Bitterness

This is another great opportunity to share what someone else has figured out so successfully.  You could really apply this to just about any relationship.

Marriage.
Friendship.
Neighbors.
Co-workers.

When someone has gotten to the point where everything they do annoys, irritates or frustrates you... if you no longer can see them in a good light, as a good willed person... it's time to examine the bitterness you have allowed to grow in your heart.  And be honest about the hurt it has caused.

CLICK HERE TO OPEN THE LINK:  I ALLOWED BITTERNESS TO GROW IN MY HEART
http://husbandrevolution.com/i-allowed-bitterness-to-grow-in-my-heart-and-it-hurt-my-wife/

Confirmation

Have you ever been waiting in anticipation for a package to arrive?

You check the shipping confirmation and you read those words "in transit". Wondering, what does that mean?  Did it actually leave their hands?  Is it in transit to the sorting facility?  Is it on it's way to me?

You really don't know for sure, and you keep checking.  You are waiting for the words "Out for delivery".   But, we don't always get that confirmation.  It depends on what service the package was shipped with.   So, sometimes... we just have to wait in anticipation.

This is exactly what it is like waiting for an apology.

We set the ball in motion.  We understand that it can take time.  But we find ways to keep checking in on it.  Perhaps we check their facebook page or their blog, to see if they are wrestling at all with how to handle things.  Or, maybe we are just wanting to keep tabs on what is going on in the interim with them or their family.

We wait.

Checking in, looking for that confirmation that the apology is on the way.

Recently, I found myself in this position.  I really thought I was reading all the signs correctly that my apology was "in transit".

You see, I had apologized.  I had recognized the areas where I failed the person.  I also called attention to some misinformation and assumptions.  I did my best to explain myself over and over again.  I realized it was time to wait, to allow the person to take the time they needed to evaluate the situation.

The ball began rolling, I noticed little things here and there.  And I thought surely the apology from them would be on the way.

I also knew that there was no way our friendship could be restored with out that person being accountable for their part in the dissolution.  I actually sought counseling within my church over the situation, I was brutally honest with them and myself.  If I was wrong, I needed to hear it.  And, I was wrong in some areas.  I was not the best friend I could have been.  I was being the friend I would have wanted, and not the friend they needed.  I recognized it.  I apologized.

The ball had left my court.  I needed to be patient.

It happened today.  The confirmation that I needed.

There was no apology on the way.  The person still saw me with the tainted vision that ended the friendship.  Their opinion of me had changed in no way.  Which also meant they were still seeing themselves as a victim & not willing to take ownership or be accountable.

I got the confirmation that my package was "lost".

I'm not sure what happened.  I don't know if I misread the signs.  Or, if something derailed it. But I have to accept that the apology is not coming.  The friendship is completely dissolved. It would take an act of God to restore it.

That last glimmer of a human chance, it has passed.

And, I am totally at peace with it.

When a relationship is facing the end... marriage... friendship... and familial... I feel we have to ask ourselves one question:

Did I do everything I could to save it?

If you can answer YES, you walk away with a peace that is beyond explanation.
If you don't feel peace, then you know the truth.  You didn't do everything possible.
If you constantly need to justify your leaving.  You didn't do everything possible.
If you regularly have to convince yourself that you were right.  You didn't do everything possible.

I have approached her privately.
I have approached her publicly.
I went directly to her husband, when she wouldn't listen or misunderstood me.
I went to her mother, for advice on how to speak to her.  Thinking this woman would know her better than anyone else.
I wrote emails, texts, letters, etc.
I explained myself.
I admitted my mistakes.
I apologized.
I reached out for reconciliation.
I recognized the impending doom of our friendship, if tensions went ignored.
I sought counsel from my mentor and church.

I sought the counsel of my husband.

What more can one do?

Just pray.  I pray for her.  Because, in my heart... I still love that family. But until their can be accountability on both sides, reconciliation is stalled.

The more I pray, the more my heart softens toward her.  It may not change her, but my prayers change the way I feel about her.  And, in fact, today I realized for the first time... I haven't given up hope for reconciliation.  In God's time.  Not my own.

So I keep praying.

Blind sided by our Children

There is a person in my life who is entirely blind sided by her children.   She has a very open relationship with her kids, they can talk about anything.  This is great.  But they also have a very protective relationship over their children, with a lot of expectations of them.  It particularly evident in their restrictions upon dating.

We are little more open to "dating" than they are.

One of the things that has begun to happen is that their eldest daughter is finding ways to get around their rules and restrictions.  One of these methods to help her stay under the radar is by throwing my daughter under the bus.

You see, she knows all the right "Christian" things to say to her parents to get their trust and respect.  She talks about not wanting to date.  She even points her finger at my daughter and says that she doesn't want to be "boy crazy" like her.  (Mind you, my daughter is hardly boy crazy).  Her parents believe her.  And so they trust her.

