“Con­sider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and chal­lenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pres­sure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true col­ors. So don’t try to get out of any­thing pre­ma­turely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not defi­cient in any way.” James 1:2–4

I can hon­estly say that 2013 has been the most chal­leng­ing years to date!  It had ulti­mate LOWs and a cou­ple highs.  I enjoyed the dif­fer­ent things I did, met a lot of great peo­ple.  But it still left me with a HUGE void.  So my goal for this year is to com­pletely live my life for God.  This body is a tem­ple and I will feed it with the Word, nutri­tional food, sur­round it with pos­i­tive people.

Sit­ting through church on Christ­mas Eve, I cried the entire time through.  Not only did I lose my fam­ily this year, I feel as though I have lost my church fam­ily as well.

I would list my goals for the year, but I have way TOO many.  Started a weekly jour­nal and want to accom­plish a dif­fer­ent goal each week.

Change, Renew, Embrace.

They say time heals everything…well I have a wound so deep, a whole so large — it will be a life­time for this pain to dis­si­pate! The more I miss him the fur­ther he runs…please God take this pain away…take this hurt, erase the memories…make them horrible…It can be done. The other party has mag­i­cally talked him­self into think­ing that every sec­ond for 15 years was the most hor­ri­ble ones ever.…so some­how can’t it be where I can think the same! I am tired of crying…tired of hurt­ing and tired of see­ing my boys cry!

I have a lot of things I need to work on to becom­ing a bet­ter ver­sion of me.  I have so many things that I need to work on to get to that point. Voltaire makes a good point:  “Don’t let the per­fect be the enemy of the good.”  I need to remem­ber to not push myself to an impos­si­ble “per­fect,” get­ting nowhere and accept “good.” This doesn’t mean that you don’t try and do your best, it is more about decid­ing what your real pri­or­i­ties are, and most impor­tantly using the lit­tle time we have every day on those priorities.

What are my pri­or­i­ties?  To have a closer walk with God…lose weight…finish college…and have a clean house…save for another car…maintain my garden…be a bet­ter friend and the list goes on and on!

Closer walk with God…so it goes with faith.  We slow from a run to a walk to a stand­still on get­ting to know him bet­ter.  As life­long believ­ers, we do our fair share of stand­ing still. Prayer, read­ing our Bible, con­nect­ing with others…floats to the bot­tom of the to-do list. It is tacked under “shop for gro­ceries” and “reply to emails,” rather than let­ting our faith dic­tate our lives.  We look to find­ing the best-right-perfect way to pur­sue our faith and we plant our feet in spir­i­tual mud.  We ques­tion our meth­ods. We won­der if we’re “doing” faith right. We worry we’re not enough, we wres­tle with not mea­sur­ing up. Christ, how­ever, says oth­er­wise.  God says we are saved by grace. Jesus died on the cross to save us from those mis­steps we’re oh-so afraid of mak­ing.  Jesus died on the cross so we could be free to serve him, not our inner per­fec­tion­ist.  God says we are fear­fully and won­der­fully made. No ifs, no ands, no buts. That is our iden­tity.  Because of this iden­tity, we don’t need to be par­a­lyzed in our spir­i­tu­al­ity by per­fec­tion. We are free to run towards him, to skip towards him, to som­er­sault towards him. We are free to leap towards him, dance towards him, look for­ward to him. His love is per­fect and we are enough!!

Gar­den­ing is on my list…I feel as though I don’t have time to gar­den to make it per­fect and so then I end up doing noth­ing with it at all.  Before I know it the weeds have taken over and the sun has dried it out.  If I just take a cou­ple min­utes every day to work on the things I love, it would slowly get where I want and not tak­ing huge steps back­wards.   There is always another hur­dle to jump in  our quest for per­fec­tion. When I work in my gar­den for sev­eral hours, I always see more I want to do.  There are always plants being moved or removed, new plants added. I feel as though I never get to a point of really being done and sit­ting in the gar­den to enjoy it. A place where I can sit qui­etly for a while, appre­ci­ate the silence, the scent of the flow­ers, and the wild life it attracts. I will only see this if I am still and not striv­ing for perfection.

