunt left she went almost instantly into congestive heart failure and was terribly sick for 2 solid months.  I lost 7 pounds in those 2 months.
 

I was starting to have panic attacks again and all the time.  I stopped going to the church I was attending because I felt like I wasn't getting any help from my church family (I was not being fair.

I wanted help and I wasn't getting what I wanted as fast as I wanted it). 

I became angry, bitter, resentful, sad and isolated.  Then I got weak and barely made it through the day.  I felt I didn't have the strength to reach out for the help I needed.

I felt like I was getting very sick and was going to get even sicker if something didn't change.

Please understand that I did understand that my aunt was going through a horrible transition in her life.  She was dealing with a change that was like a death.  I felt so sorry for her and prayed for her comfort often.  In September 2012, a year ago almost to the day I wrote about it here.  We tried to continue to be understanding and comforting but her abuse became too much for us to take.
 

       I prayed a lot for God to change the circumstances so I could be free of this burden that had been cast upon me without warning and just when I was starting to feel strong and happy again.  I really couldn't believe what was happening.  I had a lot of guilt for how I felt and my mother was not handling it well either.  She also was riddled with guilt for not being able to keep her promise she had made to her sister many years ago......that she would not put her in a home.  She was strong then and now she was old and sick herself but she tried.  When she and I realized we had made a horrible mistake we felt nothing but guilt and resentment.  It was an awful swirling of emotions.

We did pray for an answer, for joy in the circumstances, for the anger to go away but what we didn't say to God or pray for was Faith.  We didn't thank Him for the learned lessons, the time we had to spend with our aunt and sister.  We did not say "we are having a hard time and we know you have a plan.  Give us the strength and measure of faith to wait on you to handle this for us.  You know what we are going through.  You know what we need and how much we can take.  You know the ending.  We don't.  We trust that you are sovereign over this entire situation."  We did not do that. 

Until one day I did do that.  I knew it was how He would want me to pray so I tried and He answered.

We were able to get our aunt and sister to visit her niece who ended up talking her into going into an assisted living home near her in yet another state.  She didn't take out her anger on anyone else so they were able to help her understand she could not come back because her sister was too sick to take care of her and she had to accept that she would have to stay there but in her own place.  A blessing!

We feel bad but we feel delivered and free.  But now my mother is sick.  She hasn't rallied this time.  Her health has declined and I am working hard with her care and dealing with watching my mother become like a child. 

I sit here and wonder, wrongly, if my mother didn't get sick and I didn't get sicker because we sent my aunt away.  The guilt imbedded in our family history is so damaging yet seemingly out of our control.  Like a limb or something.....it's just there.

The consequences of me not having a measure of faith is that I am now very Angry all the time. 

I am taking it out on my mother and on my son.  I feel like more time has been wasted. 

Am I ever going to get my life back?   Am I being selfish?  I don't know but God is helping me sort this out.

Everyone has made me very aware of my behavior and attitude as has God.  Everything I am reading, every blog post from a Christian blog and every scripture I am turning to in the Bible relates to anger and how we deal with it and how it hurts us and others. 

God is putting it in my face and making me address it because He loves me and wants me free

of the bondage it has put me in.  I must be ready to hear it and to let Him help me. 

His timing is always so right on.  That's how you know it's God, by the way. 

He puts people in your path to reveal a way out, to reveal hope!

Here is the link to the first message of hope for me and my anger from God.  It is from ibelieve.com.  I get daily encouragements from them.  That link took me here.  And it just kept coming.  I was so grateful.  I dropped to my knees and thanked God for hearing my prayers and answering them.  The rest is up to me.

He is perfection and in His perfection is freedom, joy and contentment.  He only wants to bless us but we get in His way.  This is what I have learned this week and I intend to listen and pray and let Him have His way with me. 

I want to thank all of you who are faithful in your walk with God to write what is divinely inspired by God to help people like me who are struggling with faith and anger right now.  If you didn't have faith and weren't obedient to what God was calling you to do, I and people like me wouldn't find your words and would still be struggling without remembering to go to the one and only place to find our freedom and deliverance. 

Bless you.   Anice