Single and Lonely

Being a single woman of 53 years old in today's world is not a place I am finding very rewarding.  I thought I would be that woman who grew old gracefully.  But I find I am lonley and frustrated a good part of the time.  I gradually and conveniently seemed to be being left off the invite list of any and every social gathering of my "friends" and "family".  It didn't bother me at first but as time went on I felt more and more isolated, ostresized and like an outcast.  I wondered to myself, "It must be awkward for these couples to sit with a single person feeling there must be nothing in common anymore to talk about and maybe they feel sorry for me and just don't know what to say".

When we were young we were all in the same boat, beginning our lives, wondering when love, marriage and children would be in our "present" instead of our future.  We all socialized together, excited when a friend found love, rooting them on, supporting them.  These were good times full of hopes and dreams.  Then, out of the blue someone would announce they were getting a divorce.  It seemed like yesterday we were reading their wedding and baby announcements.

What to do?  Friends were at a loss when they were planning dinners and parties.  Who should we invite?  We can't invite both of them.  That would be so awkward.  What a predicament they have put us in.  It would just be best to stay friends with just one of them or maybe neither.   Were we only friends because we shared common circumstances?  Yes. It seemed so.

The circle was now broken and there were single people that were a threat all of a sudden.  I don't think anyone purposefully thinks that their friend of 10 or more years would threaten their marriage but survival instinct kicks in for them and they become protective of their family.  It is only natural but is devastating to the newly divorced man or woman.  And if they do invite their single friend it usually ends up socially awkward.  They inevitably become the third wheel, the fifth wheel.  Isn't that what they call it - Us?

Times goes on and we, the newly single, try to maneuver through this new life that is so foreign to us.  There are more and more lonely and sad times, Christmas and holidays are the worst.  We put on a happy face but feel the absence of "family".  We feel out of sorts.  I expressed this to a friend from church recently. She sent me an email with an article a biblical view of singleness. She is young, able to have babies, newly married and met her husband through friends.  I appreciated the email but found it hard to embrace.  It was about "Singleness being a gift".  At first I was angry and wondered how she could possibly ask me to embrace God wanting me to be single and alone.  But as I read what she sent me out of love I found I was feeling more and more peaceful.

                 "None of them that trust in me shall be desolate". Psalm 34:22.

This one sentence in the entire email sticks with me and helps comfort me.  All I can do is trust in Him who loves me and knows my situation.  His plan is the only one that matters and I embrace His will for me.

I still feel lonely sometimes.  It is a work in progress to believe and embrace that God has a plan for me, will work all this out and make it good, that He is by my side through all of it and that He wants to be my husband and provide for me all that He has!  I ask Him to show me how to be faithful and obedient to where he has me and to give me the strength, wisdom and power to move forward to the place he plans for me to not be alone or to accept my aloneness if  it is His will for me to be alone.  I ask that He fill me up and give me circumstances that help me to feel loved and to have a purpose that I feel joy from.  My dream is that He replaces what the locusts have eaten as He says He will in Joel 2:25.

Am I proud or prideful?

Pride Cometh before the fall.  We have all heard these words many times but I don't know about you but I didn't understand what that really meant.  I have heard it over and over but always thought "pride" meant just being proud and boastful.  More boastful than proud.  I truly did not understand why pride is so destructive until recently.

I was brought up in an Italian Catholic home where you were told to hold your head high and don't take any help from anyone.  That would be shameful and weak.  You must be independent and do everything perfect!

What I didn't notice was all the critical undertones and constant ridicule that was going on.  It was so consistent it became normal.  I knew nothing else.

Until God got a hold of me and began to teach me through His word that this behavior is not glorifying to him.  What a battle was ahead of me.  It has taken years to peel away the layers of pain that built up because of wrong teaching.  My pride rears its ugly head from time to time but the Holy Spirit is quick to convict and I listen and I change.
 

Being proud of myself was the furthest thing from what I was.

How could I be proud of myself.  I did everything wrong, didn't I? 

Wasn't what I just did not perfect?  I had to make it better.  Everyone around me had to be better.  I could do it all;  raise my child, take care of my husband, work,  and come home and take care of our home. I was always beating myself up. 

Yet I was told I was engulfed in pride.  I didn't understand that at all.  "I'm not proud" I would say to myself.  "What are they talking about?  I'm a kind, caring and loving person who puts everyone else before myself.  I didn't understand that I had this hard shell that no one could penetrate. 

I wouldn't let anyone help me.  I wouldn't let anyone close. 

I told my family everything they did wrong and never praised them for what they did right. 

I was growing into what I have realized is "codependent".

