The Blessing

 It was a regular Well-check appointment for my youngest son...his pediatrician is like a member of the family and knows us well.  As the visit progressed, she naturally asked about how things were going with the rest of the family.  After my son’s quick response of “Fine.” (I’m thinking I’ll have to go to his appointments with him forever, right, so that all info is communicated?!), I interjected that I was still concerned with the “lack of connection” within some of his family relationships.  The conversation continued and his Dr. made the comment that studies show that the effects of divorce continue for several generations following.  I heard nothing else after that. The pain of divorce runs deep, there is no denying that, but to think “SEVERAL GENERATIONS???”  Of course, we feel this to the depths of our soul if we’ve experienced the pain of divorce, but the thought that we (us and our children) not only have to experience the devastation personally, but it’s passed along several generations to my grand-children, great grand-children, great-great grand-children.....NO.

The next Sunday, I was still reeling from the “several generations” theory in church.  Worship began and I found myself soul-sick, weak, down-cast, head hung. I hear the melody and semi-familiar words from the worship leader....

“The Lord bless you

And keep you

Make His face shine upon you

And be gracious to you

The Lord turn His

Face toward you

And give you peace

The Lord bless you

And keep you

Make His face shine upon you

And be gracious to you

The Lord turn His

Face toward you

And give you peace...”

**AND I LIFT MY EYES**

“Amen, amen, amen

Amen, amen, amen

The Lord bless you

And keep you

Make His face shine upon you

And be gracious to you

The Lord turn His

Face toward you

And give you peace

As we receive, we agree, amen

Amen, amen, amen

Amen, amen, amen (amen, amen)

Amen, amen, amen

Amen, amen, amen”

**AND I SINK IN. YES, LORD.**

“May His favor be upon you”. **(YES!)**

“And a thousand generations” **(A THOUSAND GENERATIONS?!)**

“Your family and your children” **(EVEN MINE?)**

“And their children, and their children” **(FOR GENERATIONS?!)**

“May His favor be upon you” **(YES, LORD.)**

“And a thousand generations” **(YES. THERE’S HOPE.)**

“And your family and your children

And their children, and their children” **( I CLAIM IT)**

“May His favor be upon you

And a thousand generations

And your family and your children

And their children, and their children

May His favor be upon you

And a thousand generations

And your family and your children

And their children, and their children

May His presence go before you

And behind you, and beside you

All around you, and within you

He is with you, He is with you

In the morning, in the evening

In your coming, and your going

In your weeping, and rejoicing

He is for you, He is for you” **( THEN WHO COULD BE AGAINST ME?)**

“He is for you, He is for you

He is for you, He is for you

He is for you, He is for you

Amen, amen, amen

Amen, amen, amen (may His favor)

May His favor be upon you

And a thousand generations

And your family and your children

And their children, and their children

May His presence go before you

And behind you, and beside you

All around you, and within you

He is with you, He is with you

In the morning, in the evening

In your coming, and your going

In your weeping, and rejoicing

He is for you, He is for you

He is for you, He is for you

He is for you, He is for you

He is for you, He is for you

He is for you, He is for you

He is for you

Oh He is for you

Oh (amen, amen)

Amen, amen, amen

Amen, amen, amen

May His favor be upon you

And a thousand generations

And your family and your children

Their children, and their children (may his presence)

May His presence go before you

And behind you, and beside you

All around you, and within you

He is with you, He is with you (in the morning)

In the morning (in the evening), in the evening

In your coming, and your going

In your weeping, and rejoicing

He is for you (He is for you), He is for you (He is for you)

He is for you (He is for you), He is for you (He is for you)

He is for you (He is for you), He is for you (He is for you)

He is for you, He is for you

He is for you, He is for you”

_ The Blessing, Song by Cody Carnes, Elevation Worship, and Kari Jobe

So, all the pain, all the internal shame, all the guilt....He can shoulder it.  He shouldn’t have to, but He is willing.  WHY? Because he is FOR US.  And if He is for us, who can be against us (including ourselves with our self-talk of brokenness?!) Romans 8:31

Lysa Tyrkerst recently said, “Forgiveness doesn’t require reconciliation. Sometimes reconciliation isn’t possible or safe.

