Last night was rough. I stayed up til 2 AM read­ing Whis­per (see resources>books). Again, con­fir­ma­tion after con­fir­ma­tion, that God would make my hus­band who He cre­at­ed him to be… though no guar­an­tee he would be my husband.

I told my broth­er it was a rough night, and he sent me yet anoth­er time­ly TDJ link. It was the live stream from The Pot­ter’s House Sun­day ser­vice. It’s not up any­more, but if you go to https://sermons.love/td-jakes/ and search for “pace­mak­er,” it will pull up four mes­sage excerpts that are part of the series. 

I want­ed more, and found “Hear­ing When You’re Hurt­ing” as soon as I hit enter. My God, so appro­pri­ate. I lis­tened to it on my dri­ve to church. And as soon as I got home, my dad also told me I had to watch today’s TPH service. 

I need to be in an atmos­phere of wor­ship with oth­er believ­ers. For NYE, I plan on going to my home church’s ser­vice, and maybe anoth­er that actu­al­ly goes to mid­night. I can’t imag­ine a bet­ter place for me to close out this year and begin an unprece­dent­ed, unex­pect­ed new one, than in His pres­ence, with His people.

I had to take notes while lis­ten­ing to the mes­sage. There was just so much that applies to me! This was the only active link I could find now, but my notes/transcription are below.

THE TRANSPLANT 12.30

“God doesn’t give you full rev­e­la­tion all at once. That’s why you ought not kill your­self, because He’s not through talk­ing yet. He’s not done work­ing it out yet. He’s not done reveal­ing it yet. Lit­tle by lit­tle, He leads His dear chil­dren along.”

1 Samuel 15:7–14; 16:1

• v.11 – It repen­teth me that I have set up Saul to be king. Anthro­po­mor­phic mean­ing, I’ve turned in anoth­er direction

• 1 Samuel 16:1 – And the Lord said unto GI0, How long wilt thou mourn for YOUR HUSBAND, see­ing I have reject­ed it from reign­ing over you? Fill thine horn with oil, and GO; I will send thee … 
  • When­ev­er God asks a ques­tion, it’s always a set-up, see­ing as how He already knows the answer.

• The process of becom­ing takes time… male to man, female to woman, vows to married…

• Some­times God doesn’t give you some­thing, because He thinks He’s it. (Every sin­gle woman should have gone to danc­ing.) Some­times He doesn’t give you some­thing less­er because He is greater. I thought Myself to be your Hus­band, but if you insist, I’ll give you what you want. But be care­ful about get­ting what you want, because some­times you won’t want what you get.

• You can be out of God’s will and still see some good stuff. Sin­ners get jobs, y’all. Sin­ners have chil­dren, buy hous­es. You don’t have to be saved to expe­ri­ence progress. Progress is not always a sig­nal that you’re in His per­fect, absolute will.

• Saul’s obe­di­ence sets him in rhythm with God. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heav­en.” It sets him in a place of sub­mis­sion and sur­ren­der. Saul was kind of slick, and killed all the stuff nobody would want, kept the stuff that looked good. He did not whol­ly fol­low the Lord, and because of that, God speaks to SAMUEL, who is His prophet, and says, “I want to talk to you about Saul… I’m sor­ry I ever put him in that posi­tion.” Samuel knew right then God was going to make a change, with­out Him say­ing anoth­er word. Samuel had walked with Him to the point where God doesn’t have to explain every­thing for Samuel to know what He means. 