It happened not that long ago that their daughter invited herself to a sleepover at our house.  The girls plans were to go to the mall the next day and "window shop".  Then my daughter suddenly canceled the plans.  This was very out of character for her.    When I was finally able to get the reason from her, I found out that her friend was using us.  She was the one who really wanted to go to the mall, and she was planning to "accidentally" run into a boy there.  A boy she really likes.

The same boy she has been selling to her parents as a "nice guy, but not my type".

Several months later, I found a few note books in the trash.  I was checking them to see if they were full or if there was any paper still left.  This is pretty common from school.  They will have a notebook or composition book and only use about 1/3 of it.  We tear out the pages and the kids use it around the house for journals, sketching, etc.

It happened that one of them my daughter had started to use as a journal. I couldn't help it, I read it.

In it she was lamenting about how her friend's mom sees her as some sort of boy crazy "slut" but in fact her friend has had more "boyfriends" and had "done more things with boys" than she had.  She went on about the cancelled sleepover & how she didn't want to be involved in deceiving her friends mom.  She didn't want to be blamed as a bad influence.  She didn't her friend using her.  She didn't want to potentially hurt the relationship between this mom and I, by putting me in this position.

I was really proud of my daughter, she recognized these things & made the right decision to protect herself and her family.  I was really sad for this girl, because I know where lies and deception can get you.  And I was hurt that my daughter recognized this woman as someone who looked down on us, all while calling us friends.  She knew her friend's mom saw her in an unflattering light.

Ladies, parents... lets be very real.  Our children know us.  They know what to say, what we want to hear.  If we don't keep at least a small dose of skepticism in our trust of them.... we are going to be blindsided. 

Are you fighting for victory…or resting Victoriously?

Sometimes, someone else just says it 100 times better than I can...

This is a great article written by Brandon Chase - I highly suggest that you read it.  But before you click on the link, Please PRAY...

Pray that the Lord will speak to your heart when you are done reading it, to reveal to you if you are truly resting victoriously or fighting for victory.  And which one is God really wanting from us.

http://brandonchase.net/2013/07/31/are-you-fighting-for-victory-or-resting-victoriously/

My job, my mission.

When I was in high school, it was so very clear to me what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.  I wanted to be an actress.  Not a just a famous actress, but a respected actress.  Think less Lindsay Lohan and more Meryl Streep.

God had different plans for me.

But, I can't lie that bend towards doing or being something great in my life has never gone away.

When I started down the line of Drama Ministry, I thought I could end up well known and respected there.  When I started script writing, I thought that would be my place in the world.

When I started serving in Women's Ministry, I thought I'd become a speaker.... and that would take me down the road to writing a book, and perhaps one day when you bought your tickets for Women of Faith ... you'd be coming to see me.

Again, this was never from a place of just being successful, but respected.

Which is something that gets me on another tangent.  So many of the texts for husbands and wives talk about him wanting respect, while she wants love.  And while yes, I do want love... I really want my husband's respect.  But that, my friends, is a topic for another day.

I am a woman who wants to be respected.  I thought that respect would come from doing something great.  And it did, but not in the way I imagined.

It came in the form of a baby, swaddled and handed to me.  A life that I would have a chance to mold into a person better than I have ever been.   Not realizing it would be she that would make me a better person.  That this little bundle would reconcile me with my Savior, in a way greater than ever before.

When she was just about to hit school age, I thought to myself "now is the time" and I called up my agent and said I was ready to work again.  Less than a year later, God said WAIT.  Another swaddling bundle would enter my world.  This time not only did I once again have a great mission in impacting this child, but it would be that as a result of her conception, my life would be saved.  It would draw attention to the cells trying to attack my body & we would be able to catch it before it became a vicious cancer.  When she was about to hit school age, I thought again.... NOW is the time.

But God would once again say WAIT.  A third precious bundle would come into my world and bring with it peace.   One daughter brought me to God on my knees.  One daughter saved my life from disease.  One daughter would fill my life with peace.  I was amongst the least of these, and they were the ones making ME a better person, a better Christian.

As this third precious child was about to enter her school years.... I had a thought.  NOW is NOT the time.  My last bundle was walking into the world and my oldest child was entering the last 4 years of her adolescence.    Now is not the time for me to do anything but focus on the mission that God set before me.  My mission is motherhood.  The greatest mission ever.  The greatest impact I can make on the world, is by pouring myself into them, and pointing them to the cross.

A Christian without a Mentor is Limited

Early in my walk, as a Christian, I really didn't have a mentor.  I did have a few people in my life I could ask questions of... and they didn't look at me as a fool.  They understood that I was growing.  But, I didn't have anyone who took me under their wing and helped guide me on my walk.


Now, much later in my walk, I have several mentors in my life.  I recently was meeting with one of them.  We were talking about the book of Revelation and the churches listed in Chapters 2 & 3. We were discussing how these different churches mirrored our current world..... the attitudes not just of countries but even of our churches today.

