Where's my Knight in Shining Armour?

Lately,  I feel, God has really been challenging me on where/how I get my needs met. After sharing with a friend a few weeks ago, I don't think I'm alone.

You see, I've had this expectation of my husband and have been bitterly disappointed when he has not met it. I have really been trying to identify what it is I'm looking for out of my husband and I think I've got it narrowed down to a pretty good list:

• Has grace and understanding when I screw up
• Is always taking my feelings into account with every action he takes
• Can listen to my attacking, nagging and anger with love and not be defensive
• Never gets angry or is harsh with me 
• Is essentially my emotional punching bag, taking any and all of my immaturity with stride
• unconditional love and responses when I'm hurting and therefore hurting others (mostly like him)

Writing them down  makes it even more real, in two ways.
The first; acknowledging how absolutely selfish and ridiculous these expectations are for me to have of a man.
The second; how real and how desperately I really need unconditional love, acceptance and a safe place to screw up.

The more I thought about my dream husband, the more I realized I was longing for pretty much the exact description of the Christ figure. A man who  literally set aside everything and everyone that was important to him to show his love, to the point of his own death. Many people debate about the sin/ Saviour dynamic, but the bottom line is the scripture that everyone knows: John 3:16 "For God so LOVED the world, that he sent his only son.." His motivation was love, his agenda was love and a reconnection to his people.

Over the years I've really battled with my relationship with God and faith. Flip flopping back and forth between the things I've seen, experienced, and know that support God's existence or contradict it. As I've pressed into my marriage more and more, looking to have the healthiest , whole marriage one can have, God's plans for marriage, sex, family and relationships have always been the most sustaining and life giving. So it's really sent me soul searching again .

Now , as I feel this massive "knight in shining Armour" hole inside of me, that I know , is not my husbands responsibility to fill , although it is what he's suppose to pursue (we both are - unconditional love for each other) I know that I can't wait for my husband to figure it out , and it's not fair to him for me too. He's on his own journey and he is responsible for his heart, thoughts and actions. But I am also in charge of my own, so when I am looking to my husband to respond to me in the way only a perfect being can,  I'm setting us both up to fail .

 We are trying to teach Nehemiah now that it is HIS job to control HIS actions & attitudes, not mommy and daddy. And that his brother and other kids jobs are to have their own self control. I don't know if it's working! lol But, in trying to spell this principal out in three year old terms, it's really convicted me and reminded me again, that I am responsible for my own emotional well-being and thoughts and that my husband (to put it objectively) is just a resource to help with me managing myself , not a crutch, not the source of my happiness or peace, but someone to reference from time to time when I need help when I'm working on me.

Fear, Rejection & Failure

I haven't blogged in months. After I lost my neice, I kind of lost my "UMPH" to share, I've been internalizing for months and I think I am coming around to being  a little more open and vunerable again. Maybe...we'll see.

It's incredible what you discover when you start to be honest with yourself about what's holding you back. The next step in my "marketing" for my business is to start cold calling some potential clients and taking them out to lunch , introducing myself and my work and getting to know them and theirs. But I don't want to pick up the phone ....why? I ask myself ...because I'm scared. Of what? I ponder...being rejected. I sit back and let this register a bit with myself. I feel like I am back in middle school, or high school, when you become aware , well at least for me, that some people may not like you, or want to be your friend. It's amazing after all these years, everything I have done and the friends I have made and the people in my life I have that I know love me and like me , this is still something that manipulates and controls my actions and interactions with others.

I don't know if there is anything more powerful then the driving force of fear, specifically with rejection. I was listening to a talk last week and one of the lines the speaker said resonated with me "People who say they don't care about what others think about them are usually lying. Often they care so much that they instead build walls so high and so strong to protect themselves, and isolate themselves from others to prevent others from telling them what they think about them." Obviously this can speak to someone different ways. I don't think that one should dictate their lives based on whether or not someone likes them, or thinks poorly of highly of them. You can know the truth about what someone thinks about you, but not come into agreement with it but to hold onto and operate out of the truth of who you really are. But I think one of the main reasons why we don't want to know if someone likes us or not , and what they do like or what they don't like is because we don't personally have a strong grasps ourselves on who we really are.