Forgiveness is your decision that no one can take away from you. It’s you honoring God. It’s you honoring your healing process. It’s you deciding you’ve suffered enough because of what happened.

It’s empowering and it is beautiful.

Reconciliation requires that both people are willing to do the hard and humble work of coming back together.

If they weren’t willing to honor the work necessary to come back together in a healthy way, that doesn’t make you a failure. Not even close.

Your redemption by God is not held hostage by someone else’s choices. It’s between you and God.

You are loved. And your life can absolutely be a redemption story.❤️”

Lord, As I continue to do my part to heal, and as I do all I can to provide healing opportunities, encouragement, love and support for my children, Let our lives be a redemption story. 

...And my family, and my children, and their children, and their children.  Amen (Hebrew translation, “Let it be so”, “So be it”)....As we receive, we agree...AMEN.

"Life Ain't Always Beautiful...."

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“Life ain't always beautiful
Sometimes it's just plain hard
Life can knock you down
It can break your heart.

Life ain't always beautiful
You think you're on your way
And it's just a dead end road
At the end of the day.

But the struggles make you stronger
And the changes make you wise
And happiness has it's own way
Of taking it's own sweet time.

No, life ain't always beautiful
Tears will fall sometimes
Life ain't always beautiful
But it's a beautiful ride.”

-Tommy Lee James

Remember that country song from the early 2000’s?  I remember when Gary Allen released this song in the aching vocal ability that he has which gave me chills.

I experienced divorce this past year.  Like most divorces, this was a long-time coming.  Through the years, I had many hours of contemplation regarding that impending reality.  Many people, however, had a completely different view of my life, and therefore experienced shock at the realization that my marriage didn’t look like they expected.  There were many assumptions made, and most of them led to the conclusion that my life was ideal, perfect…beautiful. 

This begs the question, “What is beauty?”

Society tends to assign beauty to outward appearance.  This falls far from the mark.  Relationally, is “beauty” the football star/prom queen match with everybody all smiles?  Sometimes…but not always. Those smiles fade sometimes when life gets hard, disappointments occur, true values are exposed or they are discovered for the first time through time and experience…

And what then?  What about “beauty” when life gets ugly?  Generally, that’s when we dig in and try to restore the things that we thought were creating beauty.  But, what if those efforts aren’t enough?

When I separated in 2017, I experienced a roller coaster of emotions…relief, fear, hope, sadness, disappointment…I grieved the loss of an “ideal”.  I worried about how people would perceive me.  Human nature tends to conclude things based on very little accurate information and instead base “fact” on what they view from the outside only. 

So, I worried…”I don’t want to disappoint people.  They don’t know lived experience…only the assumptions of the image.” 

And truth be told…there is always a lot of work creating an “image” that is acceptable to others rather than openly displaying reality. 

But when we live authentically, and we correct the areas of life that are so broken….why do we not tend to see that as “beautiful” at least not initially?

God stepped into my situation once I acknowledged the truth to myself, and what I realized was that He had been in the midst of it all along.  He had produced blessings despite the challenges.  I called on Him for many years to transform the areas that were not as beautiful.  The moment that I finally accepted that my marriage would end, He opened doors and showed me that He had already paved the way because He already knew my story long before I did.  I do believe that God hates divorce, but I also know from experience now that God gives grace when we’ve given it our best efforts.   

As I look back over the first half of my adult years, I see so much beauty in the midst of that which was not perfect (as is nothing.)

I see the faces of my precious babies; 

I see goals reached;

jobs secured;

friendships deepened in just the right times. 

I see so much beauty.

And, as I look back over this past year where I experienced so much that would appear to be ugly…I see so much beauty in the midst. 

Again, I see the smiling faces of my precious now young men;

I see goals reached;

jobs secured;

friendships deepened in just the right time. 

SO much beauty.

So, YES…..

“Life ain’t always beautiful

But it’s a beautiful ride.”

"Everything Happens for a Reason..."

