Where'd My Blessings Go?

So what do you do when your blog is titled "Bursting With Blessings" but you're just not seeing many blessings?

Sure I know I have blessings. I spent time with each of my girls today after not seeing them for a week and a half. That's a big blessing.

I had lunch today with both girls, my ex-wife--thank gosh the title is now official--and her boyfriend, and it actually went well. Blessing. Check.

I have friends who check in with me on occasion at just the time when I need them to. Check.

I receive guidance from God in the form of answers to my prayers. What's the percentage of people in all the world who can confidently say this? (And I'm not bragging here. Just recognizing a huge reason for gratitude that's impossible to overstate.)

I could go on. I have blessings. I do see them. Some of them amaze me, really. To the point that I think--Wow, really? What have I done to deserve this?

So yeah, I have them. They keep coming. Some are just amazing. Many are miracles. And I believe I do acknowledge them and give thanks. I believe I try to.

But I see so much more than blessings. I see what I don't have. Things I want that seem perfectly reasonable, yet are incompatible with me :

• A stable, intact family for my daughters. Nope. They have to have two homes. In this case, two is not better than one. And I'll not even mention my first set of kids--or did I just?
• A steady income. Nope. Mine is a job that is not paying enough to pay the bills. Gonna have to rectify that before long.
• Doubts. I darn sure don't want them. But how many answers to my prayers are from me, not God? I have evidence enough to know that my voice has supplanted His in some of those answers to prior prayers.
• Self confidence. What's that? Yeah, uh-uh. Move along. Nothing to see here. Do you have extra? I'll pay you. Do you take credit?
• Lack of depression. In other words, I have depression. Again. It's like the evil twin brother of no self-confidence. Executive function? Heard of that once a long, long, time ago--for eight great weeks. Then poof! Yeah, no.

I remember walking into my new home in Evansville, IN some 15 months ago, freshly separated from my wife. Here were my thoughts:

"This is bottom. I am up $#!^ creek without a paddle. I. Have. No. Clue."

Over the next several months miracles worked their way into my life and I found more than a clue. I found God who became my rock and who lifted me up from rock bottom. He helped me hit reset and lifted me up into a new orbit with new eyes and new habits and helped me begin to build a new life.

Some of those new habits have turned pale and sloughed off like a pair of work pants fallen to the floor after a hard day's work. Two steps forward, now back one.

And yesterday's bright clear eyes have begun to film over, scales forming anew. A little less sunshine, sometimes a lot.

Today on the phone I told my 2nd rock--my mom--I was gonna have to change the title of my story from "How God Saved Me From the Wreckage of Divorce," to "God's Dragging His Feet And Needs to Hurry the Hell Up and Help!"

We both got a good laugh because there is some truth there. Though spoken with tongue in cheek, in my human frailty I really do wish He would hurry up and get my painful lessons over with. I do not enjoy these deprivations. I long for when this time in my life ends. And it may also be that this present level of ingratitude prolongs the trial.

For it is ingratitude, is it not?

Maybe this is the point at which, like the woman who reached out and touched the hem of the Savior's robe, all I can do is to reach. And hope. And pray that my reaching is enough to activate His grace.

For if I ask of myself the question--would I rather have my will or His prevail, assuming they are different, I can still answer "His". I am gratefully too fearful to go my own way.

Yet do I not go my own way still when I am unwilling to reach, unwilling to go a step further and sincerely ask Him what more would He have me change or give up?

In other words, I can reach up toward Him, whose grace is always sufficient, or begin to descend again, to a new rock bottom.

That's perspective.

The Gift of Grief

I just took a walk down to the local beach – 10 minutes away from my house. While there, a woman who is a long-distance friend of mine, messaged me and I messaged her back. I got to thinking how I usually only respond to her texts. I have only rarely initiated. And I never provide her any details of my life. This is unusual for me. I have historically been prone to share with others the details of my life. But I have not shared with her even the fact that I’ve been divorced now for a week. And I have no inkling to share that with her, nor really any other detail about my life.

As I walked up the road toward home I wondered why this has been so with this particular friend. The answer came quickly. After all, this isn't something I haven't pondered before. I have known the answer to this question. But it seemed to sink in to me more deeply than ever before. The reason I don’t share intimate details of my life with the opposite sex is because my heart has been demolished.

This sounds hyperbolic and maybe it is. But I wonder if the reason I am unwilling to share the inmost parts of my heart, or what remains of it, is because there seems to be nothing left of it. I think there has been so much devastation and shock to my heart that there is nothing that would make me want to expose it to the elements again. I cannot even imagine when it may be ready again.

Someday I believe it will be. But I believe it will be years – maybe many years. For I am still reeling in shock. The blow I took was mighty. I think that I am unable to comprehend the greatness of it. It feels surreal.

The only evidence I can see arises from my behaviors. Such is my complete and utter lack of interest in establishing relationships with the opposite sex. There is simply zero – maybe even negative – interest in giving my heart away.

For where Is my heart? I'm not even sure.

I try to understand what happened. I try to put my arms--the arms of my understanding--around the idea that I am no longer with her. I am no longer with my wife--who is not now my wife. All I get back is an error message. There is no computation. It's well beyond me. I think I have only once before been at such a complete loss from my world heaving and hoing. It was when I denied God and actually doubted His literal existence.


Bad move.

That rocked my world so much that I admitted myself into the psychiatric unit of the local hospital. I was 12 years into working my way back from that devastation when my wife who is not my wife handed me this one. I still had not recovered fully from the tumult and upheaval denying God had caused my inner world. I was changed in a profound and unfriendly way from the loss of that reality back in 2005.

Ironically, this new devastation got me right with God real quick and He and I have never been better. That’s why I believe this was all according to His plan for me.

Because He’s a healer.

And because He’s a healer I know there will come a day when I will be healed. Even a day when I will rejoice at what I now see only as devastation. And in that day I will have a pure heart of gold.

But for now all I see is fool’s gold. And I am the fool.

I never knew foolishness could hurt so bad.

A Walk Around the Temple

I went for a walk today on the temple grounds. I was led to the flowers. Father wanted me to see the perfection of the flowers, yet how they were mottled and imperfect because of this fallen world. He said, “You are like these flowers. Except you are far more beautiful. But you are perfect like these flowers, and mottled, too.“

I expressed my sadness and being so weak and having to carry this mortal frame within the walls of the temple. I expressed dismay because of my weakness and not feeling as close to him as I would like. He expressed to me that I have endured much. That I have been through it and am doing far better than I realize.

I expressed sadness and sorrow that I am so easily overwhelmed by the cares of the world and by all the things I must do every day that are just a part of my activities and chores that I must accomplish. And how they overwhelm me and cause my focus to be taken off Him.

He reassured me that He is still the only way. He has overcome everything. He reminded me to look to the past year and all that I have overcome through Him. And that if I continue to look to him in every thought, I will find joy and feel of His love.

It was then that he said to me, "let me show you something," and that was when he led me to the beautiful array of flowers and gave me a glimpse of myself.

I laid out to him my grief, sorrow, and sadness during my short stroll around the temple. He gave me encouragement, love, good cheer and a mirror for me to look into and reflect back at me a glimpse of the perfection he sees in me.