chapter 4.5

****if this is your first read, be sure to start at the beginning of the story....called "it's a good life"******

also, check in at the c-box to your left if you don't want to post....it's just fun to see who has been here. 8) thanks

now back to the story.

a home group is an incredible thing. i've never been a part of one before, but i don't know what i would do without them now. for me it became almost a therapy group for a while. this is the place i would go to spill whatever beans i had been holding in all day..or all week.
it's also the place you go to get a really very much needed hug and possibly to be held while you cry....it's the place where you talk about things you don't talk about anywhere else, and it's the place where you feel safe.

i guess you could say, i got hooked! 8)

ok, so--things are good, right?

we're both gainfully employed (meaning if we keep the budget, we can pay our bills). we have this great little house. i finally found a church. i'm starting to build relationships. everything is wonderful!

except the part about how my husband is definitely now NOT walking with God. don't get me wrong, james and i have always done a lot of things together, and that included backsliding. we went down together. but now that i was trying to fix that in my own life, well, james didn't really follow suit. one of the reasons i think of that house as the "purification house" is because of the lessons the Lord taught me through my relationship with my husband during those years.

both of us have done and said really hurtful things to one another in our moments of frustration and anger. God has been so gracious to wipe all of that away. and i don't have to go into the details to show you what i learned.

one thing i learned...you know in 1 corinthians 13, the love chapter, it says, "love always trusts." that's kind of a weird one if you think about it. the world usually says that you have to have trust in order to love. but it isn't what the Lord says. and He ministered to my heart about His love. that time and time again, He is hurt by us but never puts up a wall against us. His heart is always open to us when we come back to Him. He never says, "you know last time i told you to do something, you just did the opposite, and it really hurt me, and i forgive you, but i'm not going through that again." He continues to trust us even when we are untrustworthy. one of the reasons for that is that one who is never trusted with something cannot become trustworthy without the practice.

another thing i learned...you can't be on the same team and still be enemies. it's one or the other. something that i learned to remember in my own heart whenever i wanted to yell and insult and hurt my husband...is that we are on the same team. and one of the goals of this team is a happy marriage. so i cannot make my husband my enemy. i must make him my partner and work with him to find out how to love him in whatever situation we find ourselves. it took some time to get that one right. i definitely did my share of yelling and hurting and insulting.

a third thing....God honors the heart that will follow Him, even alone. meaning i had to learn and train myself that i would be in church no matter what my husband did. if he wanted to sleep, i was in church. if he wanted to go somewhere else, i was in church. if he wanted to .... whatever, i was in church. it took me a long time to get that one right, but i found out that God honors our commitment and uses it for His glory.

here's something else. God is always faithful. i mean always! 8)

ok, so that was chapter 4.5.....just a little tidbit. hope you liked it.

to be continued....