Author: Tamara Belanger (Page 17 of 74)

Only with a better ending for the song…..”Yesterday, all my troubles seemed they’re here to stay, now it looks as if they’re far away.”

I walked into school yesterday morning quiet and still so as not to wiggle the jello in my stomach.  My emotions were tender and precarious, after the day before, like the first day after the flu when you don’t dare eat more than dry toast. After baring my soul, and after feeling “called” to do just that, I just wanted to sit just quietly like Ferdinand the Bull, a children’s book I used to read to my kids.

As I made my way through the day, first one, then another, of the kids and teachers and parents found their way to me.  “I’m praying for you.”  Some hadn’t even read my words from the day before and had no idea of my hearts’ wound.  It’s just because the Creator of my wounded heart wanted it held extra close and so He whispered to people around me who He knew would love me into His shadow.

The morning turned into afternoon and, it being Friday, and the weekend approaching; that time when everyone but you seems to have plans to put on Facebook; I started to feel myself sink a little with the late day sun.  I went into the bathroom to be alone a minute.  “God.  I want to panic again.  I don’t know what to do with myself.  Tell me what to do.  Ugh.  I miss my boys far away.”  It’s funny how sad can wrap itself around lonely to compound the fracture.   I sat a minute and let myself cry in a gaspy sort of way, just for a minute and then I knew.  I was going to go get my girl and I something to eat and come back and watch the basketball game at school.  I don’t even like sports.  But my “family” was there.

We walked into the gymnasium, full of hamburgers and garlic parmesean  fries and found ourselves surrounded by friends; the kind that make you laugh too loud.  As I threw back my head I looked up at the rafters of the ceiling.  “Thank you, Father.  Good, good Father, for giving me what I didn’t know I’d find.”  We left with plans to meet for breakfast and talk life the next day.

The girl and I came home and piled up 3 blankets deep on the couch to watch a movie until we fell asleep.  It was our plan to stay right where we fell.  Sometime during the night, I woke up from a snapshot dream.  My Hannah and Rachael, my older girls, were in it.  “You guys!  Come look!  It snowed!”  Hannah’s voice was excited but quiet and sparkly enchanted.  When we looked out the window there was a glittery light surface white shining in the moonlight.  And then I woke up sleepy and groggy.  I felt a lifting, a peace, from the day before.  “Father,” I heard myself whisper, “hear the prayers of your children, my friends, on my behalf.  Renew my strength, my thoughts, my emotions, my heart, my vision.  I am Your container.”

I still feel tender.  But I’m not sure I need to lose that feeling.  It makes me aware of how fragile, how precarious, how rough the way here can be.  And points me in His direction.  Because, the truth is, this world is not my home.  I’m just a passin through.  How deeply grateful I am, though, that He’s put pilgrims beside me to help me carry the load.

I washed up on shore today.  Limp and ragged.  Just got shot in the heart without my armor on and it took me by surprise.  I feel like a carrot scraped raw and  my leafy green top hangs by a thread. It’s a fresh wound to a recent stab site and I wasn’t expecting to feel it.

I’m now on wobbly legs.  I can hear the hissing of the arrows pointed right at me.  I’m batting back life long lies that feel real true right about now and my arms feel weak; the will to fight it just barely there.

The honest truth is I feel worthless.  Unlovable.  Unkeepable.  Foolish.  Replaceable. Wrong.  Weak. Discarded. Picked over.  I thought I’d found a home for my heart.  I’d risked vulnerability. I’d invested.  I’d shared honest.  The favor wasn’t returned.   It didn’t end well. It didn’t really end at all; just sort of gasped till it died.  Today I saw the heart icon and it killed the hope I’d denied was still there.   Social media can be a battleground of the mind.  I’ve opted out of the territory for awhile.

I shook all the way home, the emotion more than I’d bargained for.  It felt like an army tank driving over me flat.  And then I remembered, I’d flat out challenged the enemy of my soul just this morning.  I’d gone after his ground, praying against it.

he has taken me on and hit below the belt. ( I refuse to capitalize the “he”.)  So I’m putting on my yoga pants and going to exercise until I’m too tired to keep going.  And then I’m going to lay down and cover up with my cozy blanket and rest in my Creator’s lap, commit myself to Him….and continue to do good.

What if you knew that what you were about to say was the last thing you’d say to someone; to anyone at all?

What if all the distractions in this life were keeping you from noticing the thing, the person, the small something that was the reason in the first place?

What if the attention you’re paying to someone or something is less than the best one or thing?  That it’s sucking the liquid in your eyeballs  from staring too hard and the space in your brain right dry?   That it’s causing you to strive for what you don’t really need or want? That the virtual world is more real than real is?  That you keep forgetting to look up and take stock?

What if, on the way to getting somewhere, you passed where you were supposed to be?

What if you didn’t notice that someone had just told you they loved you because they did it quiet with a meal or a sentence written on a card?  Or yelled it at you to get your attention and you yelled back because you thought they were mad?  What if your kid needs you more than whoever just texted you or what if you missed all the status updates for a day….or four….and made the voice overs stop so your heart could think?  Who or what needs your attention really?

 My girl and I made this sign when the days passed eager to get to our new school this year.  I wanted to pose the question to myself and to the kids I’d yet to meet.  What kind of person do I want to become……because I am living out the story of redemption, either the how to or the how not to.

What if something happened that forced you to pay attention to your choices?  What if that’s what Love decided for you since He died for you?  So that you wouldn’t miss the point.

“”Wake yourself, wake yourself…stand up, Oh Jerusalem!  (Is. 51)  Awake, awake!  Put on your strength, Oh Zion! (Is. 52)  I can hear it whisper in my soul as I make my way through my day, the slow and steady drumming of enticement for my attention that bites at my mind and heels.  I pace the floors in the school gym calling for the dross of distraction to burn off of us all.  We don’t have time, we don’t have time……I want to warn people……we don’t have the luxury to waste our time.

Pay attention to your attention.