Relationships…when peo­ple hang out with you they enjoy the time they are spend­ing with you.  They are not look­ing at your per­fectly man­i­cured gar­den, your extra clean house, your degree you have sit­ting on your wall.  They care about the time they have with you.  This is so true with lit­tle chil­dren.  They need us to be involved in their lives, not after we have every­thing else per­fect in our lives.  Your friends need you to be a part of their lives.  And how can we do that if we are con­stantly check­ing things off our to do list.  I would like to send out per­sonal birth­day cards…so I can start now.  I don’t have to wait until the begin­ning of the year to start.

Los­ing Weight…sometimes I get so dis­cour­aged about the amount of pounds that I have to lose that I lose focus on just slowly get­ting to that goal.  As the say­ing goes, “You didn’t gain the weight over night and you aren’t going to lose it overnight!”  When I do go to the gym, I feel com­pelled to lift every weight…every machine and all it gets me is really sore and want­ing the gym to be the VERY last thing on my lists of things to do.

Fin­ish­ing College…This is prob­a­bly the only thing that I can say I am actu­ally doing…maybe because my goal is more attain­able and I see the fin­ish line.

Hav­ing a clean house…Probably should just give up on this goal completely.…but I am not.  I will tackle one drawer at a time, one closet at a time, purge and maintain.

Saving…well that would entail actu­ally hav­ing money! :)

Be mer­ci­ful to me, O LORD, for I am in dis­tress; my eyes grow weak with sor­row, my soul and my body with grief. My life is con­sumed by anguish and my years by groan­ing; my strength fails because of my afflic­tion, and my bones grow weak” (Psalm 31:9–10)

When I feel as though there is no where left to turn, I turn my eyes to Jesus!  He should be the first place I turn!!

“I am worn out from groan­ing; all night long I flood my bed with weep­ing and drench my couch with tears. My eyes grow weak with sor­row; they fail because of all my foes. Away from me, all you who do evil, for the LORD has heard my weep­ing. The LORD has heard my cry for mercy; the LORD accepts my prayer” (Psalm 6:6–9).

I just got this OVERWHELMING FEELING all over my body like there is more to the STORY that I don’t know.  It burns inside of me…

Some­ways I wish I knew the deep dark secrets…and other ways I know it will hurt me more!  But know now that there is more, I just know.

And that is why!

God bring me peace in this time!

It is evi­dent that the prob­lems we have have made it where a mar­riage just will not work. As I look into the future, it is not about me — we are all self­ish by nature.  What is most impor­tant through all this is bring­ing forth godly seeds…our chil­dren are what is most impor­tant.  They need to feel loved, appre­ci­ated and wor­thy.  I will do every­thing in my power to be the best mom I can be to them and let them know that they have a REALLY awe­some dad!

Thor­ough search of the scrip­tures will reveal very few bib­li­cal rea­sons for divorce, but a mul­ti­tude of rea­sons to stay in the mar­riage: to bring forth a godly seed (Malachi 2:15); to pro­vide a nur­tur­ing envi­ron­ment in which to raise chil­dren; and to love, honor, and cher­ish one another as evi­dence that mar­riage under God works; and divorce does not have to be the end result for two peo­ple who fall in love.

When the envi­ron­ment no longer includes love, honor and cher­ish­ing, not sure how it can just ever come back.  I have not been loved, I def­i­nitely have not been hon­ored.  And cher­ished, no can’t say that is there either.  I have loved him more than I ever had and that is what makes this so hard.

Our chil­dren will be fine…we are both good par­ents and want the best for them.  We will do every­thing in our might to raise them into Godly men.

Where do I fit in this equa­tion? Am I a fac­tor or a by prod­uct?  I feel as though I am the later :(

I am tak­ing a cou­ple courses on word press and try­ing some of the tech­niques out!

Plus this is a really cute video! :)