Life- Drowning and Being Saved.

Wow! I'm not really sure where that title came from but I think it fits perfectly with what my life was, a drowning in the proces, and what it is becoming, a salvation project. I guess more than anything I am reminded of my life because of a story and a friend's current struggle. Without giving anything away, I can say that I feel compassion for her, I understand what she is going through because I too have been through the same thing. The personification of my life is not as it seems. I was told this weekend twice "you are tough". Even though I can deny that openly and truly know that I am not "tough", the personification that I present is the "tough exterior" life, the "suck it up and get up" person who can get through anything, or it seems that way.
The majority of my life, the part where I became this tough person, was spent drowning. I have no other way to explain it than that way, I was drowning. I didn't know it then but looking back now, I was. My life was filled with all the things that I wanted, done the way I wanted and there wasn't anyone in my life who was going to change me. Not my husband, not my family, not my children. I knew what I wanted and that is all there was going to be. I wanted the fairy tale marriage, I wanted the nice house with property and horse, I wanted no strife, I wanted perfection with no work...ah the good life. Well let's face facts here Theresa, that is definitely not what my life was like. When I didn't have the fairy tale, prince on a white horse, romance marriage, I started to struggle within my marriage. Doubting if Lee was "the right man for me". Wondering if there was something more and perfect. When things in and around my family was going the "right way", I pretended and fantasized about it being the right way and ignored those things that were happening. When I became a mom and realized that motherhood was more than I "bargained for", I went through my childrens childhood just being a provider not a mom. And my life became a fast moving river that was sucking me down and drowning me. And I struggled against that current looking for what I wanted. What I had planned out and expected, not what I was living. I was drowning in my own tears, that were becoming a river or anxiety, hatred, anger, frustration, discontent, you name I was it....drowning.
I don't believe I hit "rock bottom" but I was close. Things in my life were quickly falling apart and I was on the brink on falling apart with it. That's when the saving began, when I couldn't come up with any way to make what I wanted work anymore.
Isaiah was told plainly "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you." I was just recently given that passage. When I was so tired that I couldn't find a way to "search" out God.
I have a friend heading down the same path that I took and walked for 17 years, and I know what lays ahead of her. I know what is lurking around the next corner, what is lying in wait, and I want to run and tell her not to fall into the river, it's so very close and the path is being, even now, eroded away as she enters the beginning of the journey she is facing. And I want to encourage her to take those steps on that journey. She has something that I didn't have to start that journey, she already has God, I had to start the drowning process in order to find Him. The journey is not going to be easy, and from the inside looking out, it is going to look as though the waters are very deep. But no matter how much she may want to believe it, the rivers will not overflow her, they will be ebbed. I wish I could go to her and tell her to run toward the journey, the challenge and do not shrink away from it, the river is hoping, waiting for the first signs of doubt to come rushing in. And I would love to give her this piece of encouragement and hindsight. Being saved is the part of my life when I realized this: Marriage isn't a Cinderella story, a romance novel, or a girlie movie. Marriage is a cycle, a merging of two totally different lives being altered to become one. A changing of the guard so to speak, only this time one of you don't leave. You stand together, cover one another, protect one another, encourage and support one another and in the end you find that really in truly this man you are with isn't just some random person you had a small spark of love for but a man who was given to you. Given in a way that only God can give and then the fairy tale times drift away and love sets in. Children aren't here to be raised and their childhood goes quickly, like the changing seasons. I missed all of my kids' childhood, I wish I could go back and start all over with what I know now but I can't. Children are by far the best thing in an adult life, they are in our life to teach us to laugh and how to play again; because, believe it or not, we do forget how to play and really laugh.
Drowning in life is an option, it's something that I allowed to happen, something that I think in some part of us, we all allow it happen. And during that time, some of us-like me, become tough, but more likely than not - drowning becomes the end result. Being saved and being able to stand in the river and know that it is not going to overflow me, is a result of guidance and allowing God to work around me. I wish I would have ran into my journey instead of crawled, but for me I wouldn't have been saved, I would have just learned to run. For my friend, I believe she is being called to run, to trust, to stop looking at things around her and look ahead at what is already planned and know that she is able to stand along the river and in the river and not drown.