Numero Uno.

**This post has been rewritten. I shouldn’t have published the first version without giving it time to simmer. It’s now been a few days, more things have happened / thoughts have occurred, went to church and God always speaks to me there. Then I read a post that could almost have been written by me. You can read it here. It has a lot more grace and calm, which I needed and brought here.**

My priorities are all screwed up. That's what I'm coming to realize. Actually, I've realized it for a while I just didn't want to admit it. It’s a little scary to be admitting it out loud.

God’s certainly been doing a roto-router job on me this year. Combine that with what I suspect could be hormone changes and it feels like disaster, loud and tear-stained. Yet, while it’s very uncomfortable to go through change and growth (aka hardship and disaster, emotional anguish or what have you), if you allow change to be made, if you let go of your control and trust that God will catch you on the other side, it’s so very good. I’m still waiting for that “very good” part. Also, consequently, the allowing and letting go parts.

This year has been about cleansing. Stinky old lies have been brought to light, things big and small uncovered. There has been some growth into new territory in marriage, though difficult, and I expect more is to come. Over the summer, I have experienced some healing of old wounds (think grade school / junior high, old) and though that’s pretty new, I think there is freedom there I haven’t even discovered yet. Work continues also in where I turn to, not only in times of trouble, but at every moment of the day, from whom I draw my strength, and trusting that God’s actually going to be there. Which brings me to the biggie. Numero Uno.

Who is my Numero Uno?

With all the stuff I’ve been delving into and attempting to process (sometimes unsuccessfully), on top of dealing with the day to day of being a mom to five kids and wife to a semi-absentee husband, a person can get pretty crispy. There’s only so much you can pile on one person.

My heart feels smashed. My senses are overloaded. My emotions bubble, constantly, at the surface, all day, every day, overwhelming me. Anger, sadness, grief, frustration, lonliness, hunger, ache, desperation - all unrelenting. And satan is doing a real number on my thought life, like you have no idea. It’s killer, I tell ya. But there’s just simply not time for me. Cuz, you know, I’m a mom. There’s always some need or task that calls me away from the freedom to feel and to process, and to listen to what God has to say. I keep (yes, keep, as this is very much an in-progress situation) looking to my spouse to be my healer, my savior, the one who lifts me up, salves my wounds, encourages me, who is strong where I am weak, my knight on a white horse swooping in to make it all better.

My husband is not that guy. And while he has room for his own improvement, the problem is largely within me.

*suck in breath*

That hurts to say.

I weep.

He shouldn’t be all that. That’s a lot to ask of anyone. He can't be my everything. And yet I have tried to make him that. My husband is not my savior. Nor my healer. There is only One, and his name is not Jayson. It’s Jesus.

Jesus is the only one with self-sacrificial love for me. He is the only one who knows my inner most being. He is the only one that can soothe those deep, deep places, without me even having to speak them.

And yet, while knowing that, I keep trying to beat it out my spouse. Demand it, force it, beg for it.

You know what that produces? Conflict. Heartache. Disappointment. More lonliness. It pushes farther away that which I desperately crave.

I want to be loved.

As much as my heart aches, my soul aches more. But for some reason, I am unwilling, or unable, to surrender the fact that I place my husband, inappropriately, as Numero Uno, not God. I look to my husband to fill me, to give me all the love and reassurance I need. To ease all my hurts and comfort my weary soul. I make him the center of my universe. I love God, but I can't say that I love Him most. As a Christian, I am ashamed to admit that.  (See Commandment #1 - Thou shalt have no other gods before me.) But I don’t know how to love God more. I don’t know how to feel his love more.

In church on Sunday we sang this song (and this is the only version I can find but I believe it was written by Joel Hanson of PFR)

Chorus:

Under

I’m going under

Let the water

Water wash over

Let me rise up

Out of these old ways

Into new life

Into your name

As I started to sing this chorus, I had an image of myself going under water, drowning. And that’s how I often feel. But then I saw, instead, rising up, like a baptism. Emerging out of the water. New. Free. Mended. Whole.

I want the baptism, not the drowning. To be a new creation.

This part’s pretty good too.

Mark me with love that flows from your name

As I plunge under and rise again 

(which reminds me that more big waves will come, it’s never just one)

Let your kingdom rule to the depths of my soul

Make me free, make me whole.

Lord, forgive me. Help me. Please, hear my cries. I don’t know where to go from here. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit, and a right order, within me.

Do you have a story of brokenness, one of being mended or needing mending? It's important to share those stories so we know we're not alone. Angie Smith, in honor of her new book release entitled Mending, she is asking for people to share their stories. If you are interesting in the book, it can be purchased at Barnes & Noble or Amazon.