Ramblings???

                So apparently there is not much hype about the Heafers.  I haven’t blogged in over a year.  I do not consider myself a blogger so I am not disappointed in myself for not having done so.  However, I have had one heck of a year.  A journey during a season I will call it.  I have changed the way I view God and the Church, the way I relate to my family, and the way I let the world around me affect me.  Part of this change has wrought in me a deep unchanging trust in the God I call my God, the Creator of the Universe and Creator of little ole me.  The love I have is one that instantly fills me with a peace and a fullness the moment I consider Him and His creation around me.  It is like climbing to the mountain top to soak in the rays and then no matter what valley I walk through, hills I traverse, or storm that arises, I carry the warmth of that light within me.  Seriously, it is His kindness and Faithfulness that have finally amounted in me to a gloriously heavy weight that is NOT a burden to carry, nor could I ever ignore it. 

                Since I met my husband we have attended 5 churches over the last 8 years.  Only two of them stand out in our minds to not have been a painful memory, yet one of them was not the most supportive of us trying to work things out during the early marital struggles(to say the least) and even doubted my husband’s salvation.  So yes, he was obviously the source of all our problems…haha!  Only later did I learn that I had to change the way I viewed myself, him, and God.  Real hard when you hear a lot of other things from the people closest to you.  A couple of people from one church did help.  Pastor Van, you cared.  You would call and just listen.  See how things were going.  Offer BTDT wisdom and perspective.  So if you read this, thanks again!  But back to the last year or so…

                We have struggled to find a church where we fit in.  Yes, we have looked but have given up after the last one.  So for the past 6 months we have been actively not looking.  Now, some of you may have bristled at that.  Good!  This blog is for you J  During the last six months we have seen God’s hand move in our life, provided for our family and felt hope at what is in our future.  I even felt compelled to hash this out in Word because I feel a season change for our family coming in the near future.  A change brought about by, once again the Kindness and Faithfulness of the One and Only True God.  *Some of you even bristle at that term!  Where does she get off saying One and Only True God?  She must feel the same way my insert name did and the condemnation is sure to come in play somewhere in this blog. Humph.*  Now maybe no one thought that at all and it is just my wounded self expressing what I have felt I have been on the receiving end of in the last few years.  The mixed messages of you will never “fix” your husband, “He will never change”, “You and the kids are better off without him”, “You are young enough and pretty enough that someone better will come along” to “If you divorce your husband God will not forgive you”, “You will go to hell if you re-marry”, “Only unfaithfulness can be seen as a legitimate reason for divorce”.  Those mixed messages have left me with a bitter taste in my mouth for “The Church”, but not for God.  I have not attributed the characteristics of the Church to God.  That’s odd, last I checked we were supposed to do that.  Jesus did in fact say, “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”(John 13:35)  Now I am sure that the person who said I would be going to hell was trying to love me.  Right?  Promising to let me live in the vacant in-law suite if I finished the puttying, sanding, painting, cleaning was a very good gesture, a loving one in fact.  But once the work was done telling me my choice to divorce prevented him from keeping his word.  Hmmm.  Ya, you can probably tell I have had the hardest time getting over that one.  That decision left me with nowhere else to go except back to my husband or 650 miles away to my family.    I chose my family.  I was so weak emotionally and completely drained I was stressed all the time and dropped down to 105 lbs.  I hadn’t seen that weight since freshman year of high school.  I just wanted the whole thing to be over.   I wanted others to make decisions for me because the decisions I had made so far were not getting me anywhere.  Long story short(since I am taking this blog where I didn’t really plan to), having been praying the whole time we were separated and not really to be reconciled, two weeks before the divorce was supposed to be final, we reconciled.  Yep, seriously, we reconciled.  I don’t know what else to tell you.  It sucked having to pay thousands of dollars in lawyers’ fees for nothing.  My husband changed the way he spoke to me, I felt a forgiveness in my heart I didn’t know how it got there, and the love I once felt for my husband returned after a few good sermon’s timed just right, songs I clung to that stirred things up I had shoved way down and the desire of having a good life.  Jonathan was born a year later and I slipped into depression over the choices I made concerning his birth and some issues with our marriage once again.  I had found myself weary again, trying to hold my family together, taking care of a three year old, a thirty year old and was full-term with our second child making it from paycheck to paycheck, seen as outcasts at our church, and family members on both sides just waiting for the divorce papers to come back. 

