First Day of the Rest of My Life: Take 14,524

As I start this, it must be the right thing to do because Matthew West's "Day One" is playing on the radio right now.

Day one. 

No day before.

Clean slate.

The beginning.

It's late evening as I write this but that's because that is the time I have available to write. I have never been much of a conformist and the older I get the more I see the complete illusion that is calculated time. Shrug. Call me a weirdo. It's okay, I am totally fine with that. 

Lamentations 3:23-24, that's the whole His mercies are new every day thing. Sigh, but in full disclosure...I struggle with this and the idea of hope these days. Shrug. At some point, in a relentless beating, you just give up and shut down. 

That feels awful to type but it is so totally how I feel right now! 

I keep hearing that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but worry. The first time I heard that it was comforting because I have really been wrestling with well, anything and everything. 

Why wouldn't I be? 

My husband left me for a woman who somehow despite working in the women's studies department at the local state university and having done some work she feels worthy of noting involving Christianity...well, she seems to fail to recognize or even implicate herself in the ongoing financial abuse or any of the past verbal, mental, emotional or physical abuse. Plus, she has totally ruined the Beastie Boys for me because now when I hear the lines,"And beatnik chicks just wearing their smocks/ Walking high and mighty like she's #1 and /She thinks she's the passionate one." I for whatever reason think of her. But I digress...

Where was I. Oh, yeah...my husband left me. It's been almost two years. I am still in disbelief. How can a man who says that you are his whole world and that he is so grateful that God gave me to him suddenly decide that livestock makes a better romantic alternative? In my best Church Lady voice,"Hmmmm, could it be Satan?" Damn Skippy.

When all of this broke, I hit my knees and then hit the pavement and came up short. No better job, no better income, and a whole mess of other issues that have me very much fully doubting just about everything. I mean everything! As I sit here on my patio typing this, I am gonna lose this house. I have tried and tried to get more income, to get support on paper, pray, plead, hope, wish. Nothing. I love my little house. And stupidly, part of the reason I love it is because my husband worked so hard and without complaint to get us here. Wanna see the view from here? 

Okay, so the webcam takes a horrible picture. There is so much peace in this backyard. That right corner where it's all bushy should be a vegetable garden but all the rain and lack of time for weeding and um, my love of morning glories has lead to this abomination. You can't see the apple tree or the fire pit or any of the memories of all the good times in this backyard or how absolutely gorgeous the sky is tonight.

I don't know what I am supposed to do with myself. Yeah, pretty much you would not be wrong to queue up that White Stripes song of a similar name. I didn't need him when I met him or have any weird issue that made me make poor decisions. He was in my life because I wanted him and not just haphazardly, willy nilly. Fuck. (Sorry.) That's what makes this all the harder. I didn't enter into this half-cocked or aimlessly trying to fulfill some need. I repeatedly put him off. I was good in my condo with my daughter and all my friends. Something though said give him a chance.

Famous last words.

Seriously.

He just dropped our son off and he treats me like some two-bit whore he never gave two shits about. Dropped some money on the table on the porch and does not acknowledge me. It's pretty unnerving.

Anyway...

Where was I?

I am not even sure. Seriously. Seriously.

First day of the rest of my life: take 14,524. How many of those days were wasted? I shudder to think. But God's mercies are new every day. Every single solitary stinking day! This is good. It means that no matter how bad I screw up today that tomorrow is a new day. And I do screw up I struggle with forgiveness for my husband and that skank whore he is shacked up with. I struggle to be okay with a world that is okay with what is happening to me and my kids. My kids are absolute proof in a higher force to me, I don't deserve such loveliness, such awesomeness in my life, yet there they are...somehow still calling me Mom and relying on me for things despite the fact the I know without a doubt I have totally dropped the ball of providing sanity, comfort, security, peace. Ugh. I feel very bad about this. This...all of what is going on in this moment...it is not what I ever wanted or envisioned for either of them. I wanted more. Every mother does...

The mercies are new everyday, but the residual feelings of failure never seem to fade.

Maybe I am doing this all wrong.

Please advise.

Getting What You Ask For: An Exuberant Declaration of Faith

A tad over a month ago, I posted on Facebook that I was in search of a vehicle under $4k and that I wasn't really picky about make and model and honestly what was important to me was sunroof, leather seats and a stereo system good enough to drown out everything mechanically wrong.

