Walk This Road With Me, Will You? Chap.6

It has been 2 weeks since my surgery. I just went through all of the face book messages on my page from the past few weeks and I am completely overwhelmed. All the love, prayers, well-wishes....I just can't wrap my mind around it. To say thank you seems so lacking but I don't know what else to say. I just hope that everyone knows how much I have felt and am still feeling the love. I am on the mend and doing well. Still have to watch it though. One day I will feel pretty good and over-do it a little and the next day I pay for it. I'm not use to my strength being so depleted. The biggest thing I am dealing with right now is night sweats. Oh my goodness, they are miserable! They are so different than just the hot flashes of menopause. My sheets and gown literally get soaked. It seems that they are pretty common after major surgery. My poor husband is having to change the sheets every day. I pray that they go away sooner than later:) As for the arthritis, it is not an issue. My joint pain stays around a 1 or 2.  It has been almost 9 weeks since the Enbrel shots.  I thank Him every day.

So while I was busy trying to find answers to my array of issues, life was marching on. My best friend and soulmate died of cancer at the age of 41, my daughter got married while struggling through depression and anxiety, my son went off to college while on a search to find truth, my sweet grand boys joined our family, bringing unimaginable joy, my loved ones struggled with substance abuse and I took a 10 year journey with my hero of a daddy through Alzheimer's disease. It was a most horrible journey. And it did nothing to help build my faith or answer my questions. As confused as I was, I still loved life though. I was still able to find joy in living. The good that I had always overpowered the bad. I was happy in my home and in my job. I loved my church but still there was a feeling of disconnection. Not with the people but with the religious part of it. I just felt like I didn't fit in for some reason. I still cannot explain it. But I knew one thing. I would never leave my church. That thought never even entered my mind.  What happened though is I began to lose interest. It was subtle. I used to be in church every time the doors were open. I had been so involved, all of my life and I loved it. But I found myself questioning too much. Not being able to find answers. I didn't really know how to talk about the issues I was dealing with, the Holy Ghost thing, the tongues, the homosexuality. I began to skip Wednesday nights. Then Sunday nights. It got easier and easier to just not go. My husband had his own set of church issues to deal with so he was content to stay home with me. We stopped being involved. We hardly ever gave money. We were physically and emotionally disconnecting from the church family that I had known for almost 50 years and we hardly realized what was happening. Still I never thought about leaving. I would never leave my family, even though I felt like I didn't belong. That was not anyone's fault but my own. I never got anything but love and acceptance from my church family. They just didn't know what I was going through because I didn't know how to tell them.
Shortly thereafter, a series of circumstances took place which eventually led to our leaving my church. I  can tell you in all honesty, I had never planned for this to happen and I was devastated. I literally felt like part of who I was was ripped away from me. For a long time I was numb. We immediately started looking for another church and ended up staying at the very first one we went to. I remember that the first message the pastor taught on was about Jesus. And His Grace. And how simple that is. Now, I am sure that I heard the message of Grace many times before at my former church but I had let other things that I didn't understand get in the way of it. This seemed fresh to me. And freeing. I now believe that I was in such a place in my life that I needed to hear it all from a different angle. I still missed my church family terribly but the messages I was hearing here were like life to me. I was so moved by some of them and felt like they were directed right to me, I literally could not get up from my seat when the pastor finished. I rarely cried in church, but I found myself sobbing during some of the sermons. It didn't take me long to realize that as painful as it was to leave my church, God had led us away in His timing.  I want to make it clear that it was not because my former church was bad or wrong in any way. It is a wonderful church. When we left and people would question why, I would always say, "We left a good church and we are now in a good church."  I believe with all my heart that because of the circumstances in my family's lives, some that are not even mentioned in my blogs, we were led to our current church for a reason. I will always believe that. I love my church. I miss my former one. It will likely always be like that for the rest of my life. 

I have more to tell you. The search was not over. In fact I believe that we will always be on a search for something in our lives. But I have some answers that satisfy me now. Answers that completely feel like truth to me.  And believe it or not it was my children who led me to discover answers to some of my most pressing questions about God and life. That is an amazing thought. God has used the children that He gave me to help me now understand what He is about. It is so true that He works in mysterious ways:)

My daughter will be telling her story this Sunday,  September 2nd at Forest Park Church at 8:30a,  10:00a and 11:30a. It is an incredible story. Pray for her. Come hear it if you can. And thank you again for sticking with me.......