This is Post 2 for today, be sure to head back one post to The Death of Little Girl Dreams.
I want to share an old folktale with you, which illustrates God’s view of our brokenness…….
A water bearer had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it, while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water.
At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water to his house.
Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.
After two years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream. “I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize to you. I have been able to deliver only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house. Because of my flaws, you have to do all of this work, and you don’t get full value from your efforts,” the pot said.
The bearer said to the pot, “Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side? That’s because I have always known about your flaw, and I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you’ve watered them. “For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.”
Moral of the story: We’re all cracked pots, but nothing goes to waste in God’s great economy. He uses our flaws for HIS glory. So don’t be afraid of your flaws, for there is beauty to be found in your weakness.
Forgiving Dale took all the poison out and I am left with a soft, yet still broken heart. But I know,A True Love Story Never Ends……..
{I got this for our bedroom so I can see it every morning when I wake up.}
But that’s just it, I feel as if our love story did end. My ideas and dreams were dashed back in July.
When I was 17, I handed God the pen and asked Him to write me a beautiful love story, and honestly? I feel as if I can’t trust the Lord with my pen anymore…..
He let me down.
No, actually Dale let me down, but it all feels connected somehow.
I am so so so disappointed that this happened. I am so so so sad that my love story has such an ugly part in it. I am so so so sad that THIS is my happily ever after. I am. I can’t lie. I am disappointed because I have dreamt of this my whole life. I am disappointed because my heart is still broken. I am disappointed because my very best friend, the person I am one with, is the one who broke it, who hurt me so deeply. I am disappointed that sin has such hold on our men.
As I work through these thoughts, these days where I put walls up to protect my heart, I hurt Dale. He longs for my heart, begs me with sad eyes to trust him again, love him fully again, lavish him with my love, including the old days of sparkly eyed smiles and leaping into his arms at the end of a work day.
I can achieve that some days, even weeks at a time, but like the layers of the onion, we reach the next layer and the next hard day, and I hide. Hide behind my wall again….
He can’t hurt me again, I won’t let him.
Jesus is working on this with me. Gently reminding me to love fully, gently reminding me that….
Love is patient. Love keeps no record of wrong. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
(Parts of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8)
Yes, Jesus. I hear you.
Love is a choice and it represents a commitment. I said “I Do” and I meant it…..from now until the day I draw my last breath.
I choose Dale.
I choose us.
I die to the dreams of little girl Tonya, and wait patiently for the Lord to breathe new life back into me.
Deuteronomy 31:8 says:
“And the LORD, He is the One who goes before you. He will be with you, He will not leave you nor forsake you; do not fear nor be dismayed.”
One of the hardest parts of my journey of late, is the death of my little girl dreams.
My whole life I’ve dreamed of what my life would be like, the kind of wife and mother I wanted to be, the way I’d keep my house, what I’d name my kids, how I wanted to raise them, how I’d greet my husband after a long day at work….with a kiss, hug and smile. How safe and protected I would feel in his embrace, the comfort of knowing it would always be the two of us as one, us against the World.
But now, we have this…this ugly that threatens daily, to destroy us.
This ugly that whispers horrible words and plants seeds of doubt in my ear. A battle I CONSTANTLY wage with my thoughts as I shout at the devil to LEAVE ME in the name of Jesus! The fears that threaten to drown me. The insecurities that could drive me mad with worry.
I look around me and see this beautiful dream, lying there shattered in pieces. I am in a pit. I am broken. I am so so weary of these months of working moment by moment to keep my thoughts on what is good, these months of fighting for my marriage, these months of the Refiners Fire as Jesus wants to make me whole again, this cracked vessel needing to be filled and fired, filled and fired over and over again until it is whole.
Yet, sometimes it feels as if I shall never be whole again. How could I? How could I ever trust again? Love with abandon again?
Forgiving Dale was a huge HUGE step in this journey, it took the rage right out of me, the hatred leaving and the door closed forever. And, whatever door God closes, cannot be re opened. (From Revelation 3:8) But what remains, is hurt. Not the gasping, can’t breath hurt of months past, just the dull aching kind that you can forget about when things are going great, but feel it anytime it is quiet and you aren’t being distracted from it.
I have been crying out to God to show me where I am in my journey, for I am losing hope. I am so so weary of fighting, I feel as if I want to lie down by the side of the road and quit. We seem to have stopped our great leaps of improvement, since huge pieces of healing have already been accomplished in counseling, huge hurdles have been overcome in our lives….now, we fight to survive the onslaught on us, some days, just barely keeping our heads above water. Clinging to each other as life RACES by, not giving us a chance to catch our breath.
Demands of regular life as husband, provider, mommy, blogger, photographer keep marching on, threatening to trample us at times.
I am glad we are such a threat to the devil, it means we are doing something good and right and we have him running scared. Take that, satan! Oh how I hate you and your stupid schemes to rob and destroy. Your sneaky tactics of complacency, acceptance and denial. You won’t win this one, the battle has already been won, VICTORY IS ALREADY OURS!!!!!!!!!!
The Lord has been speaking to Dale and I about Joseph this week, 2 times on Christian radio during Dales work day, a whole series on Joseph and Lessons from the Pit at church and then of all things, our counselor bring it up this week during our session.
When God repeats Himself, we tend to perk up and listen a bit more closely!!!