I got what I wanted. Isn't she a beauty? Sunroof. Leather Seats. Stereo with cassette AND six-disc CD player. Bonus, nothing mechanically wrong. Yes. Yes. It is a Lexus. It's irrelevant. Just more icing.

I am grateful that I got everything I asked for in this vehicle. I am astounded at how it all happened.

There are some very specific challenges in my life that I have been leaving off the blog because I really don't want to give them anymore life than they already have taken on. So that being said, the night that I met with the bankruptcy attorney rather than get down about the long and the short of things outside of my control, I decided to kind of poke around and see what vehicles would be under the exemption limit. This popped up on a search on the high end of the criteria. A few other things that caught my attention as well but then I just sort of filed it all in the back of my head. I had a number of things to do before I got to that point.

About three weeks went by before I sold the vehicle I needed to sell. The check hold gave me a few days to really do some legwork on what was next. At the time, I still had another vehicle but not one that was going to last long-term. This car was still coming up in searches. Being on the high end, I dismissed it. Well, at least I tried too. A strange chain of events caused me to be on the phone with my insurance agent. So, I figured I would ask for a quote and that would end the fantasy of this vehicle. My jaw dropped. About the same as I had been paying.

Hmm, okay. Then, my thought was this Lexus RX300 has to be a teaser car. Emailed the dealer. Nope. So I scheduled a test drive that night. She's not perfect but she's better than a lot of what was out there in my range.

I need to back up. Around the same time that I met the bankruptcy attorney, Psalm 27 started popping up all over the place for me. In whole and in part. For those of you not familiar, Psalm 27 is titled in the New King James Version as "An Exuberant Declaration of Faith" and goes as follows:

An Exuberant Declaration of Faith

A Psalm of David.

27 The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
Of whom shall I be afraid?
² When the wicked came against me
To eat up my flesh,
My enemies and foes,
They stumbled and fell.
³ Though an army may encamp against me,
My heart shall not fear;
Though war may rise against me,
In this I will be confident.

⁴ One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.
⁵ For in the time of trouble
He shall hide me in His pavilion;
In the secret place of His tabernacle
He shall hide me;
He shall set me high upon a rock.

⁶ And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me;
Therefore I will offer sacrifices of joy in His tabernacle;
I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord.

⁷ Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice!
Have mercy also upon me, and answer me.
⁸ When You said, “Seek My face,”
My heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.”
⁹ Do not hide Your face from me;
Do not turn Your servant away in anger;
You have been my help;
Do not leave me nor forsake me,
O God of my salvation.
¹⁰ When my father and my mother forsake me,
Then the Lord will take care of me.

¹¹ Teach me Your way, O Lord,
And lead me in a smooth path, because of my enemies.
¹² Do not deliver me to the will of my adversaries;
For false witnesses have risen against me,
And such as breathe out violence.
¹³ I would have lost heart, unless I had believed
That I would see the goodness of the Lord
In the land of the living.

¹⁴ Wait on the Lord;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the Lord!

Back to the story at hand. After my test drive, I made an offer and while I waiting I noticed the number on the dealer plate that they had slapped on for my drive. 2710. So, in an effort to not worry about what was being done with my offer I pulled it up. The second verse jumped out at me...then the Lord will take care of me.

I am by no means a prosperity theology person. I don't believe that obedience brings material wealth or some other ways Biblical truth has been twisted to justify less than Biblical gains. But I do believed that God provides. And on April 7, He provided me with exactly what I asked for: leather seats, sunroof and a kick-ass stereo. I am grateful, so grateful for the way it all worked out.

As for the fact that it's a Lexus. I am pretty sure that can be filed under the way He uses the foolish to confound the wise. Or maybe it really is that He contends with those who contend with me and a little something about living well being the best revenge or something like that. I don't know. I am not bragging. I just want to encourage you to not settle. Don't let your circumstances dictate your choices or your critics get in the way of you receiving your blessings. Playas gonna play and haters gonna hate but a little faith and the right intentions who knows you could be driving a Mercedes Benz and get that color TV and your night on the town.

Don't think, just believe.

And be careful what you ask for you might just get it!!