I lost sight of the birth I wanted which to me represented much more than the birth itself.  It was me standing up for what I found to be the best decision.  It was me making my own choice desperately seeking the validation that comes with making a good decision.  Somehow the only time I had that validation was when I brought home a good grade.  My choice of college was looked down upon, my choice of husband was looked down upon, nobody from my family came to our wedding for peat sake!  So finally researching a good option, what would have been a healing one for me in more ways than one, slipped through my fingers and I opted to have major surgery based on the convenience of others and their schedule…once a freakin’gain.  So I became depressed and didn’t realize it until my husband spotted it.  Something in our marriage changed, again.  I was the one who was not thinking clear, I was lost, I was unsure of my identity and in emotional pain.   I used to run from emotional pain, still have that urge from time to time.  I can’t exactly see past that pain once I mound it up so high.  I ran away from my husband.  He chased me to GA and won me back, we communicated without yelling after getting a good yelling match out, telling each other how we felt when the other person did something, telling each other what we needed from the other.  I became pregnant with Grace.  She was not planned but welcomed. 

                Now here is where I grew the proverbial set of balls.  I knew that I was making an informed decision.  All the evidence supported a vaginal birth after 2 cesareans(vba2c).  I knew I would have to fight for it.  Everyone thought I was crazy or stupid and family members said so to my face.  NO-ONE supported me but I had peace, inner peace that only comes from God.  That peace that you can’t explain, some call it intuition, some call it your gut instinct, or even Providence.  Well, I had it.  This decision was not just making a great and safer choice for my baby and me, it was the culmination once again of me validating myself.  This time though it was not me seeking the validation of others.  It was me already having the validation of my Creator and letting others see I wasn’t a flake.  While I was depressed after Jonathan’s birth I really struggled with the decision of putting other’s wants ahead of mine for his birth.  One day during a private boo-hoo session, aka: pity party, God spoke as clear as day to my heart, “Because you chose to honor others above yourself I will honor you.”  Boy did I cling to that.  Yep, there was more divorce papers (*sigh*) re-locating, stress, and nausea until 5 months, and family member saying, “He will NEVER change”  “When are you gonna open your eyes?”, “You better tie your tubes”, “You are crazy!” AND more prayers!  I never stopped clinging to God and His promise to me.  I mean clinging.  There were times I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t sleep, I was scared.  I would slide out of bed and hit the floor on my knees, tucking my big belly in between my legs, desperate for God to move in my life, for my family and to validate me, pouring out my heart quietly so I did not wake my sleeping boys.  I kept myself surrounded by worship music and the very, very few people I knew who were still rooting for our marriage.  I love you Lisa and Kate.  Sure enough, two freakin weeks before I was due with Grace, my husband dropped the divorce papers.  We couldn’t decide where to live.  Well, I knew I couldn’t move back in to the house we were in neither could I be so close to the family members that had no confidence in me and thought so little of me and thought so little of their own son.  My husband rightly couldn’t move down so close to the family members who thought so little of him and had no confidence in him.  What happened?  That is a great question.  An excellent one!  It is the culmination of years of struggling finally set in circumstances that everyone can see.  My husband got laid off.  No job.  No college to offer his B.A. program…except in Georgia.  The choice was made for us.  We bought a van and he was officially laid off on the same day and in that order.  We sold a vehicle, consolidated bills, signed the official reconciliation papers for the last time in our lifetime and had a baby a few days later.  Do you want to see a picture that I have framed in my bathroom?  I look at it every day and it reminds me that I need my husband.  I NEED him! 

  I successfully birthed our daughter and savored the comments I received from those who doubted me. 

               

       So now that I laid the backdrop that led up to this past year I will come back to my point I was trying to make.  This past year has been monumental.  After being unemployed for an additional 5 months after our daughter was born, living in an un-renovated apartment with a room-mate we came upon, we bought our own house.  While my husband and I have had ups and downs during the last year, we have learned the power of taking it on the chin, forcing down crow, and holding our tongues.  It is true that “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and they who indulge in it shall eat the fruit of it” (Proverbs 18: 21).   What is pretty funny is the very next verse.  It states, “He who finds a true wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.”  Ha!  I hardly doubt the wisest man ever to live just randomly placed that one there.  Although the thought of filling the Proverb’s 31 woman shoes is daunting, that woman was well aged so thankfully I have years left for my proverbial feet to grow.  Having gone through all we have gone through as a couple we can honestly say we trust that the other truly loves the other.  A love that has been tempered by storms, selfishness that broke us individually and as a couple, and derision of others does not fail.  For anyone not familiar with the definition of love check out 1 Corinthians 13. 