Here is what He is showing us:
“Being Dysfunctional does NOT disqualify you from Gods plans for your life. Neither does a stupid decision.”
God still wants to use me, but He needs me to seek Him with my whole heart.
Joseph made MANY mistakes, but he was still called one of the Wisest men in scripture.
“Our dumb-ness, displays HIS High-ness….”
“God can lift us up from the pit and be proud of us, because He loves us and has a plan for our lives.”
Then the Lord showed me this and I knew it was the answer to my hearts cry of “Where are we in our journey?” I am in a season of Mourning.
Mourning the Death of Little Girl Dreams.
Check this out…..
“The Death of A Vision” by Bill Gothard
Three Basic Aspects of the Ways of God
1) Birth of a Vision: Each one of us has special purposes for being here. God wants to reveal them to us. This is often the dreams of our youth or things we felt spoken to us during an altar call or prayer time.
2) Death of a Vision: When things don’t seem to be going as we had planned. When all seems lost or hopeless, but don’t give up. The expectations God gives are powerful motivations to continue during times of discouragement. Sometimes we just see a mess of strings in the beautiful tapestry of our lives that He is weaving. Sometimes it is not our privilege to ever see the “big picture”. This may be hard to understand, but that is why we have FAITH.
3) Supernatural Fulfillment of the Original Vision: He fulfills our expectations in ways that we NEVER would have thought! And in BETTER ways than we ever thought possible! Praise His Name!
Watch this, as it happens over and over in scripture….
Abraham had a vision of being the father of a great nation. But how could he? His wife, Sarah, was barren. After years and years of trying and not succeeding, they became too old to have children. In FACT, somewhere along the journey, they decided God needed their help to make this “Father of a great nation thing” happen, and he got his servant Haggar pregnant. What a dumb move!
Did this ruin what God had planned for him? No. God gave Abraham and Sarah a son in their old age, and YES he did become the Father of a great nation after all!
Let’s talk about Joseph again, he had a vision that he would be a great leader and that many would bow down to him. This kind of talk, added in with his father’s favoritism of him, lead his brothers to hate him and plot his murder. (Dysfunctional anyone?)
In fact, they beat him up, took his beautiful coat (a gift from their father) and threw him in a pit while they decided what to do with him. The sat down to lunch like nothing was wrong, and decided they should just sell him into slavery and cover his coat in blood so that father would think he had been eaten by wild animals.
As Joseph, tired and sore, from most likely being beaten by his own brothers, was led away into captivity, sold as a slave, don’t you think he doubted his Vision from the Lord?
Don’t you think later, as he was thrown in prison after Potifer’s wife lied and said he attacked her, that he cried out to God wondering where he was in all this mess?! How in the world could he be the leader of a great nation from this dark, damp prison cell? Where was God as he rotted away in jail for years? I bet things felt more than hopeless. Then, God allowed Joseph to interpret the dreams of the butler and baker. {Who promptly forgot about him as soon as they were freed. Ugh! How frustrating that must have been!} But wait, one day the king needs a dream interpreted and Joseph is just the man for the job. Not only is he freed from prison, but his dreams are fulfilled, and he goes on to RULE the land. But WAIT, there is more! The VERY brothers who hurt him and sold him into slavery end up BOWING to him as King, when they come to beg for food during famine.
The Original vision is fulfilled, Supernaturally, by the hand of God.
So, what am I to learn from all this?
That my “dark place” is not a stagnant one. I am not losing a battle by lying here in this pit. I am lying in the arms of Jesus as He strengthens me for the journey to come, and one day…praise His name, my original visions of Happily Ever After will be returned to me, better than I ever thought possible. My job now is to have Patience in waiting on God’s timing, to have Faith, in knowing what He will do, and Self-control in not running ahead of the Lord to “fix” this, but to just trust in His perfect plan for me.
I am already catching glimpses of what is to come, as I have never been treated better by Dale, I have never been loved so freely by him, I have never felt more cherished. For He who is forgiven much, loves much….{Taken from Luke 7}
Funny, I thought we were so good before, so full of love for each other, having NO idea just how wonderful things COULD be once we were made new.
Satan is putting in over time right now. He seeks to destroy God’s work and wants to deceive us, prompting us to try in our own energy and wisdom to “fix this”. To work on our own strength to get back our “happily ever after” in a quick manner. He sends spirits of darkness, to make us feel hopeless. But we are never without hope, it is a gift of God and He NEVER removes His gifts from us. We are never HOPELESS in Christ. Never. There is always hope and a future. My Lord and Savior NEVER wastes a hurt. He doesn’t. He just loves us too much to keep us as we are.
And like a grain of wheat must die into the ground before a Harvest can spring up the next season, I am in a constant process of dying to self. Dying to MY plans, MY hopes, MY little girl dreams, MY thoughts on what should or should not have occurred, so that everything can be made new.
~T
“The Reedemer” by Sanctus Real
“I don’t have every answer in life ButI’m trusting You one day at a time
Cuz You can make a weak heart stay alive
Forever
And this is where heaven and earth collide
I lift my hands, I give my life
This is how my weary heart stays alive
Oh, I’m still a dreamer
Still a believer
And You are the answer
The Redeemer
Cuz You can make anything new
Yeah, You can make anything new”
4 little Fergusons 