"Out with the old.........."

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; Some blunders and absurdities have crept in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered by your old nonsense. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The common saying on New Year's Eve is "Out with the old and in with the new!" And as I was ringing in the New Year with great friends, many things passed thru my mind! 
Going thru Divorce in 2015 triggered all kinds of emotions and unsettling feelings. It totally disrupted the life I knew and launched me into uncharted territory. Everything changed; my routines, my ability to trust another person, the loss of self-esteem, and uncertainty about the future. Along with these changes, I was blown away by how devastated I felt (even though I wanted the divorce). Allowing myself to feel my emotions and move through the pain of loss is what helped me let go of my old relationship and move on with my life.

Divorce is an end and a beginning. From the moment you walk down the courthouse steps, you're going to need new knowledge and new ideas and most of all a new you. Even after the disequilibrium of the breakup is restored and you've found balance in the various spheres of your life, you're a different person.

So let's begin right there. First you need to take control of your own life. I wish I could tell you that it's okay to lie down and pull the covers over your head, but that's not possible. You may feel like you're the only person in the world who could ever feel this bad, but let me assure you, YOU have plenty of company. Once you've decided that "it's really over," you'll have set into motion the task of becoming a different person, a better person.  While your decision marks the end of a marriage, it's also the formation of a new kind of family. It's a new play with different characters in strange settings and changes in relationships.

In the first weeks and months after I left my marriage, I tried so hard not to succumb to my inner pain. I tried to present a strong outer image — that “I’m a survivor” persona. I couldn’t fall apart because I had my family and grandkids, my friends who knew very little and only saw this power couple who were in love, and my pageant daughters who depended on their mentor… and because I felt that everyone in our community was watching to see how I did. I believed that I had to be stoic and that I needed to just do what needed to be done. As much as my heart felt broken, I stuffed my pain down and went through the motions of going on with my life.

In the early days someone special from my past surfaced and it immediately reminded me of the young carefree girl that I was!  Some things never change, and I wasn't so different from that teenage girl who always knew who she was, dared to enjoy life, and wasn't afraid to be different!  It reminded me once again there is life after loss.  My pain did not make me weepy, or a sobbing mess, it challenged me to pick myself up and move on!  I couldn't change it, I didn't ask for it, but I did need to grieve it! Emotional pain is real, and the only way to get over your loss is to grieve it.  I worked at not stuffing it to far down. I just found a safe place and way to express my pain — rather it was through crying, raging, writing down my feelings, talking to friends, exercising, punching my pillow, or prayer — I just did it. It was the best thing I could do to help myself to heal.

 Most people don't understand that divorce follows a long trajectory. What you feel today is probably not going to be relevant to your life three, five, or ten years from now. The quick fix that you want to put into place tomorrow won't be of much use down the post-divorce road. You can take steps to ease your immediate pain, but the really hard work comes one day and then one year at a time with changes that ricochet into your life.
You're about to undergo a metamorphosis. To succeed for yourself, your family and those that depend on you, you're going to have to create a self-image as someone who can cope with the demands set before you. You can't become an effective person until you've regained your footing and begun to repair the damage done by the failed marriage and the inevitable stresses of the divorce.

How fast or how well this happens depends on how you respond to the challenges and frustrations that lie ahead. There's no way not to cry. Whether you left the marriage or you were the one left, crying is good for the soul. It doesn't banish the hurt but at least you can get the pain out of your belly. But if you're caught up in the image of having failed in your marriage -- because you were betrayed or you're guilty of breaking your marriage vows or your judgment was just plain lousy -- you will be burdened. Nor can you muster the strength you need if you think of yourself as a victim. It may be grossly unfair if the person you trusted most in the world is the cause of all your pain, but that feeling must yield to the tasks before you.

As strange as this sounds, if you find yourself raging at your husband or wife, it really doesn't matter if you're right. What matters is that being enraged will eclipse your ability to mourn and to heal for the next person who comes along in your life. It will cloud your judgment and make it harder for you to take care of yourself. Worst of all, it will make it much harder for you to be a compassionate and loving person.