Ya, so you aren’t a believer in Creation or the Redemption of Jesus Christ that the Bible claims is true.  That’s fine, just check out the definition of love and if you disagree then you haven’t lost anything.   Reading the Bible doesn’t make you a weirdo, you are just researching the truth for yourself.  And yes, research other material as well not just the Bible.  Seek out the evidence for yourself, not hearsay from those around you or a history channel show you watched three months ago.  Decide for yourself not what your Sunday School teacher taught you, your parents instilled in you, or even what you learned in college.  Otherwise you will be the narrow minded one.  

I have become pretty well versed in the birthing community and we have a coined term that you probably have learned in ethics class called Informed Consent.  If this is new to you, informed consent basically means the Doctor does not tell you what to do, he offers you the risks and benefits involved in an intervention based on evidence from current studies and guidelines set forth by ACOG, allowing you to make the choice for yourself.  Informed choices now have a place in every aspect of my life not just how I give birth but what food I buy for my family, right down to my core beliefs.

Because most people will not stop to read the chapter on love in the Bible, I will sum up my conclusion of love.  Love is sacrifice.  It is sacrificing yourself without sacrificing your identity.  I accept my husband now and myself.  I don’t like everything about him.  He doesn’t like everything about me.  I don’t like everything about myself, but we have gotten comfortable with our differences and recognized we make a dog gone good team when we respect the other’s differences *insert=listen to and apply it to the situation unbiased, figure out a way to make it work* and give them room to be themselves.  We have the mentality that only by working together will we leave a legacy for our children, our children who have just as much me as him in them.  And for those of you still waiting for that condemnation low punch to the groin….We believe marriage is sacred.  It is worth every last ounce of effort, sweat, fear, agony, self-sacrifice, fight and prayer to keep your family together.  That being said there is no condemnation if you don’t believe the same.  That belief my husband and I share is not from scripture in the Bible although you will find it there, it is from our experience.  From seeing God answer unbiased prayers, okay so there were biased prayers; closing and opening doors not just in our lives but in our hearts.  We are the happiest we have ever been in life and at times are still paycheck to paycheck.  We have stability in our lives that our children can grow strong from.  Just like a house being built on a firm foundation has a better chance of surviving a storm than one that is not structurally sound.  We by no means have a perfect life, but when we raise our voices at each other and do have a spat, our children see us forgive each other and work through it, a skill I do not hesitate to say they will need in life.  They model everything else after their parents why not conflict management.

So for those churches that we have tested out around here in the Bible belt, you are wrong!  If you aren’t actively serving in the church it doesn’t mean you don’t have a true relationship with the Lord.  No, if everything is going smoothly in your life then it does NOT mean you must be appeasing the Devil, not the Lord.   You do not have to use up to date lingo and come across as a laid back, peaceful, Jesus loves you no matter what-just come to the lord and be happy approach to reach the “lost”.  Yes we have seen it all.  Oh, and if your kids are sick, STAY AT HOME! 

We are sick and tired of churches trying to preach the truth at unbelievers, shedding light on the error of their ways without showing interest in their endeavors.  Tired of churches reaching out and emailing, coming over to your house, knowing your name, etc only to drop you the moment you have pizza with the pastor and after missing 8 weeks of church due to traveling and illness in your family not a single call or email from these folks.  Only to return home after the last trip to a letter asking for money.  Ya, you can probably tell this has been the second hardest thing from “the Church” I am trying to get over.  Be a friend to those around you.  The Good Samaritan physically saw someone in the gutter and took care of them.  Jesus chose a tax collector and fishermen as his disciples, the “sinners” looked down on by the religious institution and he called them friends.  He didn’t see them as a convert to win over and neither did he see himself as better than them.  He loved them.  He loves us.

So if you have read this all the way through, Thank you for listening to me, and putting up with my slightly annoyed tone.  I am excited to see where God will take our family next and I know that time is right around the corner.  Even if it isn’t a physical move out of our house, change is in the forecast.  Change that will continue to bring forth the good plans He has for us, to know Him more and more and hopefully, just hopefully help someone else along the way who has been in similar shoes.  And a church we can “fit” in would be nice too.

May God give you...
For every storm, a rainbow,
For every tear, a smile,
For every care, a promise,
And a blessing in each trial.
For every problem life sends,
A faithful friend to share,
For every sigh, a sweet song,
And an answer for each prayer.