deer in headlights

PRE-POST THOUGHTS:

I think there are three kinds of people in the world: those who refuse to open up even to close friends, those who share personal information with close friends and less with acquaintenances and none with strangers, and then those who tell their business on blogs.

I fall into that last category.

This doesn't really disturb me...(suprisingly?) I am sure it does my husband.

I wrestle with this about myself....it can be awkward when people 'know' your husband...even more so because 'knowing' him is tied in with ministry... but there is something in me that more often than not favors the awkward nakedness (in the soul sense of nakedness) to censored feelings and truth that has been edited to be more palatable.

Its who I am. And at 25, I am learning to make peace with that.

So you have had your personal warning from me as the author...if rawness isn't your thing, this is your chance to exit.


THE ACTUAL POST:

The written word gets to me. I could never be one of those people who listens to books on tape...I would fall asleep. At least, I assume so since TV has that affect on me. I hardly went to any classes in college, but I read all my text books faithfully. I prefer email to phone. In fact, if you were talking to me and I was really listening, there is a good chance I would be picturing the words as you spoke. I love the written word.

Naturally, I love books.

My favorite things to recommend are books...if you have been reading this blog for any amount of time, you have probably already suffered through several pushy book recommendations.

Ready for another one?

I don't know if I have ever recommended a book after less than 10 pages, though..this might be some kind of record with me.

Henri Nouwen's "Finding My Way Home". A must-read friends.

"God looks at us and weeps because wherever we use power to give us a sense of ourselves, we separate ourselves from God and each other, and our lives become diabolic, in the literal meaning of that word: divisive."

I am a deer in headlights. Exposed. Found out. Caught.


I like power...the upper hand...control. If the whole birth-order concept was scientifically valid, perhaps I could place a bit of the blame on being first born. Or maybe the need for control could be a woman thing. Maybe...

..or maybe I use it give me a sense of myself..

I have been a nightmare of a wife for the last couple of months. I don't think its a secret that the first year of marriage is hard for most and that we certainly fall into that 'most' grouping. Shawn has been on the road. I went with him. Then I stayed home...both ways he was gone. and tired. and worn out. and on the brink of burn out. Here we had jumped into marriage and then hit the ground running. When he was praying a few nights ago he said something to the affect of, "God I don't understand your timing...why my ministry got so busy just months after my wedding.." I had the same question.

You might not want to hear this, but its been horribly rough for us. So hard to be newly married and living life on a tour bus with your husband and 11 other men.... hard to adjust to having a wife be involved in your work when you have done it alone for 7 years... harder still to try and do marriage long distance via cell phone! (dating long distance was cake in comparison) Its hard to integrate lives and become One...harder still when your separate lives and childhoods vastly different..It was hard to move 3,000 miles away from my parents and siblings and friends and church... probably harder to married to a needy, lonely woman. We got married, bought a house, got some puppies and life has just kept pressing on without a moments pause.

Our first anniversary was last Sunday. We haven't gotten to celebrate it yet, but still we passed that mile marker. You probably don't want to hear that a christian singer and his wife almost didn't make it, but we almost didn't.

We are on that bumpy road to recovery...and I am grateful for God's faithfulness that has helped us find that road.

Shawn has been gone and I have been trying my hardest to hold everything together. I have felt a little bit like an illustration I remember from Dr. Suess' "The Cat in the Hat". Remember when the Cat messes up the house and the children are trying to keep things together? I felt just like that...things are exploding around me on every side and I am running in circles, trying to catch all the peices before they fall to the ground and shatter...

I don't think I realized how exhausting months of that can be, until he came home to stay for awhile and I could let down my guard a little..or a lot, as the case may be. He came home and I am falling apart. He is home and we have so many things we want to do together and enjoy together and frankly, I am a mess. I got a little room to breathe and nearly a year of worry, homesickness, anxiety, disappointment, anger, fear, sadness all has come crashing down on me.

And I feel powerless.

I think all of my life, I have prided myself in my stability...successfully carrying out my inner resolve to handle life well...to stay composed... I really think that sense of power over my life and emotions has defined what I think about me. I am okay with myself as long as I can manage me and a failure when I can't. The problem is that sense of control was just a mirage...a dream of water to a man lost in the desert.

Still, mirage or not, I want that power back. I want nothing more than to not feel what I am feeling. I don't want to be snappy and moody. I don't want to feel tired when I wake up after a night of tossing and turning. I don't want to toss and turn. I want to cherish the months we have together to garden and work on the house and play with the puppies. I want to be happy. I want to be a well adjusted, problem free adult. Oh yeah, and a perfect wife. I kind of want to just take myself by the shoulders and talk some sense into me.

Ok...let's be honest, I have tried that. Didn't work.

I am coming to terms with the fact that my need for control over my life, situations, emotions, and body is a little 'diabolical', in Nouwen's words. Divisive.

So I am the deer in the headlights of truth. Exposed. Caught. Frozen by a mixture of fear and curiosity....wondering, with shaking limbs, what the light leads to...

Our pastor spoke Sunday night about how suffering and glory go hand in hand..that the fact that the Bible doesn't hide the sin and ugliness of life (just read Genesis) is one of the reasons he believes it to be inspired. He said there is rarely a moment of glory that doesn't have a pang of fallenness in it and rarely suffering that doesn't bear glory. He said that Jesus' proclamation that the "Kingdom of God is among us" is telltale of this: while the world and everyone person has been broken by the fall, Christians embody the presence of the future in the now of life. Meaning, that one day all will be set right again...the lion will lay down with the lamb, justice will prevail, long life will be the rule (check out Isaiah 65 & 66) and while this is an event that will come about when Jesus returns...the Kingdom lives NOW when Christ-followers allow God to transform them and when in their lives,those very things take root... justice and mercy,peace and life.

I long to be apart of that Kingdom...to be the presence of the future in the now of life. I know that context for that Presence is my life, in which both glory and suffering are key players.

Please pray for me and for us.. as I wade through this season...please pray that we will be able to feel the swell of glory under our feet amid the brokenness...pray that the Kingdom would live in us and that we would be transformed...pray that where my grip on power has led to division, that God would loosen my grip and bring unity.

Thanks for reading these wandering confessions.

POST-POST:

Tonight as I read my book and felt the push to write and share and process, I felt opposition. My computer was downstairs and I had already turned the lights out. My husband isn't home tonight and suddenly I remembered the rape I heard about on the news earlier and I got scared. So I laid in my bed for awhile, deciding whether to listen to the fear or the inspiration.

It occured to me that maybe I needed to share this..maybe God was pushing ...and this unusual fear about walking around in my house at night wasn't. It tipped the scales. I went and grabbed the laptop. (and of course, hurridly locked the bedroom door behind me) *grin*

All joking aside, I hope this has had purpose in your life and is more than an over-share on my part.

One more aside, as I re-read this in the light of morning, I realized something else: how grateful I am for Shawn and the amazing work God is doing in his heart...the simultaneous softening and strengthening I see infused in him. I am thankful for his forgiving nature and his ability to laugh when the situation calls for light heartedness. I am thankful for his honesty. I am thankful he is committed to being here and loves me the way I am, even when that's not an easy task! I feel so blessed to call him my husband..I really do...

Have a blessed night!