Week 6 Day 6 Moving Forward

It feels like this week has sped past me. Where last week I could at least search for and identify areas of wasted time, I can say truly that this week I can't see where the time was wasted. I've not napped, played on the game machine nor sat for hours at the computer screen. As a matter of fact, three days this week I had less than 30 minutes of computer time.

Yet, I cannot look at my home, my yard or myself and say, "Oh that took my time." None of that either. It's gone. I can't reclaim it, don't want to begin yet again. So I've decided to just move on.

A few months ago I had this deeply introspective time. I'm not sure why. Perhaps wrestling with the unforgiveness in my heart led me to look backward, because we do have to do that in order to loosen the tentacles that tie us to our pasts. But aside from soul searching, I kept wanting to return to scenes of my past, places where I was so deeply in pain. That part wasn't the best idea. I'd gone beyond looking back to trying to dwell in the past. The realization came one Sunday as I sped towards a little country church...

Let me start at the beginning of this story so you can understand it all.

I grew up in a tiny country church, one that my great great great grandparents attended, and the building I went to church in was built by my great grandfather, pews and all, after the original building burned down. When I walked in the graveyard, I walked among my relative's graves. That church was as much a part of me and my life as my brunette hair and hazel eyes, as much as this property I live on now. It firmly anchored me to the past generations just like my hair and eye color did.

As an adult, I began to seek God. And in seeking God, I tired of the every other Sunday meeting times and went to another church, a little country church, nondenominational and plain, on the opposing Sundays. I liked it because it was simple, straightforward, and reminded me most of my home church. Then I bumped hard against 'religion' right in the middle of what had become a spiritual walk.

My eldest daughter wanted to be baptized. But neither church would just baptise her and be done with. No, she had to become a member of one or the other as well, because God knows you can't be baptized and not believe in the 'religion' and just declare that you are a Christian. So began the wrangling back and forth. I left the decision up to my daughter who was old enough to know where her heart lay, though I personally disliked the determination of the churches to 'own' that soul.

During the decision making time, my home church pastor sort of settled it all up rather neatly. Angered that DD1 was unable to determine to which religion she would choose to belong (notice I don't say church) he called me in to a special meeting and ultimately told me to leave that church and never darken the doors of it again! I was devastated. I'd attended church there since I was six weeks old. I loved every inch of the place, every pastor who spoke there. I was unable to see the heinous crime I'd committed in going to another church. And having just begun a spiritual walk, it was a hard and nearly fatal blow to my spirit.

So off we went to the nondenominational place and DD1 was baptized and "belonged" to that church. I gradually grew to love the non denom church and pastors, but I struggled hard with the spiritual side of my life, falling away and lapsing and then returning. I was seeking and struggling and not sure what was going on in my own self all that time. The pastors were incredibly tolerant of my on/off relationship with God. Often in the services I wept openly throughout the whole of the service, tears running down my face. The experiences I had were draining. And yet,despite questions to the pastors, there wasn't a single person to give me answers as to what was going on within me at the time, nor anyone willing to take the time to explain to me why I struggled so hard.

During all this struggle and attempt at being spiritually born (because I see now that I was in a labor of spiritual birth), I realized that my marriage was never going to be a good marriage. It was frighteningly dead, and nothing I did, good or bad, jolted it from death. I knew the kind of marriage I wanted, but no matter how hard you work at it, one person can't make a marriage happen. It takes two and frankly my ex couldn't have cared less. He'd gotten married, had children, and that was that. He'd done his part. He felt it ended right there.

So eventually the struggles all became too much. I'd wrestled with depression for years, was often physically ill, and the strain on my body and soul finally reached the breaking point. I got deeply ill, so ill the doctor threatened hospitalization. It was only his knowledge of the lack of care my children would have that made him tell me to go home, get in bed and stay there. It was during this time of illness that I lay and prayed and prayed, harder than I've ever prayed in my life, and something happened that began the journey to change forever. It was a personal spiritual turning point in my life.