If your divorce is like most, only one of you wants to end the marriage. There's almost always pain and palpable grief. At this point, the hardest thing you face is the need to avoid getting stuck in your pain. The decision to divorce requires that you focus on what lies ahead, unrelated to how or why the divorce happened. If you are the one who wanted out and are feeling great relief and pride at having, at last, done what seemed impossible, you are to be congratulated. But you're still going to face problems.

Unfortunately, the legal change noted on your divorce papers does not usher in this change in identity. You do. Divorce doesn't happen in the courts, although the public record is what makes it official. It happens in the psychological changes that occur over time in both you and your ex-partner. Most of the changes occur gradually, with the result that you wake up one morning and realize that you're a different person. You no longer cry yourself to sleep, wake up angry, berate yourself for your poor judgment, obsess all night about whether you made the right decision, or feel like screaming much of the time. After weeks or months, of feeling shaky and bewildered, there will come one psychological moment when you become this new person, content and ready to move on!

How can you tell? You'll know that you've begun to acquire this important new identity when you finally excise your partner's voice somewhere inside your head berating you, accusing you, pleading with you, or hounding you. You are a new person when you finally stop feeling like a failure who says, "I tried so hard but my best was not enough," when you feel free, even hopeful, and can make decisions without trembling inside. In taking these new steps toward a new identity, reward yourself with something real that makes you feel good. Try a massage, a night out, a new hairdo, a whole new outfit or a weekend get-away!  As it is after any shock, you may start out walking a bit unsteadily but then you will gather strength as you go forward.

To begin the healing process, you might try this. In your mind, go back over the years and try to recapture who you were before you got married. Are there earlier self-images that you can substitute for the sad ones linked to your failed marriage? Were you hopeful as a young man or woman? What happened to that hope? Did you have other choices when you chose your husband or wife? We all have different dreams and get swept me off our feet with promises of everlasting love!  We all hope to find that love where the honeymoon never ends! I look at myself in the mirror and I don't worry about what stares back at me!  I am happy with who I am, stronger for where I've been and confident on where I'm going wherever that is!  

At some point every man and woman, whether left or leaving, has to face up to the hurt and disappointment that go with a failed marriage and the continuing tensions of the divorce. Resolving grief means letting go. In divorce, it's letting go of the memories collected over many years of being together. It means letting go of the hopes and dreams that led you to marry this person in the first place. You need to pull up the memories of your courtship and all the good times you had together, to mourn each recollection individually and put them to rest.

At times I felt immobilized by the pain of the break-up of your marriage, yet I felt that same immobilization many times in the marriage also.  I had feelings of fear and powerlessness and at times felt like I was in a living hell.  I often felt like I was standing alone in drifting sand that obliterated the forward path that I knew I needed to take but couldn't quite see, until enough was enough!   And in true June style?  When I was done, I WAS DONE!

Why?  Because I had done all the work already and it never was enough!  So in spite of the devastation and loss I was experiencing, I FELT I needed to show the world that I could power through the debris of my shattered life and survive!  Why?  Because that's what June does and that's what people expect of me!  I remember that inner paralysis well — going through the motions of each day, wearing a paper-thin veneer of “being okay” to present to the world, while feeling broken inside.

As I began to navigate this change of direction in my life's journey, I have begun to not only survive, but thrive! I allow my self to heal. That was the only way to begin to ease the pain that catches you with every breath — you have to let the anger go for moments and allow yourself to feel the pain.

As you feel it, you allow it to be expressed and released. I picked my times when it was safe and appropriate, most times by myself or in my car alone with God.  I allowed it to rise within me and feel it right to its depths. It is scary because it feels like it is going to engulf you, but I promise you if you experience some of the same, it won’t!  If you go right into it, its power will swell, crest, and subside — and you will find a sense of calm and peace as it does. Do this as often as your pain rises within you. It needs to be acknowledged and released.