As a child, I heard of the story of the little wooden people, the Wemmicks, from You are Special by Max Lucado, the story did not impress me much, until I got older, and realized the hoops I was jumping through to avoid dots and gain stars and how I cared about them. The bottom line is this, I think it's important to receive what people think of us, regardless of who they are in our lives, but to invest and build relationships with the ones who invest and agree with the truth of who we really are. I think it's a journey most of us are on, to one degree or another, Who Am I? I know I can SAY (or type) who I say I believe I am, but I know I don't really believe it, because the dots are way to important to me, cripplingly so.
The past few years I feel as though I've been fumblingly along on this journey, people coming in and out for work or for personal reasons, but they are never really meeting the real me. They only get to see the coping mechanisms and the reactions I have designed to protect the scared little girl. I feel as though , I am a bit unstable as a result. When your relationships and life choices are dictated by survival/ defense or by your feelings, rather then a core from which you operate, you never know what you are going to dish out at someone, and people never know what they are gonna get when they meet you. Which is exhausting when you are trying to work and wear multiple hats. The amount of energy I have to pour into being  a stable and reliable professional is immense. We all expect our personal lives to never interfere with our professional lives or our work -but when your inner person is full of torment and confusion it takes a lot to put on a facade of togetherness when interacting with clients or potential clients. As a result, I think, all my other roles suffer. Our adrenalin and will power are finite, if they are not nourished they cannot be sustained. So the longer our inner battles rage against us, the more we burn our resources to be whole and healthy.
It's scarey, so many things are scarey to me - to be perfectly honest. And to overcome those things is scarey , I know I am totally in denial about different things - I start to process stuff - and then my heart just stops mid thought and says "We can't go their - we can't handle it." It's all bubbling under the surface, I can feel the wheels spinning underwater , but I don't dare bring them up to see what's on them. Because of course next to the fear of rejection is failure. All these "What If's " ...what if , what if , what if... it's horrendous. I remember hearing this statement once "All the difficult things that have happened to me in life I never worried about -because I didn't see them coming." The what if's I constantly worry about never come into fruition! But I waste so much mental energy on them that drains me from productive or life giving thoughts it's pathetic.
 I suppose to end the cycle, I need more honesty with myself, haha, more fear. But it really seems like the only option. Where did the lies I believe about myself that people won't like me, or people won't accept me or people will reject me , come from , in the first place?  And what's the truth ? No, everyone will not like me, but why do I let that attach itself to my self worth and cripple me? Why isn't it ok if someone doesn't like me? That sounds logical and reasonable, to understand you can't make everyone happy, but why do we still try and do it. I clearly don't understand this in the depth I need to for it to be real in my life.
Well I clearly don't have any answers, only questions, but I do have hope to press on for more clarity.

Why You Are Here

So Rye and I were watching this teaching on Love and relationships (it's what we do, we are big into relationship stuff) and the speaker addressing the issue of marriage in our society today , and why should my generation even bother with getting married and how do you know when you are ready to get married (FYI: We learned we weren't ready to be married, actually we've been learning that along the way -ahhhhhh!) But essentially it boils down to this, you were created and are most alive when you are overflowing with life, -in essence, you were created to give and receive love. Ya know, I remember hearing as a little girl that God created us to worship him -so so SO not true, it's blasphemy really and quite frankly I think it makes God sad. God does not, nor ever did, nor ever will, need to be worshiped, if He is God in the one true, perfect whole God he is, he does not NEED anything from us, nor does he have a desire for insincere compliments and ass kissing- I mean who does? No we were created to receive love from first, our heavenly father, and then second from each other.