“Everything happens for a reason”…

I’ll bet that I’ve stated that a million and one times over my lifetime.  And yet, when I saw my little camper cut in two and thought of the blood, sweat, and tears that went into it, I just couldn’t see a reason.  As minor as losing a camper is in the whole big scheme of things, I felt as crushed as that camper. 

 

 I believe that sometimes things happen to give us an external visual expression of how we’re feeling internally.  This offers us perspective that we might never achieve if we remained “in our heads” about it.  It has been a year since my neighbor at the lake called me to tell me that the hurricane on Sept. 11, 2017 had wreaked havoc on our trees resulting in one falling right down the middle of my little camper parked in the driveway where I had been restoring it.  All the way to the lake, I mentally grieved that which was a loss only to me. I was the only person on the planet that cared about that camper and the healing work that it represented to me.  For this reason, the loss felt like a direct attack on me personally from Hurricane Irma.  I wasn’t sure what to even do when I pulled up at the lake and saw it, so I just started pulling it apart and freeing it from tree limbs.  I struggled to focus on my Dad’s familiar refrain “It could always be worse.” as I did feel thankful for the lake house being spared yet I grieved my loss.  I struggled because the camper felt like one big representation of my life right at that moment and through the visual representation of the “camper carnage”, I knew some things in my life were also over. 

~In January 2017, I had finally acted on my dream of building a counseling retreat center and partnered with someone who had been working with me to build it.  For 8 months, we worked together, planned, and constructed my dream, and then in August, my partner decided to head in a different direction with the project leaving me scrambling to discover the next path for my counseling practice.

~In April 2017, my Daddy was in a horrendous vehicle accident, and I spent the next 2-3 months focusing almost solely on his care.

~In September 2017, we sold the house that my boys knew as their home for 11 years.

~Though a long-time coming, my marriage of 18 years had reached a point of finality which brought much grief over our changing family dynamics.

~The barn-house that I designed was delayed in construction leaving me feeling displaced, exhausted, and searching for daily solutions.

Each one of these situations was a lot to deal with each in it’s own regard, but all together, it felt crushing just like that tree on my little camper.  Just like my inclination to jump right in and drag the debris away, I jumped into each of the situations that I was dealing with to effect whatever change I could into the situations. 

In the middle of my clean-up that day, my cousin, Laura called me.  She said, “I know this sounds crazy, but I keep getting these words for you: ‘It is finished.”  I instantly knew when I heard those words that they were gifted to me through her in order for me to begin the process of Acceptance. 

But oh, I was so mad!  Not at her, but I instantly retorted, “No! It is most definitely NOT finished!”

I thought,  I’ll keep working on it…all of it…but especially the camper…my visual representation of it all…”  As the months wore on, and I saw that even the frame of the camper was bent…the very foundation was not stable (what a metaphor for the other areas of my life in disarray!)…

I knew that I had to accept the loss.

Acceptance did not come quickly…in any situation.  It did however, come slowly over months and months of working on it.  I realized that each of the situations that I was dealing with carried huge loss but also promise.  Within each of the situations, there were blessings.  Through the months, I learned to be thankful for the blessings, grieve the losses, and accept the realities.  I worked at plugging away at the debris of the losses while rebuilding a new reality. 

Acceptance…for a word that made me feel so weak when I first tried to wrap my mind around it, it sure did take a lot of strength to achieve! 

It took realizing that acceptance is active, not passive. 

It’s empowering, not resigning. 

It stimulates forward movement, not apathy. 

So, I've learned that while the wreckage is ugly, the new "sprouts" of growth are even more beautiful that we could ever imagine. 

Restoration...Part Two!