What transpired after that moment was incredible. My ex, who had been out all evening, came home and picked up a letter he'd put aside and failed to read. He'd just been drafted once more for training in the Gulf War. He had to leave home within 24 hours. He was in training for 8 weeks during which time, the war ended. In all the time he was gone, I felt the most incredible peace. My mind cleared, I physically healed, and while the strain of struggling alone financially was tough (and at this time I won't even go into the difficulties that entailed or what I faced), I realized that I could make a life on my own. So when my husband returned I asked for a separation.

In steps the 'tolerant' church who paid no attention to my spiritual struggles and I was told in no uncertain terms that I needed to 'repent' and return to my marriage. Another hard bump against religion. The assumption by the pastors was that I'd simply woken and decided on a whim to divorce. There was no attempt to counsel me, no questioning to determine how they might help, simply a demand to return to my marriage post haste or 'go to hell'. In the meantime, my soon to be ex determined that the pastors were on his side and immediately joined the church he'd seldom bothered to visit. Two weeks later, while still separated, I had a car accident. For the next twelve months as I struggled through healing and physical rehab and began trying to rebuild my life from scratch, all without a single communication from the church.
It was a horrible time in my life. But it was a definitive time as well. What followed over the next two years ultimately led me to my dear dear husband and a marriage that is, even in our worst moments, a hundred times better than I dreamed a marriage could be. And during that horrible time, I came closer to understanding and knowing God than I ever had before in my life, so that I was primed and ready for the ultimate salvation of Jesus Christ in my life. Just a bit over a year after meeting my future husband, I gave my life to Christ and began the most awesome spiritual journey.

As time played out I did go back to that little country church to visit once or twice, and even back to the church I was told to leave, though it was on the very verge of closing their doors forever, having been without a pastor, or an interested replacement for years. But it was a great many years before I actively began to attend church once more. I was convinced from my two past painful experiences that God wasn't in a church!

So now we're back to the start of the story, where I'm rushing down back roads trying to get to the little country church, the very church where I'd experienced my second hard wallop from 'religion'. And as I drove I became increasingly anxious and angry and upset. So that by the time I arrived I was so tightly wound I was in a nervous state. But as things happen, this particular morning, I'd unwittingly arrived at the old service time, which had changed. As I read the signage out front I realized that I'd come just in time for the end of the service. So I drove on down the country road and went off to my husband's work place where I knew he'd be watching a televised service if he wasn't out on a call.

He was in and we watched an excellent sermon in a back room of his work building, just the two of us, holding hands and nodding in agreement with the pastor in his sermon. After the service we briefly discussed my morning outing and the impossibility of walking into a service five minutes before it was over. When my husband asked why I'd wanted to attend, I struggled for several minutes unable to answer. What welled up instead were a lot of 'feelings'. I'd long since forgiven the pastors and had even made contributions to some of the special programs and building projects they'd had over the years. It hadn't even been a real desire to visit, but a compulsion to go there that really had been at the root of the attempted visitation.

After I left my husband that morning, I thought about driving back around to the old neighborhood where I'd lived with my ex. Then I realized that what I'd been attempting to do. I'd been trying to go back to the past, to walk in new shoes on the old stones, and I realized that it was silliness. I'd already tested and found myself free of the pain of the past. I'd questioned and sought out areas of unforgiveness and found healing. I didn't need to look at where I'd been. I needed to look ahead to see where I was going. I was moving forward.

Unlike this particular 70 week challenge, in which I chose to reclaim and re-do an entire month, I couldn't do that with my physical past. What I could do was look about me at my life and experience anew the current contentment, happiness and peace and realize once again how incredible the changes in my life had been since those painful days behind me.

I think we all reach a point in our lives where we realize that change is ahead of us. It's scary. The future is unknown. We try to avoid it, so we cling to the present, we try to pull the past up over us like a blanket and shelter there. For me that blanket was full of filth and holes. It wasn't comforting. I'm going to move forward, 'in newness of life' as the Bible puts it, walking in faith the whole way. It's the only way to arrive.