The Day After

I started writing this blog to encourage myself to find something to be thankful for every day.  Sometimes I get caught up in the stuff of each day and forget to sing a psalm of thanksgiving.  That's a reason I like facebook.  Not everyone is in the same place as I am and they help me when they post songs of love and joy and stories of God at work in their lives.  I stop and remember too.  I join in with the praises.

Yesterday was Gene's funeral service and today I feel lost.  Every decision I have ever made for nearly the past 27 years has involved him in some way.

I have never been an easy wife to guide, but I did work hard at asking his opinion and trying to understand when he said he thought differently than I did.  If I argued hard enough he would release me to do whatever it was my own way but if I listened hard enough [and that was sometimes difficult] I could hear why he thought it was a poor decision.  I cannot think of a time when I did not rejoice that I had listened to his counsel. [Except the time he told me all that stuff just would not fit in the car for a trip to my mother's house.  A 7month old baby takes a lot of stuff!  I emptied the car and repacked it and was he ever surprised [and humble pie was eaten] when everything did indeed fit in with room for passengers as well!]

Sometimes he was right on the money and sometimes I was better prepared to make that particular decision but it was joint and that is the difficult part today.

When I married, I opened myself  emotionally to Gene, not something I had ever done with anyone else, probably since I was a very little girl and learned it was risky to do so.  I used to pride myself on fulfilling the song, "I am a rock , I am an island".

But it was only with Gene, I didn't want that open a relationship with anybody else and I guarded that intimacy passionately.  So much so that Gene didn't really understand.  The children, the pets, the extended family, no one was given what I gave him emotionally.  He accepted it and occasionally really "got" it but I gave it just the same.

And now the hurt is so intense because I don't have ....right here I stopped and blew my nose and gained some perspective.  I am not alone.  I chose to only open myself emotionally with Gene but I can choose again and be vulnerable with others .  Not in exactly the same way but my friendship with each of my closest companions is different in subtle ways.  And I can be emotionally vulnerable with them too.  Perhaps we all learn by being so.

..........and I have the maturity to know I am not a rock--Jesus is-- and I am not an island, Jesus unites me to a huge body of Christ.  He has sent far more than two boats, a raft, and a helicopter.  [Do you remember that old joke?]

I must rest, I must receive, I must allow the ministry of the Holy Spirit to rest upon me.  I am not going to "get over this" in a day or two but who said I had to?  I will sleep some more, rest some more, eat and drink and reflect and gradually things will fall into place.  [If I need it...... will you remind me again?]  What did God do for Elijah but give him water and food and sleep to aide him in getting on with the call of God in his life.  Now that's a bible lesson I am going to learn from!