So, We Meet Again...GULP (Pt. 2)

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

Her comment hung in the air taunting me, tormenting me. She had to go there, didn't she? “If your husband is not 100% behind your efforts, you might as well go home and shut it all down. I meant it. It's not worth it.”

Her assertion was couched in the middle of other worthwhile and instructive material. The others probably heard it and moved right along with her. Again, we had one of those cone of silence moments, Rachael and I. As some Southerners might say, “Ironical, isn't it?”

They other keynote and break out speakers had all touched on the topic of faith, spouse, family, and home (in that order) coming before our blogging ventures. No big surprise. After all it was a conference by and for Christian women who both homeschooled and blogged.

While many worked from home via their income earning internet platforms, they were stay at home moms. It was almost like singing to the choir. To us, it wasn't that we were drinking the party line Koolaid or repeating a scout-like oath. It was a conviction we sacrificed to practice – faith, spouse, family and then everything else.
I slunk down in my chair and began to lick my wounds. I looked around at all the other successful women imagining their cozy marriages and thinking, “Here I am again, an imposter. I was one a year ago. I'm still one. Poser.”

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

Back in January, I had almost done exactly what she said. I lost my words. My finger hung over the blog delete button for hours every day. The only thing that stopped me was knowing the blog was a journal of my way out of darkness. What if I needed it one day after I tossed it into the big recycle bin of cyberspace. Delete meant forever.

As words failed me, so did my readership. Those stats that should not define me plummeted to zero. Nobody cared if I drifted away and never came back. Who was I kidding? Nobody cared. It wasn't worth the uphill battle I was fighting and had been fighting for most of 25 years. The blog was not the only thing I was considering deleting from my life.

By the time I got to the conference, we had reached an uneasy truce. The monster in the shadows had retreated again, but I knew he was out there, licking his chops, pacing back and forth, waiting. I wake up every day feeling his hot breath on my neck and hearing his fevered panting in my ear. He wants us. Satan wants us as one more divorce statistic, and he is using the monster that hides in the shadows of our lives to wear us down. Day in and day out. Year in and year out. It. Never. Stops. We keep fighting. We are exhausted, but he is indefatigable.

Courtesy A. Huges

Again, I wanted to jump up. Only this time I wanted to scream, “Point of order! You don't know me. Don't be getting all up in my stuff when you don't even know me!” The same geyser of tears I had fought back when we met in '04 tore open. Again, I was drowning in the tears I was barely holding back. Lamaze breathing is not just for labor, let me tell you.

I sat numb for the rest of the session knowing I had a call to make before the plane took off for home. I carried on as if I was just like everyone else and was a ferocious note taker. I asked questions during Q&A's and amassed more information than I knew what to do with. All the while, the heaviness of the phone call I had to make occupied half my mind.

I rushed out of the last session, and there she was. I had already deferred her prayers. She came rushing to me, arms outstretched to wrap me in prayer. She prayed despite having no clue as to what she was praying for. I murmured my thanks and dashed away but not in time for her to miss the soul-tears that were drowning me.

2012

I sat in the silence of my room. Bags all packed for the airport shuttle. I stared at the fraidy cat in the mirror while my hands shifted my phone from one hand to the other. I watched myself in the mirror as I made the call.

“We have to talk. Things are a mess. They've always been a mess no matter how hard we've worked to clean them up. This new thing I'm doing, that I think I can do, my head is about to explode with it all. But, I have to know. Are you 100% behind me or not? Because it can't be 100% today and then 25% tomorrow. You either have to be all in or all out. When I come home, I need you to tell me which it is. Because if you do not know in the depths of your soul, that you are 100% behind me, I'm pulling the plug on the blog and my ideas for my writing career. I'll never look back. I have to know. What do you want me to do?”

The quiet on the other end was pensive but not unfriendly. He was weighing the impact his abusive past has had on us and wondering how it might manifest itself in the future. “I'm in. I'm all in. I want to see you succeed. I believe in you. I do.” Finally, I cried.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

The monsters are still out there. The one who seeks to kill and destroy as well as the one that gave him a helping hand decades ago. As much damage as they have done, we have lived to fight another day. The blog is a testament to our grit, our determination, and our love. Try as the monsters might, they have not deleted us.

Love you long and strong. Even when you feel like an imposter who's ready to hit the delete button. Come back soon and bring a friend?

