Something's Changing

It is after 2am here in Rochester...I have been trying to fall asleep for an hour. I have a million thoughts running through my head. I have had a lot of conversations today with my brother in law that have changed me...again. I like to be changed, it's freeing to know we live that life. The good life. There is a song we sing in church. "Heaven on Earth" I love this song because it says: something's moving, something's changing, see his glory feels like heaven on earth. When you're moving and changing then you are living. Completely living. Being alive is the greatest miracle for me. I am alive to love with my arms wide open. The biggest thing is loving yourself. As I am sure I have posted in my other blogs you CANNOT and WILL NOT be able to truly love anyone else until you can love yourself. I firmly believe that and yet I fall short of that every single day. I put up protective walls around myself and just as quickly as I tear them down another one is in the process of rising. I do this out of self preservation. Like everyone in this world I have been hurt and broken by decisions that not only I but other people have made. Right before my sister left for Alaska we had a pretty revealing conversation and it made me realize that we build these walls up from a very young age. As children we have a self protecting nature. Our brains can blot out the most traumatic memories. Children in horrible situations tend to forget, at least for a time, a lot of what has happened to them. I have never studied this and I have limited knowledge in this kind of thing but I do have some personal experience. I have also heard of others people's similar situations. From a young age we learn to shut out what hurts us and forget the fear or the pain. Sonetimes the memories come back when we are older and we are left to deal with it when our brains and emotions have matured. This is the way we work, humans at their best! This is a great and horrible thing. I do not want walls built so high up that no one can get in. I want nothing standing in the way of me loving myself and everyone else. I am changing, I am learning to embrace the fact that people will disappoint you and hurt you but that they can forever be changed by your pure love for them. I am also learning that I love myself and I respect myself. I have had this attitude of "it would take a lot for some man to walk into my life and love me for all that I am and all of my scars". I would say that because it was what I thought and it was a wall of words. It was like oh if I say that ahead of time no one will be surprised and whoever decides to try and love me will be forewarned. What a line! What an attitude to have! The very idea of what I was saying, maybe to protect myself, was such a lie. Love is love...there are no levels of love. If someone loves me then they love me for all that I am. Love makes you a better person when you give it and when you receive it. I am changing...my attitude about myself is changing. I don't want to stunt someone else's growth by saying I love them and not being able to give myself completely away. I don't want to stunt my own growth by not believing the same truths about me. If I can believe it for you then I can believe it for me and vise versa. This life we live, what an amazing gift and this love we have, what an amazing power. The greatest power God has given us♥ I am so in love with the changing and the moving forward. I am so in love with the slight to severe discomfort that I get in the changing process because it means I am alive. I love to love because it means I am not just living but I am living in all the power in heaven and earth. With all of that power there is no limit to God can do.