The camper restoration is coming along, though not as quickly as I’d hoped.  I missed the North Georgia Vintage Camper Rally in Hiawassee at the end of August.  I had planned on the rally being the inaugural camping expedition since it’s “facelift” even though it wasn’t even finished yet when I registered! I thought that having a deadline would be the fuel that I needed to work on the restoration with more diligence and focus! It was a good plan, but we all know what happens to the best-laid plans…

I spent about two weeks of focused energy on the camper restoration this summer, then in early August, we took it over to a paint and body shop where it remains today.  Originally, I thought I’d be able to paint it myself (I mean, I’m doing the entire restoration without knowing what I’m doing, so why not throw in a paint job?!), then Bart said that he wanted the job of painting it as his contribution to the project.  As the “deadline” approached, though, he pointed out the benefits of utilizing a paint shop for this job given that they had a few advantages over us in the painting department…like knowledge, experience, proper equipment *insert eye roll here*.  I reluctantly agreed given the looming deadline.  When the body shop suggested a three-week turnaround time, I knew the camper rally was out of the question.  At first, I’m not going to lie…I was angry and looking for someone to blame.  I blamed myself for not spending more time on it this past spring.  I blamed Bart for procrastinating once he volunteered himself for the painting responsibility. I blamed the paint shop for not dropping everything at that moment to devote night and day to getting MY job done (because that’s reasonable to think that everyone should be waiting around for us to arrive so that they can serve us, right?!)  But, after about 10 minutes of sulking, I told myself to let it go.  I believe that in life, there’s a reason for everything, so I chose to accept that there was a reason that I wasn’t going to make it to this rally, and I moved on.  This got me to thinking, though (surprise, surprise…)….
Restoration hardly ever goes the way that we think it will and is almost never “on time”!  Whether it is something that we restore in the physical realm (an object, our body…) or the emotional/mental realm (freedom from addiction, abuse recovery, developing new habits), we tend to have a mental framework of what that process will look like, but rarely does the actual plan happen the way that we envisioned it to be.

This camper project…there were times that I just really wanted to cover up parts of it with something pretty so that I didn’t have to pull out more rotten wood.  I was already struggling with even knowing what to do many times, so to find more things that needed to come out before new could go in, I just really wanted to put the new in on top of it and pretend that the rot wasn’t there.  Isn’t that just like life??!  I’m just going to keep going…pretending…denying that the hurt, pain, addiction, you-name-it is there, and we’ll smile and put on a good show that everything is fine.  This works until it crumbles.  How much more effective we could be at restoration if we could find the strength to pull out what needs replacing and then replace it with something good!

The main problem with this plan is that we don’t generally have the strength in ourselves to be able to pull out the bad to deal with it.  I mentioned my friend, Rich, in the last Restoration post.  I had done everything that I knew to do from a “counseling perspective” to grieve his death and to receive restoration.  I put in the work emotionally.  I began this camper restoration project as a physical means to grieve and heal.  The problem was that my efforts helped just enough to help me keep going, but not enough to restore me.  My journey towards restoration began when I set aside time dedicated to recovery and when I began to include others in my process of healing.  I came to realize that I needed other people to help me process all the thoughts and reasoning that had been swirling around in my mind, restoration didn’t mean that everything that happened was ok, and that I could do the work that God called me to do if I honored past/people/experiences through restoration rather than keeping myself broken out of guilt in moving forward (as if they would like for us to remain miserable?!) or weakness.

As with any restoration, I don’t think there’s ever a time when we think we’re done.  We can stand back and appreciate how far we’ve come with our project whether it’s an object or ourselves, and we always see the hidden imperfections.  This is ok.  It keeps us humble. Let’s just focus on how far we’ve come, though, appreciate it, and continue working on improvement.

So, the camper before and after...still not finished with the outside, but it is improved to say the least!

The interior is coming along...

Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace.  And the God of love and peace will be with you.  2 Cor. 13:11

Restoration

Restoration

I love old things. I love the smell of dusty, worn books; the look of rusted metal and the weathering of old wood. My Granny used to laugh at my "rescues". I spent my entire childhood watching her make biscuits using an old metal sifter. It was white with red apples and green stems. Most of the paint had worn away in many places after years of use, and there was a hole about the size of a quarter in the bottom of the sifter that had formed after probably thousands of pans of biscuits had been rolled out, dusted with flour, and cut into perfectly formed circles.  She even picked up each one and gently pressed the sides that weren't quite perfect before placing them in the pan to bake. (Not being a detailed person at all, when I've made biscuits as an adult, they've always been "drop" biscuits, and I've given each one full freedom to be decidedly imperfect!).  One day, when I was sitting on the countertop as a teenager, watching my Granny make biscuits, she lamented about that old, worn-out sifter, and tossed it over into the trash can! I hopped right off the counter and retrieved it faster than she could turn back around! She said " What in the world would you want that old sifter for?!" to which I replied that it represented peace, family, contentment, and love to me. Now, it sits in my glass front cabinet so that I can see it anytime I pass. It reminds me every time I see it of her love for her family and oh, how glad I am that I rescued it...