This caused even more problems.  It helped me marry an alcoholic, twice.  I was the caregiver, the fixer.  I was better and in more control of myself.  I was stable and they were not.  I liked this role.  It made me feel like I was doing something right.  I could be proud of myself.  God showed me how wrong I was.  He showed me how much I was hurting the people around me and myself in turn.  He showed me by breaking me to the point I had to be so dependent on others to help me that I wanted to scream.  I was so ashamed and embarrassed that I could not put the pieces back together without the help of my family and friends.  I had no choice but to accept I could do nothing for myself.  I lost everything and blamed everyone else.  They had the problem.  God was my only hope and he had a big lesson for me.  I had no idea what good could come out of all the wreckage.  What I found, though, was that I had to be willing to listen to Him.  I had to be willing to hear the words I did not like, words that said "you are thinking and behaving in a way that is not edifying to others or glorifying to God and this is the way God wants you to talk to people.  This is how God wants you to behave and by the way, Pride cometh before the fall!"

My pride kept me from getting help.   My pride kept me from allowing others to love me, to serve me.

Those who tried didn't have a chance.  I was going to win.  If they were a friend they left.  They could leave. If they did not leave it was because we were familiar.  I see now they were controlling, critical, always trying to change me.  They were like me. If they were my family they found a way out that ended up putting them on a path of their own self destruction.  They didn't leave me but they still left me.  My first husband ended up dying from the disease.  I don't blame myself for anyone's addiction but I do acknowledge my part in their downward spiral and difficult recovery.

My son suffered under my wrath.  He loved me so much and was so afraid of losing me that he found his own way to cope.   He also has a very hard time accepting any help from anyone.  But he is in a much better place to heal from this destructive force in our family called pride because he has the wisdom to listen to God's word.  We work together and he is very patient with me.  He is healing and on his way to becoming "prideless".  His family and children will grow up knowing how special they are and that being proud of yourself is ok but comes from being righteous in the eyes of God,  not from "being perfect".  This is the GOOD that God has made out of the wreckage.

I can see that God is still working on me and in me.  I fall back into patterns but less frequently.
I stop to listen when the wisdom of another rings true.
I run to my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.
I say I'm sorry.  I ask for forgiveness.  I repent.

The biggest problem that has risen out of this new revelation (new because it's been the past ten years of my 50 years of life) is that I find myself wanting to share it with certain members of my family and when they don't receive it I get frustrated.  This is my new battle, my new pride to overcome.

I didn't say this was an easy or short term journey.

It is not.      
          
It is hard.              

It is an uphill climb.



It is like hitting a tennis ball onto a wall and expecting it not to fly right back at me.

I have to arm myself with the Armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18) so the ball bounces off me or gently goes through me.  Without it I am ill prepared for this battle.

My desire to please God and have peace and joy gives me the endurance to keep going and growing.
Pursuing to have in me The Fruit of the Spirit (Galations 5:22) is another wonderful way for me to ultimately  achieve victory!

Pictures are from the internet.

The Scripture Tree

Friends,

I found the most incredible thing on the site "Smile God Loves You".
It's called a scripture tree.
I wanted to share the link.

Covered in Grace

There are times in life when living gets hard.  With God all things are possible.  I have had many experiences that when I look back on them I wonder how I ever got through it. 

There is a saying; By the Grace of God.

I take this literally to mean that God covers us with His Grace.  He gives us Grace to endure hardship during a trial.  Without it we would grow weary.  We would break under the pressure.  He gives us a gift we do not deserve and it is called Grace.

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. 2 Corinthians 12:9


Bookmark from smilegodlovesyou.org

Growing in Patience

The past two months have been filled with turning our living room into a bedroom on our main level for my 94 year old aunt who was coming to live with us.

She fell and broke her pelvis while going to her mailbox that hung just outside her front door.  As she turned around to come back into the house she says she just fell.  This is the 4th time she has fallen in the past 3 years.  Each time she broke a leg.  Each time my mother, her sister, has gotten on a plane and spent Aunt Connie's recuperation time with her.  These trips became very costly because she lives in a town that airlines fly to often enough, therefore ticket prices were almost $1000.00 each time.
This time lasted 3 months and the family decided she could not be alone anymore.  No one else could take her in.  My mother promised her she would never go into a home for the elderly.  So off I went creating a home away from home for her.

This is a season that comes in every one of our lives, whether it is a parent who is now elderly or a sibling who lives a very long time but whose physical health deteriorates before their mental faculties start to go.  My mother has been physically deteriorating over the past 8 years.  It started with heart trouble, then an autoimmune disease called Temperal Arteritis if left untreated would cause blindness.  Treatment for this is mega doses of Prednazone.  After a year and a half on that drug she rolled over in bed and her vertebrae in her mid to lower back fractured.  As it turns out Prednazone causes ostoporosis in areas of the vertebrae.  Her other bone density numbers are good.  I'm told by the doctors it is her age. She is 80.  She thought she pulled something in her back, having had back troubles most of her life.  Because she did not go to the doctor right away the area around her vertebrae healed to the point she could not have surgery to fix it.  She is now in chronic pain and has been told this is a life sentence.  Pain management is her only option.