• Samuel start­ed cry­ing. He cried all night. Under­stand this – the prophets who proph­esy trou­ble in your life and rejoice, are lying prophets. In order to tru­ly be a prophet, there is such a lev­el of humil­i­ty, that even when you do have to say some­thing harsh, it hurts you so bad to say it. Samuel cried all night about some­thing that didn’t per­son­al­ly affect him. And yet while he was weep­ing, he still went to talk­ing. He was ten­der enough to weep, but strong enough to walk right up to the king and say, “Thus saith the Lord.” Look at that bal­ance. The one thing you want to be is bal­anced. Some peo­ple are all strength, and no com­pas­sion. Some peo­ple are all com­pas­sion, and no strength. But the sign of matu­ri­ty is to be bal­anced, not going to either extreme. Every leader in this room ought to be pray­ing every day, “Lord, give me bal­ance.” Let your mod­er­a­tion be known unto all men; the Lord is at hand. Mod­er­a­tion – not going to either extreme. Lord, let me be bal­anced. Don’t let me be bet­ter at dis­ci­plin­ing a child than lov­ing him.  I can stand your hand of cor­rec­tion if it has hugged me, held me, first.

• When you are imma­ture, you are not bal­anced. You have no equi­lib­ri­um. God wants you to be bal­anced. “I just tell peo­ple what’s on my mind. If you want to be with me, you’ll just have to get used to it.” That’s why you don’t have any­body left in your life. You’re going to be left alone.

• Ask the peo­ple around you if you are bal­anced. They will be hon­est with you bet­ter than you will of yourself. 

• He is a Lamb AND a Lion. 

• Your books don’t bal­ance, because you’re not bal­anced. Any area you’re out of bal­ance, you’re going to suffer.

• In order to be bal­anced, you have to con­stant­ly mea­sure your­self. At least 50% of your prob­lems are from being out of bal­ance. You have replaced sex­u­al­i­ty for inti­ma­cy. You need more and more and more and more, because it will nev­er scratch what’s real­ly itch­ing. You’ve lost the courage to open up and get con­nect­ed with peo­ple. You keep get­ting fur­ther and freaki­er and fur­ther out. Any time you’re out of bal­ance, you go to extremes. You’re wear­ing what you ought to be invest­ing. You have no strat­e­gy for the future. Any area you bal­ance, you will be more suc­cess­ful. Seek bal­ance. Don’t buy your wants and beg your needs. God can’t pour His bless­ings into some­one who has no restraint, no tem­per­ance. Don’t blame God for your dys­func­tion. It’s one thing to look pros­per­ous and anoth­er to BE prosperous. 

• God will bless you if He can trust you. God can’t bless peo­ple He can’t trust. I have some influ­ence to give you, but if the influ­ence is going to lead to your cor­rup­tion, I can’t give it you. Can He trust you with what you’ve been pray­ing for? The pow­er, influ­ence, stage? Or do you just want those to feed the dys­func­tion you won’t fix, because you’re out of balance?

• The secret to Samuel’s mis­sion is that his heart was opened to God. God blessed peo­ple accord­ing to their heart. Joseph was the only broth­er God could trust, that once he got up, he wouldn’t take revenge. He knew He could trust Joseph to get there first, because he wasn’t self­ish. He was for­giv­ing, com­pas­sion­ate, not venge­ful. What has God pulled out of because you fluc­tu­ate too much? Won­der what He would have giv­en you, if He could trust you?

• ***Your mar­riage might have been ripped, but your integri­ty was intact. You might have lost your job, but your integri­ty was intact. Don’t grieve about what you lost, if you held your integri­ty. Some things are worth more than mon­ey, friend­ship or resources.

• **Every part of your orga­ni­za­tion is affect­ed by your leader. The leader is the heart of the orga­ni­za­tion. To get rid of Saul is a heart transplant.

• ***The rea­son I’m preach­ing this to you on the last Sun­day of the year is because you’re going through a trans­plant. Some of you have been in a finan­cial coma. A love coma. You haven’t had the affec­tion you need­ed, the love you need­ed, finances you need­ed. God had to put you under anes­the­sia because He has to get to the heart of the mat­ter and is doing a heart trans­plant. You were ruled by dys­func­tion. He brought you here to do a new thing in you. You’re not just going to have a new year, but a new heart. 

