Barren

even though truth is extremely hard to see for me in trauma the facts are that he is not wanting to be a dad. He is living with this new lady (someone to keep enabling his behavior and taking responsibility for him. He wants to be the victim and having someone else take care of Him. this is his cycle. He can not have real relationship when he is in addict mode. Its important to me that I am not the bad guy. but why is this so important to me? THe first person he is lieing to is him. he has been in active addiction. They lie to themselves in order to feel better about continuing in this addiction. They have to hit rock bottom because he is so sick. He cant take care of his family, kids or himself. I have felt so crazy he makes me feel like I am crazy and twist the truth to manipulate me. I cant stay healthy around him. period. Its just painful to believe that this is the truth of the situation but the good news is is that God loves these girls more than Kanon ever can and will. He always responds to me telling him the truth (like telling him that he hasnt even asked or tried to see the kids in 3 weeks. Why do I feel the need to be thought of as kind and the person who has been hurt in this situation. he will never see me in this so why do i want so bad for him to see that? Why is that what my energy has gone to for so long? when he kept hurting me why did i just try harder ( i learned that is how my mom taught me to survive in this world- try harder)? how did i get here? What was marriage supposed to be for me? What part of my story is this pointing to? It points to how I learned to survive in this world. I wanted to feel loved and approved of and seen. I wanted to feel like i didnt disappoint. But I have never given myself permission to even take up space. I was a people pleaser because mom and dad did have high expectations and i still feel the burn of not meeting those. Mom will share her disappointment for the littlest thing. I was always trying to attain their love through sports and behavior. But I just needed someone to love me, which turned into me longing to been seen and loved by my husband. I shamed myself many times. I shouldnt have needed my moms love and approval that much. The truth is my mom didnt love me the way i needed to be loved. the way i want to love my daughter. it is at no fault to her. that is the way she learned to survive in her world from her mom too. If i am beautiful and athletic and good at sports, then finding a husband will be easier. the message we got. however it was not the message that you are worthy just because you are a child of God. Its ok to have needs to. you dont have to constantly attempt not to be a bother to others - because you are still valuable even if you dont have RN at the end of your name, even if you gain 10 lbs and have a messy house. That turned into a deep lonliness, a lonliness that a wonderful God centered marriage could make go away. Someone who charished me and i wouldnt be lonly anymore. That lonliness ran deep. Dad was an incredible leader of the family but Dad still allowed dad to be mom. . I felt unseen by him because He still allowed the comments and had a passivity about how she delt with us. i had two amazing parents that truly did the best they could, because it was all they knew. There is still a pain in this story that originated from then to now. Why wasnt I known in the home.we needed love and to ve iknown instead of desparate for approval through grades sports. For us to heal we have to grieve those wounds- I have lost a lot from this marriage. I am going to have to grieve past and present. Most of my idea of love was attached to how much we were performing. This was manifested in how I went from relationship to relationship. Wanting someone to fill that lonliness. This manifested in Lindsey in thinking she could earn her way to Jesus and this was manifested in Alissa in permiscuity in high school. So i took that to my marriage. if i learned how to cook. if i just worked harder to keep the house clean. if i just kept my body looking a certain way. That was never going to work because the man i married never saw me. I even remember being so exhausted and thinking, I am going to have to end up in the hospital from exhaustion for him to ever see me. And even the day i had surgery and passed out in our bathroom at home while bathing the babies. Even that did not wake him up. I opened my eyes and he was so ticked because he had worked an 8 hour day and poor him had to bath his own kids. In fact the harder I worked the less he was able to see me. This aching lonliness to be known and seen by my husband started long ago. It started when I was Breckans age. I wanted a relationship that wanted to see me and love me just for being me. I was so hungry for affirmation from my mom so that transferred into a big longing that my husband could not fill. This was given to me in a podcast by Adam Young- The Place we find ourselves. Psalm 27 Hear my voice when I call, O LORD; be merciful to me and answer me. I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD There is a link between hoping and waiting. Hope involves groaning, longing. Hope is groaning inwardly while waiting expectantly, at the same time expecting it to happen. An atheist calls hope the evil of all evils. it prolonges your tourment. Hope is something that I want. I want a husband that loves Jesus and pursues Him above all else and a husband that pursues me. When I have wanted that for years and still have been let down over and over my reaction is to stop wanting it. isnt it foolis to think that someday i will have this when i have not had that longing met? The easiest thing to do is put your head in the sand so i stop wanting it. Hope is letting myself want something when that desire has not yet been met. Hope is waiting expectantly. So to go back to the verse in Psalms 27- I will see the goodness of the Lord in this life. God will hear my cry and give me the desires of my heart. Hope is agonizing, yearning for intimacy with a spouse and anticipating a romantic night that night. All the while wrestling with God until you get that longing met. Living in hope requires 3 things to happen. 