on simmer

The past few months I have been running from the storm, just trying to find a shelter I can rest in. As a Christ follower, I know the name of the Lord is a strong tower and I can run straight into it and find covering. So literally, I have been running and running and running trying to see the tower. The whole time I have asked God, "What is going on with me? Am I depressed? Am I in battle? Is something really wrong? Why do I feel so lost right now?"

That is why I run. Every single time my foot hits the pavement, I see Him. He's waiting for me at the water tower. He's over by the railroad tracks I cross. I see Him. He waits for me and speaks to me with each step I run.

For my long runs, I put on the fuel belt carrying my water, my cell phone and a few gels to eat. I strap on an iPod and carry my mace. The other day I realize how much I was carrying and then thought, "How could I make this trip lighter?" I could start dropping water bottles off the night before and just doing that alone would lighten the load by about 95%. Drop it off! I don't need to carry it the whole time. I'm tired of feeling weighted down. I just want to run! I want victory in this one area of my life and until I get it, God's going to constantly remind me of how bad I need a win!

A few months ago Jeremy and I went through a life changing marriage study and had some very intimate counseling through all of it. Well, this weekend we will celebrate seven years of marriage and as much as I would love to tell you that it's better than ever, it's not. I love him, he loves me. We would never consider anything different. But I am exhausted from us constantly hitting this dead end. Marriage is work and naturally there are good days and hard days. I think we have a lot more hard days than good days. I'm ready to find that place of consistency, where the blows up don't get so BLOWN up and we learn how to fight fair.

As I was running the other day thinking about my marriage, I thought about my homemade gumbo I make. There are several steps to the gumbo. The most important being the roux. You mess up the roux and your gumbo is jacked! It's the foundation of your gumbo so it must be done right. Jeremy and I have a great foundation, it's actually a perfect one because it's Christ. He is our foundation. After the roux, you spend time adding onions, celery, bell pepper and seasonings. The smell begins to overtake your entire house and you daydream of eating gumbo all day long. But it ain't ready yet. This past year we began to understand for the first time ever, what our childhoods have done to both of us. We began to see how the pain has followed us into marriage because it was never ministered to. We were never comforted in that pain. When we figured that out, it was exciting because we understood how we could minister to those pains through each other. We even comforted pain which came from times we were very small children. There was hope! We could smell it, we could taste it!

My gumbo is probably not a traditional Louisiana gumbo but I'm from Texas so I've made it my own. So a few hours later, I add okra, sausage and shrimp and this is when I get really hungry but it still needs a more time to cook. The longer it cooks, the better it is. I love just looking into the gigantic pot once I have put every single thing in there. It's beautiful! It's starts to boil a little and it all comes to surface and that's when I know to turn it back down and let it simmer for a long time.

And that's where we are at! Everything has come to a boil and now it's on simmer. We've unpacked a whole lot of stuff, we've been given tools and ways to reconcile and work through pain from our past and pain we cause one another. Everything has gone into the pot to cook! But, as we have simmered, we've have gotten a little lost. What do we do now? How do we move forward? How do we keep this going?

When things are not right with your spouse, nothing else will be. For us, it's not hell all of the time but it's hard a lot of the times. Marriage will always have it's ups and downs because our spouses are not created to fulfill ALL of our needs and we are both dirty, rotten sinners. Born sinners! We will always have to WORK to have the marriage we want. For some of us, it's not as hard. For MOST of us, it is.

Tomorrow afternoon we are having lunch with a mentor couple in our life. They led our group through this Intimate Life study we just went through. We are blessed to have them. They do this for a living and we get to have lunch with them. :) I'm never going to quit asking for help when we hit a roadblock. It would be easy to let pride come in and keep from letting our friends know we need some help. But, I want my marriage to be healed so it's worth it. It will be healed!

I will keep making gumbo!

This morning i received an email with a youtube attached to it. I've been sent this email several times but just now viewed it. Today I needed it. I thought about what my cardboard would say and how God is working right now to show me what He wants to write on the other side of it.