I know the only way to truly heal is to feel what you are feeling. Of course, I am grieving. I have lost my partner, my relationship, my best friend and all my hopes and dreams for my future! I need to take the time to feel what I am feeling, and in time, it will get easier because, bit by bit, I have released the pain that I have internalized over a long period of time. Because I have experienced the trauma of abuse and addiction in my life, I understand even more the emotional pain and hurt to process and release. I tried to suppress it. If you do, it will lock into the tissues of your body and manifest itself in other ways — as physical illness and pain. It certainly did for me at different times in my life. Emotional pain doesn’t go away by itself. It needs to be acknowledged, expressed, and released for true healing to happen.

When tears come, don’t push them down and pretend to be okay. Tears are your body’s natural healing mechanism. To deny them is to deny what your body innately knows to do to cleanse itself of toxins caused by emotional pain. Allow the tears to flow, get soggy and messy for a while, and then as they ease, get up and get moving. I have found that moving my body in whatever way feels good also helps me in my healing process. It is a natural pain remedy.

As you experience the pain and shock of your separation and divorce, allow yourself to feel and express it in safe ways. It will be the best thing you can do to heal and to begin to thrive. And you deserve to do far more than survive this pain and loss. You, like me, deserve to thrive!

So in 2016, I promise to continue to heal, I promise to let "life" happen and not close doors because I don't trust.   No more time outs,  no more putting on the brakes; I enter 2016 with an open mind and an open heart!  Oh, and ONE more thing… and for me, it has been crucial on every journey of healing… know that you can turn to GOD to help you heal. Give up your pain to the Holy Spirit and allow His wisdom to guide you and God’s Love to soothe you!

Faith: Are You Ready to close your eyes??

Resolute: admirably purposeful, determined, and unwavering, steadfast, resolved.

Every year we resolve to change. We resolve to do something we haven’t been doing in our minds or our lives, successfully. We begin to edit our lives and the things we feel we need to change. The things we feel we have failed at and need to do better. Whether our health, our weight, our path; better dad, better husband, better friend, better person. Stop spending, save more, no negativity, more positivity, more of God and less of me. It doesn’t really matter what it is, at the first of the year we, at least, internally resolve to do better somewhere. 

For the week leading up to the New Year I began to edit my life, where I had fallen short, in hopes to alleviate my shortcomings in 2016. As my mind began to make the list, I found myself adding and deleting things until I almost felt consumed in the realization that, I have too much stuff. When we resolve to do something we stand firm, completely positive, unwavering like a rock pounded intensely by the waves. Day afte4r day and year after year we tend to conclude that our “resolutions” become a reminder of failure. In my 32 years of life I have yet to actually conquer a new year’s resolution. I know I don’t only speak for myself but for 1000’s of others all over the world. We intently set ourselves up to fail, even though we left failure and struggle in the years past.

I know every Dec 31^st at 11:59 I await the bell, the grand celebration to release all of the past year’s shortcomings and failures, and I reach for a vibrant confidence to conquer goals in the new year. Then 12 o’clock hits everyone screams, champagne bottles pop, noise makers screech, kisses fly, and confetti falls while new dreams and goals are born in a confidence I’ve come to learn is only temporary. A confidence to change our world we live in, a confidence that was built on the past year’s failures. We are blinded by false confidence enough to believe we can actually form a true resolution. How can we be resolved in anything with false confidence? We lack true confidence because of the failure we still truly reside in. The snap of a finger or the sight of a ball dropping doesn’t just, poof!,  release the inner spirit that we have convinced of failing from the true emotion of non-completion. I have learned, no longer can I put confidence in the flesh to achieve anything, to accomplish any goal, overcome any feat or move any mountain. With my mind lost in the consumption of editing, I turn to prayer and ask God to give me one thing this year that can change my life, one word that can truly change everything. Please give me the word I need to Focus on that will move mountains and bless my life in abundance.