1) Bringing my longings to God. 2)expecting God to meet those desires and 3) wrestling with my desire to have a intimate relationship with a spouse when He has not met that desire yet. That is Biblical hope. So the Alternative to hope is deadening to desire and cynicism. You body naturally groans as children. they are always longing for something, food toys safety. Its the natural dispositon of the heart. BUt what happens when disappointments pile up and make longing for something too painful? If i didnt want that so much I wouldn't hurt so much. This goes back to childhood longing for their parents to love and accept them for them. You say to yourself that if I didn't want that thing so much i wouldnt hurt so much. You try to numb or deaden that desire. Instead of hoping that my husband will begin pursuing my heart I say to myself its a broken world. My expectations are too high. What am I doing? I am deadening my desire to be pursued by my husband and this is important, it is also a deadening of Hope in God to do the miraculous and turn my husband towards me to pursue my heart and Gods. in Dan Allender's book the wounded heart he identifies 3 places of powerlessness. 1) core to our war with hope powerlessness in your attempt to make your dysfunctional family functional. what did you try to do to make it better. the child can become a prisoner to the attempt to life moms spirits or keep mom from being enraged the passionate desire to see the family change energizes the child to pursue academic athletic excellence. the result is deeper disappointment that mom or dad did not change. this leads to powerlessness. you tried something to make your family work better. but your efforts failed and that was immense powerlessness. powerlessness to stop the abuse. what did i do to make it stop. what happened in my brain when the attempts did not help stop it didn't work powerlessness to stop the pain in your adult life. this is the most agonizing. you have tried so many different things counseling sermons conferences to get well. heal my pain why wont you heal me ? what do i need to do to get you to heal me? if you have felt this powerlessness than you have had your battle with hope. hopelessness is a constant pull. the bible takes powerlessness and hopelessness very serious. the word for this in the bible is barrenness. this is how the start of isreal came to be! This is what leads me to love Isaiah because he speaks of the barren woman. Sara couldnt get pregnant . that is how it all begins but this theme rebecca rachel hannah. the mothers of the first 3generations of isrealities were barren! do you think God is saying something here.

 Where is the Barrenness of your life right now? where do you feel powerless to create lifegoodness and newness. the whole point of the barrennesss is that god loves to work in the barren places in our lives. in isaiah 49 God talks about how the isrealities will return from exile then you will know that I am the Lord those who hoope in me will not be disappointed. the hope of returning from exile will be in the land of the living. it will be on this earth. the hard part is that we dont know what desires will be met. hope forces us to wrestle with god. if it be your will. you express your desire to god not my will but yours be done. as long as it comes after a 12 round wrestling match iwth God. we are called to surrender our will to Gods will. it means to give in. you can surrender until you have wrestled with god. surrender only comes after exhaustion. from bringing the longing of your heart to God. you can talk about hope without wrestling. if you dont find yourself regularly wrestling with God you dont likve with much hope. unfullfilled longings are what ultimately drive us to God so until you take the riskof hopiung that God will fullfill the desires of your heart until you bring your disappointment and anger to God over and over againGod will always remain strangly impersonal to you. GOd the savior of the world but you wont know him as the God of my rescue. Disappointment means to miss an appointment iwth someone ..all disappointment is a broken appointment with God. I expected him to show up and he didnt. god could have prevented this but he didnt. One of the reasons we hate hope so much is it requires us to live a 'both/and" life. both death and resurrection. we are to rejoices with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. optimism is the denial of the darkness that we live with in this world. some focus on the dark places of this world and turn a blind eye chirstianity is both and - we are just as apt to be weeping one moment because we are wide open to the darkn