God 101: Some of you may know God, and I am referring to the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, and some of you may not, and that is tots ok. So first let me clarify what we AREN'T going to do, quote a bunch of scriptures and super-impose my belief systems on them, and try and shove them down everyone's throat. Nor are we going to debate theology, religion, nauseating stuff, etc. Essential I want to look at this Dynamic God-Person, and how who He is affects who we are. Some of you may know what the Trinity is, some may not, but the Trinity is God. God (Abba, Father) Jesus Christ (Son) and Holy Spirit. Ok so even if you don't believe, just run with me here. God , by His/Her very nature, is 3 persons in relationship, in one. I've heard the illustration comparing Her to an egg, the is the shell of an egg, the yolk of an egg, and the white of an egg. All separate parts, all functioning dependently and independently and all egg. So God is awesome and good, and He is always good and he loves this relationship he has within himself, because God IS love, God IS relationship, if relationship was a tangible thing, it would be God. SO She is awesome, and good and Loves being a relationship, it is so rewarding, so amazing, so wow. He thinks to himself, I love to create, I have created so many beautiful things, and I love them, love them all, but the trees, and the bugs, and the fish, aren't experiencing the life I am experiencing. I want to create something to experience this love and relationship. So he created Man and Woman in HIS IMAGE -IN THE IMAGE OF RELATIONSHIP AND LOVE. So that we could be walking trough life being nourished and loved and invested in and blessed and just thriving. God said I created you like me to be in relationship and to love, to create, to steward, with power and intelligence. Be fruitful and multiply , Flourish.

So here we are, perfect, blameless, in relationship and in love, but God is also freedom, because you can't have a real relationship without freedom, you can't be really intimate without freedom. When your freedom is taken away, in any form -it's abuse. God is not going to force anyone to love him or to be who he created them to be - to live at their FULLEST potential. He won't he will not violate or manipulate you to get what he wants or he thinks is right. That's why there were two trees in the garden, and that is why we always have a choice we can make daily. If I am not free to be me around you - it's not love, if I can't say no to you -there is no intimacy. It's rape. So even though you were created to be loved, to be blessed, to be nourished, you need to say yes first, cause he is not going to violate you.

Ya know what, I just want to smash down some religious strongholds that are holding people back and keeping there spirits asleep or there souls numb to recognizing the true life and the real potential they have to be living. First off , You were not created as a sinner, you were created as a saint, God did not say, hey- im gonna throw down this broken person, hopefully somebody tells him there is help. No God created you, and those passions and gifts in you , to change the world. Did you know that you are created in the image of God, and only you can reveal a certain part of her to the world? God has given you unique gifts, talents, ambitions, and he loves that stuff about you, and loves you, thinks your totally awesome and doesn't want to change anything about the real you -not the fake/false you you've had to create to survive in this messed up place, but God does not want to crush you into a robot, he created you to explore you and be the best you , you can be, and not that you have to strive or push yourself to be perfect, but because there is only one you, and you do you best, and he wants you operating at your fullest potential. And that's where sin starts interrupting shit, sin is not something God holds over people in judgement, and it shouldn't be something we hold over each other, sin is simply this: if you do this, you are going to hurt yourself or someone else. THAT'S IT. God WANTS THE BEST FOR YOU, and when you do "Blank" it makes it hard for you or someone else to operate at there fullest potential. Enter Jesus , he sees all those blanks, he knows that you haven't gotten the right information, he knows you've been hurt, abused and violated, he knows that you are going to hurt yourself and other people, and he says ya know what - I don't want your mistakes to stop you, from the awesomeness I have for you. So let me help you with that. I know what that's like - I've been here, I came here for that reason, to understand why you react the way you do so I can relate to you and help you.


Ya know, we all have choices we make everyday, you may be thinking about all the awful stuff that has gone down in history and is even going on today and think , if God really was love he wouldn't let that stuff happen - but ya know what, that is all choices, choices made by other people , not by God, because he gave you a will, she wants you to make the choice to get to know her and stop hurting yourself and others. But it's a choice and he will not ever take choices away. So that puts the responsibility on your end, he is open to a relationship, what are you going to do? Will you start making choices that are going to stop hurting yourself and others? It's that simple. A lot of pain can be stopped if we start looking at life like that. And you know what, you've been abused, you've made some big mistakes and messed up bad, you're value system is all wrong you don't know when you are hurting yourself , or others? That's when we bring in the Bible and prayer and soaking and getting to know God, you don't have to be a genius, you don't have to have it all figured out, or be perfect, He knows, and he wants to help.

I was totally going to do a marriage rant ...but this is totally random...I'm guessing someone needs to read this Cause I totally did not have the intent on going all Jesus on yo' asses lol. Please don't hesitate to msg me if you have any questions!I'm not perfect, I've got a will, and I've used it make a lot of poor decisions, but I am turning that around! Peace on every heart and "wake up!" to every spirit that reads this!