The Most Harmful Words

I was talking to a friend recently and something about the whole conversation caught my attention. We were discussing how people have said negative things to her that have made her feel like less of a person and so I started to tell her what I thought about her and what I know about her and as I was trying to build her up and fix the damage that negative words had done I began to think about my own life. I have insecurities and fears and though some of them may be from years ago I feel like many of them have stemmed from my impending divorce and the thought of losing someone I loved more than anyone. Unlike my friend who has had negative things screamed at her, I was not in a relationship like that. For all the things he has done wrong my husband was not verbally negative towards me. He did not call me names, at least to my face and he did not say that he hated me. He did not tell me I was ugly or fat. Like most marriages things were said on both of our parts either in jest or in a moment of anger that were negative. I mean sure these things could have been life altering, your words usually are and I have many, many things that I said to him that I wish I would never have said. You can spend years building someone up and showing them how wonderful they really are and in just a minute you can tear all of that down. I am ashamed to admit that as much as I tried to make him feel wonderful I did a lot of tearing down as well. I probably did more than he did because I am somewhat quick when it comes to my temper and I can spew out the most unkind things in seconds. To his credit he was better at walking away. Still, from the time I knew he was leaving I became so fearful and unsure of myself. The thought came to me that it was not the words he did say to me, it was the words he left unspoken. I know words have the power to tear down or build up but even if you are not tearing someone down, what happens if you never build them up? If you never build someone up then they are left to their own imagination and we all know imaginations can suck! I think that most harmful words are the ones unspoken the ones that you should say and you never do. I get the whole "if you cant say anything nice then don't say anything at all" but seriously, lets look at this from a different angle. If someone is not saying something nice to you and just being silent then you are left to assume that they want to say something mean...duh instant insecurities. Do you mean to tell me that there is not one nice thing you could have said. How many times have you looked at someone and thought the most horrible things and then regretted it because even though you didn't say them you know what you thought about them and in the moment you really felt that but then you feel bad cause you know its not the truth. I know people get angry and no you should not scream at them and say horrible negative things that can make them think they are worthless forever. I understand that walking away works in many situations as long as when you calm down you come back and you tell that person how wonderful they really are and you work out whatever the issue was in a calm way. You should never just walk away from someone to save them from you negativity and then just move on like nothing happened. There should always be words and communication but it should be when you are ready to look at that person and see the good that God has made them with. When you walk away and leave them on their own and never use your words to be the good in their life then you may as well not exist in their life. You need to be a positive influence in someone's life. Everything you say to them should be out of love and out of care and f it is even if it sounds harsh you can follow it up with showing them you love them and reinforcing them. You would not regret looking at someone and saying something nice...not ever. No, I do not wish that my husband had screamed horrible negative obscenities at me just so that he had used his words. That would be a horrible thing but I do wish that when he thought I looked pretty he would have told me. I do wish that when he loved me he would have told me that more often. I wish that if he realized the effort I was making to be the best wife that he would have confirmed that with words. So what that you did not insult me? I needed to hear that you appreciated me. Instead I was left to my own imagination and in my imagination I was not good enough. I mean sure I know that is not true. I know that the issued were not mine but it would have been nice to have been built up enough before the wreckage hit. I want to implement this thinking into my life. It is so easy to be negative because sometimes it is perceived as hilarious and it can be so easy to walk away, but since I know the damage that both of those things can cause I want to try and always speak but speak love and truth into people's lives. I do not ever want to leave words unspoken that can change a person for the better. 