On October 25, 2015, I texted this picture below to a close friend. It’s an old 1950's model camper that I had decided on a whim to go buy. (My husband says that he has learned to be surprised at nothing!).

My friend, Rich, was a Volkswagen enthusiast and loved to restore them. He had just about finished a recent rebuild (from the ground up!) and was always interested in a fun project! As soon as I texted him the picture of the camper, he called me "over the moon" excited about the purchase and asked , "Hey, if I help you rebuild it, can I use it some, too?!" I readily agreed, of course, as I know NOTHING...I repeat, NOTHING, about rebuilding, well...anything! I sometimes have too much confidence that I can figure things out as I go. 

On November 30, 2015, Rich committed suicide. 

I won't go into all the details nor the grieving process that I have been through, but I will say that it was almost excruciating to look at that camper after that. Sometimes, I would not even be able to look at it, and sometimes, I would just sit in it and cry.  I didn't start any work on the camper at all.  It just sat there on my land as a reminder of a project that was supposed to be fun but just brought pain at that point.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine told me that she had a dream about Rich. She said that in her dream, she and I were out at the camper working on it when Rich drove up in his truck. He got out of his truck and walked towards the camper, and I peeked my head out the door and just stood there dumbfounded. I said something to him about him being gone, asked him why he had gone away, and commented that he was SUPPOSED to help me with the camper! (Cause that's what was important in that moment, right?! *rolling eyes*). He laughed and said, "You've got this! You can do it!", got back in his truck and drove away. 

I don't know if the dream gave me peace or made me mad (there are those roller-coaster emotions of grief coming out...), but at any rate, I used whatever energy that came from those emotions to start work on the camper. It's in pretty bad shape, so there is a lot that needs to be torn out. Pent-up emotions that I didn't even realize that I had have come out with fury as I'm tearing out walls, cabinets, flooring. When you think you can't "feel" anything emotionally, try smacking yourself in the face with paneling that pulls free suddenly or have the cabinet fall on you as you're removing nails and the remaining nails pull free from rotten wood (Yes, I've had the pleasure of having emotional releases from both experiences recently.)  Healing and restoration of ourselves comes in many different forms and in our own time. My time wasn't in the past five months. I was working through some things slowly during that time through a few conversations with close friends about the situation and several intentional meetings with good mentors, but now, through the camper project, I've felt progression. I don't know that we ever reach a point in tragedies where we feel completely "healed" (whatever that means...).  I think we hope to get to the point of not allowing our pain to have daily strongholds on us, and we begin using our experiences for good, but this is "healing".  Regarding the camper, my Granny would laugh and say she doesn't understand why I'd want that old thing, but she'd appreciate the beauty of the restoration. Rich would want to be right in the middle of the project, and he is in many ways. I hope that each time I look at that camper in the future, I think of friendship, kindred spirit connections, joy, and the importance of "doing life together" with friends. 

Healing happens in different ways for different people. And right now, for me, it looks like working on an old 50's model vintage camper. 

Love this old screen door and metal door! Everything is original!

Despite Rich telling me that I needed to be sure to take pictures of the before and after, I forgot!  This is as early as I got a picture!  I had already torn out a lot of the wall at this point.

 This was the progress that I made today! Removed counter top, cabinet, and discovered that the original color of the camper was PINK and white!!!! What a fun find!

**Chris Stapleton has committed to bringing awareness of mental illness and suicide through his song, Fire Away, and his promotion of the following organization:  http://www.changedirection.org/

I love that he has hit this issue "head on" through a medium that is familiar and will likely reach more people (music).