What does that look like for you and me right now?
Months before my marriage ended, I bought a book by Sheila Walsh called
It’s okay not to be okay: moving forward one day at a time. Yes, that is
the exact title. Some of you have noticed I don’t blog as much and with
all I’ve been through I don’t have a lot to say. This is something most
people I talk to who follow God don’t quite understand, you can listen to
sermons and Christian music and read your Bible but I still haven’t found the
exact message that talks about what to do when your wife leaves you and
divorces you but I found part of it in Sheila’s book. I meet with these
guys on Tuesday night and no offense to any of them but just pointing people to
the Bible without a specific place makes it a little more difficult to find the
answers you need at the time. I also understand it is hard to point
someone to the right place when they may not understand or perceive all the
emotional damage the person, they are trying to help might have been through.
I can tell you for me it was a lot. I didn’t always get it right as
a husband but each day I tried to win the husband of the year award. I
don’t try to say bad things about my ex-wife because we both had our flaws.
She made her choices I was no longer one of them. We hurt each
other emotionally, not on purpose and I’m trying to heal, and the answers
aren’t always simple. In fact, they are never simple. I have good
and bad days like anyone will.
My friend Aaron told me I needed to be around people and it’s true.
Because friends and family help. Sometimes me being around people
is just Zac going to a restaurant and talking to the wait staff and observing
them. I’m at a point where I must rediscover who I am by myself. There
are days that are much harder than others. I talk a lot to my dog Arisia.
I rescued her from the Humane Society, and she is rescuing me each day.
I met with my friend John a few weeks ago and he humbled me by telling me
how God had used me sharing my blog to help him and his wife. Sometimes I
need the right book to read and that’s why I needed to get back to this Shelia
Walsh’s book. I have a friend Carlos who told me that the sense of
direction I keep praying for is to simply trust God. That’s hard because
a lot of days I feel numb. I just exist. I try to find some
connection to anything happening in my life. On the nights I work I have
purpose in the things I do. My nights off though I really don’t. I’m
still up most of the night. I play video games, watch whatever, eat,
sleep, and play with my dog. I take care of things that need to be done.
It took a lot for me to figure out how to do the most mundane stuff again
knowing I was alone. But even months later I’m still at a loss for what
I’m supposed to do on my nights off. I go to Most Wanted Comics and talk
to Bethany and Stephen, they know me and make me laugh and smile. I miss
blogging and I don’t know what to even say to help me or someone else.
Right now, my life is a mess. I’ve got one working hearing aid I don’t have a solution for that yet. My marriage is gone, shattered,
exploded, whatever but I still have a job, my house, and family and friends
praying for me. I’m learning to be more grateful. I have a dog that
loves me. I’m breathing so God must not be done with me. If God can
hold the world together, destroy the walls of Jericho, raise Jesus from the
dead, well then at some point he can heal the mess that is Zac. Some days
the hardest thing to do is to pray, read my Bible, listen to Christian music
because the devil is not going to make it easy on me. Depression will hit
you when you least expect it.
But I read this passage in this book and I can’t keep it to myself. I
have to share it with someone else because maybe you have struggles like I do.
This is what Sheila Walsh said in her book and it’s so powerful.
“Think about it this way: I’m not living by faith if I have an answer to
everything. If I understand everything God does or doesn’t do, then all I
need to do is love him with my mind. We are called to love him with more.
When an expert in religious law asked Christ what he had to do to inherit
eternal life. Christ asked him what his understanding was from the laws
given to Moses. His response was,
‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all
your strength and all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself’ Luke 10:27
Christ told him he’d answered correctly. Heart, soul, strength, and
mind. What does that look like for you and me right now? We love
with our heart, even when it’s broken. We love with our soul, even when
our humanity wrestles against our situation. We love with our mind, even
when we don’t understand.”
That was in her book. It floored me when I read it. Why?
Because I’ve been broken, I currently don’t understand and every day I pray for
direction, hope and purpose and my humanity is wrestling with all of that.
So, the question returns and in pro wrestling terminology this would be
your go home line of the promo or the concept that leaves you asking the same
stuff I have been. “What does that look like for you and me right now?”
I have to love God and trust Him even on the hardest or best days.
Like Martina McBride sang
“God is great.
But sometimes life ain’t good
When I pray
it doesn’t always turn out like I think it should.
But I do it anyway
I do it anyway.”
Anyway by Martina McBride
When life gets broken by Sandi Patty and Heather Payne
Hurt and the Healer by Mercy Me
Acoustic Medley by Point of Grace