John 10:10 (Message)

A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of. 

 

So....We Meet Again....GULP! (Pt. 1)

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

The last time I'd seen her, it was 2004, and all I could do that morning was fight back tears. I sat there drowning in the deluge I was gulping back when she stopped right in front of me, pointed a finger and let loose with words that seemed intended only for me.

It was as if I had been slammed into a cone of silence with only the 2 of us inside. Her eyes bored into me as if to say, “I see you. I see your pain.” I thought I'd never forget the words. In that instant, my brain was a square of cross-stitch material, and it seemed her words flowed out of her finger and onto the fabric of my heart. Sadly, I don't remember the words now – only the moment and the impact. Life does that.

As a result of that morning and her ministry, I went back home and organized 2 mini-retreats for homeschooling moms whose lives and finances prohibited a weekend retreat. I never knew our paths would cross again.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

To be honest, when I got the opportunity to attend the Titus 2:1 conference, I made the decision on a whim. I was a blogger who homeschooled and was looking for ways to connect with others. I wanted to learn more about improving my blog. Seemed like a win-win. Ahem. True confessions. I didn't even look at the speaker line up. In retrospect, that's probably a good thing because I would have hopped back in my fraidy cat hiding place and not come out for love nor money.

As soon as she walked in the door, my jaw dropped. As in country-bumpkin-goes-to-town jaw drop that you hope no one in the room sees. My mind flashed back to that morning and then sped forward to the present in one of those life-flashes-before-your-eyes moments.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

So it was, our lives became entwined again. When last she “saw” me, my life was in shambles. I had a roof over my head and food to eat. But, my family and I were post-9/11 statistics referred to as 'the invisible homeless'. I was at that retreat only because of the kindness of a friend, Hope. Not that she really saw me. I was just another face in the large crowd.

My husband had been out of work for 3 years. We had lost our home while paying our Cobra insurance premiums instead of our mortgage payment. Unlike the downturn of '08 when so many lost their jobs, the downturn after 9/11 didn't affect so many folks. We often felt we needed to justify our existence and prove we were all about getting work, any work, we could find.

I once stood on a street corner in a bear costume for 4 hrs to make $60.00. It was in the 90's (F) with humidity above 50%. My glasses were fogging so much that I had to have a minder to lead me for hydration and bathroom breaks. Even with efforts like that, I often felt the community around us was murmuring behind our backs, “Oh, they could get a job if they wanted to! JUST GET A JOB!”

On this Saturday morning, 8 years later, she began to relate the events of her life during her own husband's prolonged unemployment. His came in 2007 before everyone and his brother had mortgages under water and unemployment checks that were running out. She described feeling the same scorn I had felt as folks become more and more impatient with their ongoing crisis.

2011

I wanted to jump up, wave, and say, “Hey! Hey! Remember me? I can't believe you know what it feels like too! Hey! HEY! Remember me?”

Instead, I slipped a note in her hand. “Pray for me. No long sob story of explantion. Just pray.” I wanted to add, “Again...,” but I knew she'd only be confused. I had been just another nameless face in a crowd whose face had long since evaporated amid all the other crowds.

Later, she told me, “Will 10:30a work?”

Knowing she was one and we were many, I deferred. “I know you are pulled in so many directions. Thank you and forgive my intrusion. If you think of me, just breathe a prayer.” The hour or so before I was to leave for the airport we passed in a hall full of busy people.

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She stepped over and wrapped her long, thin arms around my chubby, short frame. “Be still. I'm gonna pray right here.” And, her words flowed like honey over a battle worn and scarred soul. No time. No time to tell her what she had triggered in 2004 nor what she had just set in motion when she uttered those words that froze me in my seat:

“If your husband is not 100% behind your efforts, you might as well go home and shut it all down.”

Oh, fraidy cat, what are your life defining moments? Have they served to point you back to the paths of truth as have mine with Rachael? Have they been hard to hear, and have you run away hoping you could avoid an inconvenient truth? Relax. You are not alone.

Hope you'll come back tomorrow and bring a friend. I have more to tell you about Rachael Carmen and me. But then, you knew that, didn't you?

Proverbs 15: 12 (NIV)

Courtesy B. Creasy 2010

A mocker resents correction; he will not consult the wise.

Proverbs 1: 7 (NIV)
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.

Proverbs 13: 14 (NIV)

The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death.