The church in Ephesus had the head knowledge but not the heart knowledge.  They kept up the beliefs, the traditions, etc...without understanding why.  It was empty.  They were on auto pilot.  Serving Jesus without loving Jesus.

It was then my friend, and mentor, mentioned how important it was that we have mentors in our walk from very early on.  Without a mentor we can allow ourselves to get caught up in the rules, the deeds, the work of our faith without actually having real faith.  We know all the things we should do and shouldn't do, but yet we don't really understand the why and more importantly the WHO behind it.

As we continue to grow in our knowledge, without a mentor to guide us, we can end up just like the church of Ephesus.  We will have the head knowledge without the heart knowledge.  And then eventually we become like the pharisees.  We stand firm and strong in our righteous knowledge, without loving the least of these.... the poor in spirit, the broken, the lost.

Mentors help us to see the bigger picture.  They help us to learn from their wisdom and experience that our impact on others has to start from a place of love.  Loving them in spite of their faults, not excusing them.  But understanding that we have to start from a place of love and not condemnation.

When you first love a person, taking the time to get to know them and understand them, you build your credibility with them. They learn to trust you.  Trusting that you really care for them and this isn't just your attempt to add another success story to your book of people's lives that you have changed.

In your attempts to share the Gospel, a mentor reminds you that it is not your job to change them.  But to love them.  The Holy Spirit will change them.  Your greatest testimony comes from your example.  We have all know of people who were considered "great" and looked up to, and the moment the truth of their depravity came out... it contradicted all the good they had done.

A mentor tells you to focus more on making yourself better, your walk better, your testimony better than trying to change others.  In fact, dear one, YOU are not as big of a part of their testimony as you think.  In fact, you are quite insignificant to the transformation that Christ does in them. 

My mentor told me that she can tell relatively quickly when someone has been mentored or not.  You can see it in their attitude towards others.

If you don't have a mentor, maybe it is time to find one.  In fact, you may need more than one.

Wondering how to find a mentor?

1) Pray.  Pray that God will reveal the person to you.
2) Let Go.  Let go of all the preconceptions of what a mentor should be.  Do not base it on age, years as a Christian, family size.  I remember once a woman in the church came to me for advice on marriage.  She was much older than I was, and I was caught off guard.  I found out as we talked, that she had only been married a few years.  While I was significantly younger than her, I had 10+ more years of marriage experience than she.
3) Be Open.  Be open to having just one mentor, or more.  God will bring those whom you need, don't turn away wisdom because you "already have one".
4) Talk to your Pastor or his wife.  If you need mentorship in a specific area, they may know just the right person for you.
5) Don't Give Up.  You may try out a mentor relationship & it just isn't working.  That is ok, you can change mentors. But make sure you are changing them because it's not the right fit... and not because they are saying things you don't want to hear. 

Eyes Wide Open - Realizing the Truth

For quite sometime I have been lamenting over a friendship that had fallen apart.  I understood what brought our friendship to an end.  I accepted that even if we could become friends again it would never be the same.  And, to be honest, I really wasn't holding out any hope that our friendship would be repaired.  Sometimes, things are just over and it is time to move on.

However, this was proving to be harder that I expected.  The reality of the situation was this wasn't just my friendship that ended.

Our husbands were friends.
Our children were friends.
In fact, we were really more like family.

So, despite my head knowledge of an ended friendship... my heart still longed for that family that was missing from our lives.

It's been about 5 months now.  Our oldest daughters are occasionally in touch.  Husbands too.

I asked my husband a few nights back if he had spoken with her husband recently.  He said that it had been a few days and commented about their inability to spend any time together.  What ended up happening was an hour long conversation about not the situation but the family I was missing so much.  Not about all the details of what went wrong, or how it could be repaired... but just about the family.

What I realized....

I missed her husband.  Truth was, I probably had more in common with him than her.

I missed her kids.  I loved their kids, like my own.  I missed not knowing what was going on in their lives.

I even missed their pets!  

I realized that in the years I have known that family, I have watched friends come and go... we aren't the first & won't be the last.

I realized that when we would be over there with other families... often their wives were not there.  It would be the husbands with the kids.

I realized that on those occasions when there were other women around, their husbands were not there.  It was then my husband stated that as long as we have been friends, he never felt her husband was as vested in the friendship as he was.  And that, he believed that her husband kept a distance with all their friends because he never knew when they were going to leave.

She drives people out of her life.

She also suffers from depression and low self esteem.

I didn't recognize it, but she does what a lot of people who suffer from serious depression do.  They distance themselves from people.  Not just by pulling themselves away, but by even going so far as to push those who are closest to them away.  That creates even more distance.

I had seen this behavior in others before, but I suppose I was too close to recognize it in my own "best friend".

But what does this mean?

The conversation helped me realize that I wasn't as close to her as I thought.  If we were really that close of friends, I would have recognized it.

It helped me realize that what I was really missing was the family, not her specifically.  But she was part of the package deal.

It also helped me realize that despite our friendship being over, she is a woman who needs to be prayed for.