Face Down...but not out!

This speaks volumes to me....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WQIIz9AuUA

I know in my heart I haven't let it go and I know it will take time to process and let him, my fantasy, my old life go. I have peace that I'm making the right decisions. I'm not making them based on anger or a sinful nature. I really am amazed on how God has been working thru me. I love it. I am truly blessed and I'm reminded of that everyday. Several people have recently told me they KNOW Im saved. I guess everyone questions their own salvation at one point or another, especially when they sin. I know God is working and has been working in my life. I know he has been protecting me even though I was being stubborn. I know he loves me...always has, despite everything I have ever done. There truly is a peace in knowing that. I'm so glad that I'm growing in my relationship with him. He really is such a comfort in my life and watching him work is just amazing.

Blessed and confused

As I lay/sit in my hospital bed (the one I will be so glad to leave tomorrow!) I am thinking a lot about my life. I have a lot of decisions to make and for some they seem easy ones but that's because they aren't the ones that have to make them. With every decision in life I always wonder if I'm making the right one. In many of my relationships, I have learned to question and doubt myself more and more. I have been knocked down both physically and psychologically for so long that when I sit down and think about it....I'm amazed I'm still here and can still bring a smile to my face. I know God knows what he's doing....me, I don't have a clue! I'm open for learning but I've always been that stubborn, fall-then-learn-from-it kinda person. I don't really know why that is. I always have to test the limits. I see a lot of myself in my daughter. She is truly my sunshine. God knew what he was doing and what I needed. (As I write this I'm tearing up). That does make some decisions easier to make but I still question myself. I really have been isolated due to my last relationship and today I felt really blessed. I had friends that I haven't kept in touch with for a long time check on me cause they had a strange feeling. Once again, God knew I needed that support. I often forget people really love me and care about me cause the one person I tried to love didn't love me back. I have really special friends. The ones that want to be there for me and wish that someone would beat him up (brings a smile to my face). God often reminds me how blessed I am. I only have a few real friends but they are so special and dear to me. That makes other decisions really difficult to make.

I didn't tell my dad that I was in the hospital until Sunday (been here since Thursday) because I knew what was going to happen when I did. He's ready to come get me and Caitlyn and move us up to VA. Thats not an easy decision considering my whole life has been centered around here but he wants to protect me and I know that his intentions are pure. He doesn't want to find out I'm dead when he's so far away and helpless. It must b hard to be a dad and have your daughter go thru the stuff I've gone thru and feel so helpless. His girlfriend called so any hospitals today (from VA mind you) just to find me cause I didn't answer my phone. They were so worried....it was sweet to me since I never really had that. Still haven't told my mom cause I already know how that will go....she is SO negative and I definitely don't need that right now. So I have a lot of decisions and finally the freedom (and few resources) to make them. I just pray I make the right ones for me and my daughter and of course my boys (but I do know they are safe).

Choices and being YOU!

We are all faced with choices everyday. Some are easy and some are not. You just can not make everyone happy all the time. In fact, that is NOT what life is even about. Sure the waters seem calmer when others are happy with your choices but in the end you are the one who has to live with them (the choices) and not everyone else. You can not be everything to everyone. We often get disappointed in others like they get disappointed in us but guess what, that is life! Since the time that sin arrived there has not been complete bliss....never will be! Life is rough and hard and we often try to rush through many parts of it thinking that it will get easier down the road just to find another bump. It's how you learn from those bumps and turns and weaves in the road that make you who you are. No one can take that away from you...unless you allow it. The beauty of being individuals is that you get to be you all the time....almost like a marriage, for better or worse, rich and poor but you cannot divorce or leave yourself!

Stress

How does someone avoid stress??? Do they hide under their bed completely shut off from the world? I find it somewhat humerous when the doctor tells me I need to have less stress. Now that's something I'd be willing to take a pill for! How do you have less stress? I mean personally I would love to have a stress-free life but how to actually have that....I'm completely lost about. I mean, do I have to first win the lottery that I don't even play? Do I have to have all my kids grown and married off first? Do I have to find the secret to being independently weathly (that I have been searching for all these years lol)? I just don't get it.

Anger

Another night of frustrations...another night of reading- trying to figure things out.

This really made sense: Anger is one of the most common and destructive delusions, and it afflicts our mind almost every day. To solve the problem of anger we first need to recognize the anger within our mind, acknowledge how it harms both ourself and others, and appreciate the benefits of being patient in the face of difficulties. We then need to apply practical methods in our daily life to reduce our anger and finally to prevent it from arising at all. Anger is a deluded mind that focuses on an animate or inanimate object, feels it to be unattractive, exaggerates its bad qualities, and wishes to harm it. For example, when we are angry with our partner, at that moment he or she appears to us as unattractive or unpleasant. We then exaggerate his bad qualities by focusing only on those aspects that irritate us and ignoring all his good qualities and kindness, until we have built up a mental image of an intrinsically faulty person. We then wish to harm him in some way, probably by criticizing or disparaging him. Because it is based on an exaggeration, anger is an unrealistic mind; the intrinsically faulty person or thing that it focuses on does not in fact exist. Moreover, as we shall see, anger is also an extremely destructive mind that serves no useful purpose whatsoever. Having understood the nature and disadvantages of anger, we then need to watch our mind carefully at all times in order to recognize it whenever it begins to arise.

I swear I could have wrote this. Good thing I have a counseling appointment tomorrow. Everyone is always saying how self aware I am. They say it like it's a good thing. I feel like it isn't. You have any idea how frustrating it is to realize what the problem is but you can't seem to make it different. I feel so helpless laying with my anger. I never realized I too had an anger problem. Now I can really empathize....but now what?!?!?

Forgiveness

This is something I have been struggling with for awhile now. I can not seem to grasp how to truly forgive. It has brought me to the point of questioning my salvation. I was doing some reading on grace and forgiveness (since I slept so much during the day I can't seem to sleep now...go fig!) and I know what forgiveness is but I just don't know how to forgive. "Just as there is no limit to God's forgiveness to us, there should be no limit to our forgiveness of those who wrong us. In response to Peter's question to Jesus about forgiving a brother who might sin against him, Jesus said, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven" (Matthew 18:22). Our forgiveness of others should be as limitless as God's forgiveness is toward us. Just as God's grace and forgiveness is incomprehensible to finite mankind, so is the expectation that we can repeatedly forgive others." I know God helps us follow his commands by giving us the Holy Spirit to help and I guess that what has me questioning my salvation. I don't feel like I have him helping me but that may not be him that's not allowing it. Honestly I know a part of me wants to hold on to the anger and pain and feed off of it for whatever sick reason. I need to really give it to God and stop saying I am because I really do know I can't do this without him. There is no logical reason for me to forgive....he doesn't deserve it but none of us do and God doesn't see any sin any more damning than another with the exception of blasphemy- "I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin" (Mark 3:28,29). If God has seen fit to forgive me for all my sins then I need to forgive those who have wronged me. It's so much easier said than done...I'm living proof!