The "I" Project

In 2004, I started the "I Project" which involved rediscovering myself. At the time, I had come upon some shocking news that my husband was a closet pedophile and a master manipulator who had been emotionally abusing everyone near him. Hard to believe until I got involved with professionals who deal with these kinds of things all the time. It was true.  I had unknowingly married an abuser, and I had lost myself.

I started to look through photos of decades past and read old journal entries.  I was looking for things that resonated with the "real me" that I had forgotten.  What I found was AMAZING! 

Without going into details, it turns out that I knew more than I had ever realized.  It seemed like my dreams and even my inner thoughts knew what was happening, but my logical mind fought it because I thought I was being selfish.

The big lesson? TRUST myself ... as long as I was committed to God's will and seeking His path, I should have trusted what seemed like me.  Evidently it was His Spirit in me. 

Lesson learned?  Not quite.  I had to go through a few more years in the opposite ditch before I was able to separate myself from the past - good and bad - and simply seek God.

One night on my balcony, I burned photos and memorabilia that was significant to a subsequent relationship that never quite got to the place of having God first.  It hurt.  But it was also cleansing.

Since then I have had continued challenges, but my foremost aim - even amidst repentance for being human far too much (LOL - like we all are) - is to keep God in His place in my heart. 

I am thankful for grace, forgiveness, redemption, and restoration.  He is a VERY good God, and I am so humbly grateful to be His. :-)

Trust

Trust erodes and corrodes when lives are in limbo.  Hope deferred makes the heart sick.

Water and oxygen ... two elements necessary for life are also two elements that can deteriorate iron.  I'm intrigued.  I'm especially interested in the picture it gives of rusted out life.  Iron is so amazingly strong, yet these two elements which are life-giving (and which also do not harm iron separately) can simply by being present over time completely consume iron!

Walls and gates can lose their strength and no longer fulfill their purpose.  So too when trust erodes.  What once was strong or should be a strength is simply being eaten away.

As I think about my biggest missteps in life, it all goes back to trust.  I trusted too easily.

Mistakes and trust ... I made mistakes. I lost trust in myself.  And that was my first big mistake.

But I don't really want to reflect on the past.  I'm thinking about how limbo erodes trust.

Definitions of trust (n)

trust [ trust ]   

1. reliance: confidence in and reliance on good qualities, especially fairness, truth, honor, or ability
2. position of obligation: the position of somebody who is expected by others to behave responsibly or honorably
3. hope for future: hopeful reliance on what will happen in the future

Here is where I have made missteps ... at least with people and with myself.  I have had hopeful reliance on what will happen in the future.  And I have even had such confidence that I have made life changes in the expectation of those good things happening.  But what happens when that hope is unfulfilled?  It makes me think of Proverbs 13:12.  "Hope deferred makes the heart sick ..."

And I found an interesting version on bible.cc about the verse from the Bible in Basic English:  "Hope put off is a weariness to the heart; but when what is desired comes, it is a tree of life."

I am weary.  I am worn.  My heart is weary to the point that I once again don't know what to trust.  I feel too weak to trust myself.  Too weak to trust myself to hear truth.  I want that tree of life to grow strong.

It's amazing what we trust versus what we do not trust.  I trust my BlackBerry but not my heart.  If I can ever "get it right" in that department, I would be on my way to conquering the world.