I won’t sugarcoat this – I may have codependency issues. I’m not saying I can’t live without him with me every free second. I am just saying when I have to I feel abandoned a little… or a lot. I hope you don’t think I’m saying he shouldn’t have gone. Oh heavens no. I told him to go. I knew he needed to go. But if we are being honest here (and honest Truth is really all I want this blog of mine to be), then I need to say that after a hard long week of being here when he’s at work, being here for the laundry, the schooling, the dentist appointments, the “she hit me”, and the “he won’t stop”… I was beat. He told me Saturday was my day and I was clinging to that to get me through. But, then he got a text and I told him to go have fun and stuffed my disappointment deep.

Saturday morning he left before the sun came and I couldn’t go back to sleep. When the kids woke I told them, “Let’s go have fun to take our minds off of missing Daddy.”
Two minutes later one child got too rough and the other child was crying ugly. Simultaneously the third child was sobbing because, “I like to go fishing. Why didn’t Daddy invite me?”
On our way into town Haidyn says, “This is not how to go to Daddy’s work. Where is Daddy? I miss him so much.” Tears flowed, and I won’t lie, they weren’t just from the baby.
In my frustrations I said, “We all miss Daddy. I feel abandoned too!” The words caught in my throat. I was ashamed I had said them. They were my honest feelings, but I knew the words that I was speaking and ruminating on weren’t truth.
That very moment I pulled to a stop light. The lady in the car next to me was smiling and dancing. Her lips were moving, and I could see she was listening to the same station as I was. The lyrics were not my feelings but they were words of truth.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DavJ9UKS2ps

I turned it up loud to drowned out the father of lies. The truth is, I struggle most with codependency when I’m lacking closeness with Christ, and doesn’t Satan love to get us feeling like God is far?

For a planet with rumors of overpopulation I see a lot of lonely people. From the parent doing the job intended for two, to the one whose spouse rarely comes home, to the family still intact but very much broken. Maybe you’re fighting trough long days and even longer nights because your spouse is fighting for our flag. There are “difficult” children given up on, abandoned, lonely. There are nursing homes full of forgotten hearts, and there are widows left here and that makes them feel left out, abandoned, lonely.

I remember Grandma Pat talking about how anxious she was for Heaven after Grandpa passed.

I’ll never forget this scene in a television show; a hostage situation went on for hours before authorities stormed the building and overtook him. The ambulance took a man who was shot and his fiancée jumped in the ambulance with him. She was overcome with fear. Her behavior was so out of control that it was preventing the EMT from being able to administer the life saving care the man needed. The ambulance finally stopped and made her get out. As she stood in the middle of the NYC street the chaos changed from monitors beeping and orders being shouted, to chitchat and laughter from the sidewalk cafe. Shoppers were strolling past shops and there was a harsh reality that her life was falling apart but the world wasn’t going to stop spinning. She is abandoned, lonely. To some degree we’ve all tasted the bitter of that.

We can speculate all the reasons she might be homeless and begging in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Basically our job is to stop concerning ourselves with the WHY she is alone and start concerning ourselves with THAT she is alone.

I read it on the bathroom wall this week. Written in red like the bleeding of her soul, “Jesus died for your sins because He loves you, but I don’t feel like He loves me.”  So, in Jesus name I graffitied that wall with the promises of Love, “Yet while YOU were still a sinner Christ died for YOU! Romans 5:8 He will rejoice over YOU with gladness; He will quiet YOU by His love; He will exult over YOU with loud singing. Zephaniah 3:17 See the kind of love the Father has for YOU that YOU should be called His daughter… 1 John 3:1”

Because sometimes we just need someone lip syncing truth in the car next to us to remember that,

You rescued ME and I believe
That God IS love and He IS all I need
From this day forth for all eternity
I’ll NEVER wander on my own
For I am YOURS until you call ME home
I close my eyes and I can hear You say
You’re not alone!  -Owl City and Britt Nichols