“This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. 11For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity.b I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.” Jeremiah 29:10-14
Sometimes our lives make absolutely no sense at all. We have a vision of what we want our lives to look like but then things happen that were not in our script. Things like job lay offs, illnesses, tragedies, misunderstandings and betrayals. People come and people go unexpectedly and suddenly we are in the middle of a life we hadn’t planned on having.
In my life I have learned that these changes, these life-events, force us to face our vulnerabilities. Some of these changes we face in life make us realize that we are not perfect and we can’t do things the way we want to do them anymore.
If you are lucky you will have one or two “ride or die” friends that stick by you during these unexpected life changes. But truthfully those friends are rare. There is an old song with a line in it that goes, “Nobody wants you when you are down and out.” Maybe like me you found that out too.
I had one person I considered a ride or die friend, but then I found out she had told things about my life, and problems, to her whole family. As a matter of fact some of them listened in to our phone conversations. That betrayal was painful, but in the long run it only served to bring me closer to God and left her wondering why I no longer wanted to be her friend.
Like me you may have found that God is the only person who you can go to and be honest with about your feelings that will not betray you and derive pleasure from your downfall.
When, due to my husband’s catastrophic illness, we lost our entire savings our life changed in so many ways. Losing our life savings, due to all the things that come along with health challenges that health insurance just doesn’t cover, caused life changes in our living style. We lived in a beautiful 3,000 square foot home at the time, and then, when that got too expensive we leased a home to buy it because our credit was ruined too. We lost that home due to a breach of contract by the crazy owner, and ended up in a small home that we were thankful to have. At one time it looked as if we would be living in our car.
Instead of offering actual help many people either ignored us, gossiped about us, or offered to pray for us. Yes, the prayer is much needed but showing up and just helping works well too. Many times people in life crisis are too depressed to even get dressed so understand that too!
I could go on and on but I know that many of you reading this could tell your own stories. You are here, but holding on to your faith in God like a titanic survivor holding onto a life raft.
Don’t try to make much sense of it because I have found that do to that is a horrible waster of time and brings in a horrible sense of self-pity. You start thinking about one thing that is wrong and then that cascades into a series of thinking of everything else that went wrong. Before you know it you are in bed, can’t get up or get dressed and horribly depressed.
As a counselor I have heard many tales of people trying to cope with life changes in bizarre ways. My favorite by far is the one of a woman whose marriage fail completely apart a week after her husband had sent her a dozen roses at work for her birthday. After bragging to everyone at work about how blessed she was to have him she found out he was not only involved with another woman but the woman was pregnant with his child. She went to the store and bought a case of Jiffy Peanut Butter and sat in bed with a spoon eating it and throwing the empty jars on the floor. When she finally let her mother into the house her mother saw the trail of empty peanut butter jars and spoons and said, “Honey, you have to snap out of this.” Yes, we both laughed about it. However, if you have ever been anywhere close to devastated in life, you can certainly understand.
Until I really experienced it myself I never knew the desperation behind the statement, “What am I going to do now!”
I want you to know that there is hope, you will make it. You don’t think so, but you will. You will come out the other side of this much a much better person then you were before. You will survive.
The key is to come to terms with the problem. Realize it won’t change but that’s okay you ARE GOING TO MAKE IT. Once you can quit feeling sorry for yourself you simple get up, shower, dress and set about to create a new story of your life. In this story you are the heroine that overcomes. You will put one foot in front of the other and survive and learn so much in doing so. One step at a time and one day at a time. You are fierce and you are strong. You are not going to let whatever broke you destroy you. Against all odds you are going to make a new, beautiful life for yourself. The only ones who don’t make it, truthfully, are the ones who don’t accept the truth and determine to move on.
You are going to have to do that anyway, so why not today! Change your story, write a new script. In this story you, like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind, make up your mind that as God is your witness you will never be destroyed like this again! You are a survivor. Life messed with the wrong person!
Pray and ask God to help you. He will, He is just waiting for you to get up first. When he healed the man outside of the waters of Bethesda he said to the man, “Get up. Take your mat and get up!” Then, God worked in his behalf and healed him. He will do the same for you!
In God’s Unconditional Love,
Cathie Miller
If you are interested in Christian counseling please contact me through my webpage contact page which can be found through the link below. I counsel over the phone and you pay through PayPal.
www.helpforgodshurtingpeople.com
Wisdom Of The Cooing Dove 