• God’s about to do a trans­plant. See, that old heart was the root of the prob­lem. That old heart has to be tak­en out. That old heart was out of rhythm with God. That old heart was get­ting its pulse­beat from your child­hood, your ego, your low self-esteem, and God has to do a heart trans­plant. He has reject­ed the old heart, and says, “I will do a new thing in your heart. A fresh thing.” Put your friends out. Send them to the wait­ing room. They can’t go through this with you. 

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After three church/worship ser­vices, my heart was in a place of peace. I saw con­fir­ma­tion woven through­out the mes­sages, the songs, the books I’m read­ing, the Scrip­ture I’m study­ing… I felt the oppo­site of yesterday.

And then I had din­ner with my par­ents. My dad decid­ed that was a good time to ask me why I tol­er­at­ed every­thing in our mar­riage – him not pro­vid­ing finan­cial­ly, spend­ing every pen­ny and not sav­ing, not help­ing in the house. And he want­ed to know why I didn’t talk to any­one about red flags. It was a frus­trat­ing con­ver­sa­tion. And he made sure to con­vey what a POS he thinks my hus­band is, and that while he believes there’s no hope for redemp­tion, he’s pray­ing for God’s justice. 

So today, I’ve heard from three sources. My broth­er thinks there’s no hope. My par­ents think there’s no hope. DJ thinks there’s hope for his redemp­tion, but 99.9% unlike­li­hood of reconciliation. 

But my heart still has peace. I can’t go back and sec­ond-guess my choic­es and stir up regret. It is what it is. God saw my heart through­out, and He saw my puri­ty and integri­ty. Right now, I’m a much stronger per­son than I was in the begin­ning of the mar­riage. I’m nowhere near as naïve. Who knows how things might have changed if I didn’t “pro­tect” him or be the only one who believed in him. If I hadn’t adopt­ed his iso­la­tion­ist atti­tude towards our fam­i­lies, at least my fam­i­ly would have tried to help. I thought we kept dis­tance to make our own deci­sions. Mean­while he kept dis­tance to pro­tect his secrets.

One good thing about God is that Plan B is not any less­er than Plan A. Accord­ing to Joyce Mey­er’s “Don’t Offend Your­self” mes­sage, Plan B is even bet­ter, and if we adopt the right atti­tude, we can say that we are glad for the hard­ship we endured because of who it made us become, and the bless­ing we can be to so many oth­ers because of it. 

That’s my choice. And I’m stick­ing to it.

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HOW HE WOULD HAVE TO CHANGE FOR RECONCILIATION

• Repent­ed and trans­formed, obvi­ous to all (aka my family)
• Coun­sel­ing
• Reg­u­lar church atten­dance and service
• Account­abil­i­ty via god­ly male friends and mentors
• Trans­paren­cy
• Spir­i­tu­al head of house
• Dif­fer­ent career/business
• Debt-free, includ­ing stu­dent loans, and sav­ings (col­lege, retirement)
• Incred­i­bly suc­cess­ful (able to com­plete­ly pro­vide financially)
• Pay me back for any­thing he took from me in the divorce
• True part­ner­ship

It’s not hap­pen­ing, is it. I should just stop the list here.

SOMEONE ELSE

• man of God (integri­ty, spir­i­tu­al head)
• roy­al­ty – tru­ly. I want a prince, a duke, or the Amer­i­can equivalent.
• incred­i­bly suc­cess­ful (entre­pre­neur, I’m not the bread­win­ner again)
• min­istry minded
• extrovert/outgoing
• musi­cal­ly-inclined (if he could sing and/or play an instru­ment, that’d be amazing)
• foodie/can cook
• smart – book smart (well-round­ed, knows enough about every­thing) and peo­ple smart
• brings me tea and pas­tries in bed in the mornings
• trav­el bug
• dance!
• has fun, adventurous

I’m stop­ping here, because all this describes my hus­band. Except for the first line appar­ent­ly. And that makes all the difference.