My Life Without You

I have been trying to decide how to write this and if I want to write this post for quite some time. I have started it and erased it and started it again and every time it was too hard. Tonight as I was driving alone to get to a home where I live alone I passed the place that we used to live together. For a minute it hurt to breathe...again. This is something that happens more frequently than I care to but admit. I try to take deep breaths and there is an actual pain. I never knew till recently that expression "hurts to breathe" was so literal. For a minute I did not feel like I was ok and memories from not long ago hit me in a way that I did not expect. It's not like you have been gone for years or even that many months but I always think I am getting better and then BAM out of nowhere there is a memory or someone says something and it's a huge setback. I admit that the setbacks are taking less and less time to recover from and depending on the depth of the setback I can sometimes push it so far inside of me that it barely affects me. This is me now: if the hurt is not too bad then I can ignore it enough to keep living. If the pain is especially bad I use my survival skills to live life until I can get home and hide. So I drove by our old home and our memories and I cried a little. I hate going to a home where I live alone and where I feel like there is no purpose. I loved being your wife and having a home and a husband to care for. I miss all of the stupid things that I thought I hated. I miss doing your laundry and not being home till after ten so we could have clean clothes for work. I miss coming home and having two days of dishes to do because I was too lazy to do it over the weekend. I miss making the huge bed and picking up your dirty socks off of your side of the bed. Those things annoyed me in the moment but honestly it gave me some purpose. I came home and had something to do and someone to do it for and now I come home and Im not sure what to even do. I feel lonely alot of the time, even when I am with other people. This is my new life. My life without you. Without you I am weirdly single. I don't have you and so I am alone but I have been made a wife and I will always have that mentality. I don't think like a single girl anymore and I do not think that I will ever again. When I love again I will need a husband not a boyfriend. I am not ever going to be that cutesy girl looking for a boy. This sounds funny but its still true when I say you made me a woman and there is no going back from that. Without you I am still a woman, I am just a woman without her better half. That's another new thing in my life without you; people say that I am better off without you. They are wrong. Who is ever better off without the person they gave their life to? I know I will be ok because every time my heart breaks again and I cry all night again, I still wake up in the morning with my heart beating. You didn't kill me, you didn't permanently break me down so yeah, I will be ok. The best thing would have been you being the man I know you are. The best thing would be you realizing who you are in truth and not acting on how you feel in the moment. I would be better off with the real you but since you have decided to live in a lie, I will be ok without you. My life without you is so different and every single day is something new that I have to figure out on my own. I know how to put windshield wiper fluid in my car now. I learned how to play euchre. I have become someone that I like better because I have learned how to be a strong person and how to live my life no matter what. You no longer make me feel like I am not enough because I know that I was not the issue and that I gave you the best of me. I realize that the issue is you and who you have decided to be. It doesn't make it easier to live in general but it makes it easier to be without you. So many things are so different without you. So many things I am figuring out all on my own. I sleep alone without being afraid...most of the time. Much like when we lived together but you weren't there at night I still turn on every light in the rooms that I could possibly have to walk in to. I remember when we first got married and I thought it was so weird to sleep with someone and then after a very short time I couldn't sleep without you. I always had to feel that you were near me no matter how annoyed you got that I was on your side of the bed. It was like in my heart I was always afraid to lose you and when I would say it out loud you would tell me that you weren't going anywhere and that whether it be hunting or the fishing trip or work that took you away, you would always come back. The day you walked out and left me crying on the bed that was all I could think about because that was the one promise I needed you to keep. In my life without you I cannot go to bed unless I am ready to sleep. When we first got married we would watch shows or movies and then go to bed and even if I was not tired I liked going to bed with you, knowing you were there. Then our lives changed and you started slipping away and you would not be home alot when I was going to bed. During that time I would go to bed early just so that I could sleep away the time until you would come home. When you would come home sometimes you wouldn't even acknowledge me but I felt better knowing that you came home. When you actually left and up to now I cannot go to bed until I can sleep through the night because waking up in the dark alone is like remembering all over again that you left. It has gotten better, now that I am used to this home. Alot of things have gotten better and honestly although I miss our home together, I don't think I could have stayed there alone for long with all of our memories. Before you actually left but after you told me you wanted to I would come home everyday and look for your stuff to make sure you hadn't left yet. I lived in a constant panic that one day I would come home and all of your stuff would be gone. Every single day I checked your closet and to see if your shoes were in the hallway and every day when they were still there I would be able to breathe a little easier knowing I had one more day to try and change your mind. In my new life without you I have gotten past all of that and now I do not have to come home and search my house for your stuff. It is hard to be without you but that back then was so much harder. In my life without you, I worry but I am not home waiting alone for you to come back. I still cry so many tears for you but not like I did in the beginning. I worry for you. My heart misses you so much even though my head tells me that I am ok. I miss so many things and all of the good is what I choose to remember. When I remember the end it is bad and it makes me hurt and angry and I am constantly reminding myself that the man who did that is not the man that I married. If I can keep that straight then I can forgive all of the pain that you caused. If I can keep in mind that you didn't do this to hurt me and that I was just affected by the harm you are doing to yourself then I can keep myself where I need to be. If I can remember that who you are in truth is a perfect man and a good man then I can pray for you the way I am supposed to. My life without you is so different, not all bad just different. So tonight as I passed by our memories and my heart broke again and I cried again I just kept driving onto my new home and my new life without you. A few miles beyond the hurt and the memories I looked at my life and I checked myself. I was not bleeding or broken physically, I was not dying. I am alive and I have a long time left to be alive and so I brushed my tears away and breathed a deep breath and thanked God that unlike you, I am really ok and there are times when I am really happy. I do not have it all figured out yet but I am learning to live my life without you.