After a couple of days in prayer God answered my question. He first started by spending the week answering my question by having it answered through the work of others. All week my life has been challenged by others’ issues and problems that have arisen in their lives as they seek for answers through me. My answer was the same to them that he was using with me while I used scripture to teach and water their souls with his word. All the while God knew exactly what he was doing, because at the end of the week before the end of my prayer He Spoke, FAITH. Son you must have faith.

Faith defined is confidence or trust in a person or thing; or the observance of an obligation from loyalty. Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Faith answers every problem, failure, or trouble that lies within me. Faith and confidence in prayer, Have FAITH and confidence in believing my prayers will be answered. Faith with an expectancy that God will always show up. Walk by Faith, Live by Faith, Breath by faith. Faith when I approach my finances, faith when I approach my calendar, faith in experiencing his presence in Constance! Romans 14:23 teaches, “But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.” When we eat in doubt, when we eat and have confidence in the flesh, we fail faith, we sin against our very desire to succeed. In Philippians 1:6 Paul assures us whom are broken, us whom are being worked on by God we are to “be confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” We must have unshakeable faith that God is not done with us yet. His painting of our lives is much grander than the unfinished ugly work on the backside of the canvas, for on the day of completion in his work we can be assured that, when we are invited around to the front side of his work it will be the most beautiful painting our eyes could ever fathom.

The good news is not pick yourself up, it is not you can do it, THE GOOD NEWS IS  put your faith and confidence in him because he has begun a work in you he promises to complete. You say it’s risky, you say I’ve done that Sean, I’ve risked everything to follow Jesus. I say with risk comes cost, with risk comes injury, but your injury is self- inflicted, your cost is the stripping and tearing down of the old you so God can mold and transform the beauty of his work into something much greater than you can ever imagine. But Sean I want to avoid pain, I don’t want to risk because risk is painful. I’ve got news for you, avoiding pain is like avoiding gravity, you will never avoid pain.

The enemy lurks constantly to steal your confidence through accusation and assumption, blinding your eyes to falsehoods of God and his promises. My confidence has been shaken, my confidence torn to the ground, however, Jesus says in Matthew 16:25, “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” It’s time to lose your life, it’s time to step out and walk on water in faith, God will direct you to land. Confidence is used 54 times in the bible, Faith is used 336 times in the king James version. We can confidently have faith in all we do this year. For all of us whom have been injured when taking risk please hear in Hebrews 10:22-23, “let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, he who promised is faithful.” God is FAITHFUL to us. His promises reign true.

I know that having my confidence shaken deters me from confidently approaching him. I have a hidden belief that I am in trouble, there’s no way I can come to him in confidence! I’ve done this, I’ve done that. I’m for sure in trouble. I allow my mind to be taken over by the enemy in assumption. It’s like when I get a text or you get that text from your mom that just says, “Call Me”, my mind begins to swirl, what did I say, what did I do, how can I field this, so I pick up the phone and make the call. “Hello” “hey sweetie, just wanted to let you know I got tickets to the basketball game, wanted to see if you wanted to go.” “WOW, really that’s it” We have to approach God with confidence and freedom. Ephesians 3:12 reminds us, “In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” We can come to him bare, we can approach him with the faith as though our week was Jesus’ week. We can come before god having been clothed with the righteousness of Christ. You see we have been given the permission to approach the throne of grace boldly and with Faith. Hebrews 4:16, “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” So I leave you with this we are to remain faithful and full of confidence in everything that we do. Knowing that our god will always show up in all that we do. David says in his exuberant declaration of faith in Psalm 27 13-14 “I remain confident of this; I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” BE STRONG, TAKE HEART and wait for the lord! Wait for the lord for he is always faithful, his hand will always deliver, and is not done with you yet. It is time to close my eyes and grab his hand, is it yours?

By: Sean A. Smith

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