The Prednaoze also causes huge weight gain.  For my very vain mother this was traumatic.

My mom (and my son)      Pre Prednazone  

My mom on Prednazone  at her worst  

Mom at lower dose Prednazone 

My mom Post Prednazone and Post Coumadin  Back to her old self!!  4 years later.


Since then she has been hospitalized for atrial fib twice.  The doctors tried "ablation".  Her heart was too damaged from too much stress on her heart over the years, left untreated.  I believe this is because she is stubborn and never thought she needed to go to a doctor.  The final straw was when they could not get her heart out of atrial fib they finally did what I had been suggesting for years - a pace maker.  It did the trick.  Another thing that affected her health was the drug that heart patients all have to take to prevent clots - Warafin (coumadin).  This caused huge areas of bruising.  Our dog could not even brush against her without a large cut and bleeding occurred.

                                             Lexi

Those of you who know about the dangers of a blood thinner and "cuts" know this was causing constant stress on the body and on all of us to make sure she never bumped into anything.  I have lived with her all this time feeling she could not be alone. The doctors finally put her on a new heart drug that does not cause the kind of bruising she got from the coumadin.  It seems she finally has the right cocktail for all her physical problems.  The biggest thing is she is always in pain causing her to only be able to walk for a short time or do a project for a short time before she needs to stop and sit down and take a pain pill.  This causes me to take over any project she has started to finish it.

I have a full time job and find it very stressful to care for my mother.  I don't have anyone (like a spouse or sister) to help.  I grow weary.  I never imagined this time would come and what it would entail.  I was unprepared.  Now we have taken my aunt in who walks with a walker and doesn't really want to be here, turning her life upside down.  To top all that off neither of them can hear.  There is a lot of screaming and misunderstood conversations.  Hearing aids only help so much.  They don't wear them like they should either.  It makes me never want to get old unless I can keep my physical health and not lose my hearing.  I hope they have invented something better than what is out there for hearing aids by the time I start to lose mine.

It has been quite a journey but one that has given me an opportunity to learn patience and strengthened my love and compassion, respect and admiration for my mom.  Who would ever know how a parent would be needy but have too much pride to accept help from their child.  I look at her sometimes like she is a child now.  She's not far gone just seems fragile.  But she has taken on a huge task loving her sister so much she puts her needs first and works tirelessly to make sure she is comfortable and feels loved and wanted.

Caretaker seems to be the word that comes to mind when I wonder about the Call on my life.  I have been caring for some very sick people since I was 20 years old.  That's another post but for now I am hopeful that sharing my past few months with you may help someone else know that every season of your life is a chance given to us by God to learn something new about ourselves and to grow in Him feeling His grace overflowing to help us get through something that is hard!!

Bless you all!!

A Quiet Spirit

As my first post on my blog dedicated to learning and growing in Christ I want to share the biggest thing that God has been dealing with me on.  I am drawn over and over to blogs about being in the quiet, being  a gentle and quiet woman, hearing the whisper of God.  I find those around me needing me to be quiet.  I think God is trying to tell me something!

One of my favorite verses in the Bible has always been 1 Peter 3:4 which says "Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight."

I am a rather opinionated woman who has been a single mom for most of my adult life.  I was forced out into the world through work and being the sole provider for my son. I learned how to be a fighter, focusing on survival more than God's provision and promises.  I was strict with my son because I knew he would be on his own without help from a father.  I yelled a lot.  I demanded a lot.  I worked hard and was often tired.

I came late into God's kingdom and realized I was doing it all wrong.  It was too late to go back and do it over but I could focus on doing it right.  I could show my son and others around me that it is wise to change for the better and that you're never too old and it's never too late to change.

I can be the light of Jesus to those around me.  In order to do that I had to look deep inside and allow God to peel away my many layers of flesh that had built up over many years of living in the flesh.  All I needed to do was be still, be patient, listen and believe God's word that He will provide and He will make my paths straight.  He will help me be quiet.  He will help me by filling me with the Holy Spirit and teaching me about the Fruit of the Spirit which if in Christ we will naturally be inclined to practice.

The fruit of the Spirit is a great reminder every day on how to behave.  The entire chapter is a must read.

Galatians 5: 13-22

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.  

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command:
“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

May this year be filled with many moments of revelation and growth which I will consider blessings no matter how I am brought to these.  May I hear God whispering to me. May I be more kind, be filled with more joy,  feel more peace, show more self-control.  I am so grateful I have the opportunity to be quiet and humble in the sight of God!

 My step daughter Ami!

Blessing to all of you this New Year!