Laying it on the altar

I could not count the number of times I have said this phrase in the past 3 and a half years.  Add to that the number of times others have said it to me.  Many times.

What does it mean?

“Laying it on the altar”?

In the Old Testament you will recall they sacrificed offerings to God on altars.  This is how God was worshipped. This is what God asked of them in that pre-Christ time.

Why would anyone be suggesting that to me today?

It’s surely not a matter of me getting some wood, fire & stone and offering a lamb to God.  No.  That’s not it.

So, what?

There is one particular part of the Bible that talks about Abraham & his son Isaac.  And in this passage, God tells Abraham to go up on this mountain and offer up his only son Isaac to Him as a sacrifice.  Kill his only son.  This son that God had told him HE would make into a great nation.  This son that God had given to him and Sarah in their old age.  That son.

The Bible doesn’t give us the idea that Abraham questioned God on this.  It appears that Abraham heard from God, and he did what God asked.

Assuming Abraham is just as human as you and I, I have to believe, while he may not have verbally said it, his mind had to have been racing with questions.  He had to have been wondering what would happen and how God was going to pull this off.  He had to.  He was human.  Not perfect.  Not a saint.  Just a human.

Like me.

“After all this, God tested Abraham. God said, "Abraham!"
"Yes?" answered Abraham. "I'm listening."

He said, "Take your dear son Isaac whom you love and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I'll point out to you."  Abraham got up early in the morning and saddled his donkey. He took two of his young servants and his son Isaac. He had split wood for the burnt offering. He set out for the place God had directed him. On the third day he looked up and saw the place in the distance. Abraham told his two young servants, "Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I are going over there to worship; then we'll come back to you."

Genesis 22:1-5 (Msg)

The passage continues with Abraham obeying, getting to the top of the mountain, raising the knife, and then…

They arrived at the place to which God had directed him. Abraham built an altar. He laid out the wood. Then he tied up Isaac and laid him on the wood. Abraham reached out and took the knife to kill his son.

Just then an angel of God called to him out of Heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"

"Yes, I'm listening."

"Don't lay a hand on that boy! Don't touch him! Now I know how fearlessly you fear God; you didn't hesitate to place your son, your dear son, on the altar for me."

Abraham looked up. He saw a ram caught by its horns in the thicket. Abraham took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.

Abraham named that place God-Yireh (God-Sees-to-It). That's where we get the saying, "On the mountain of God, he sees to it."

The angel of God spoke from Heaven a second time to Abraham: "I swear—God's sure word!—because you have gone through with this, and have not refused to give me your son, your dear, dear son, I'll bless you—oh, how I'll bless you! And I'll make sure that your children flourish—like stars in the sky! like sand on the beaches! And your descendants will defeat their enemies. All nations on Earth will find themselves blessed through your descendants because you obeyed me."

As I understand it, we do this today when God is asking us to lay down something very precious to us.  Something we love very much. Something God has given us, and we felt was ours to keep.  And He is asking us if we are willing to give it all up for Him.

That’s how I understand it.

In my mind, I’ve been trying to do this.  I know it is the right thing to do.  So over and over again, I will lay down bits and pieces of things dear to me. Mostly my hurt. Trying to give God my marriage, but having a hard time seeing how I give it up and believe for a miracle at the same time.  Laying it down. Letting Him have it. Offering it as a sacrificial offering to Him.

I’ve said it.  I’ve done it.  I’ve said it.  I’ve totally struggled with understanding it.

Last week I was on the mower (a great place to think), and I was thinking about this whole concept.  The promise I believe God has given me for restoration of my family.  The desire I have in my heart for that to look not just as a restoration of a father back to his children, & his God.  But back to me.  Back as my husband. 

I saw myself over the past 4 years dragging the sacrifice up and down this hill.  laying it on the altar and then pulling it off again.  Up and down.  Up and down.  Up and down.

It’s been exhausting.

Then I thought.  Have I ever really, really raised the knife to this thing?  I mean, I’ve laid it up there and then I’ve snatched it back off (unaware most of the time) and drug it around. Tried to prop it up and make it look like a living thing.  But, have I ever raised the knife?

I haven’t.

In my mind I have totally struggled with being able to separate the death of this on the altar and giving up on God’s ability to do what He said He can do.  It just felt like giving up to let the thing die out… it’s too much for my brain to grasp…

And God’s saying, “You don’t have to grasp it, Just let Me do it.”

I saw myself in my mind, standing over the promises.  Standing over my marriage.  Standing over my dreams.  My hopes.  My pain.  My struggles.  My vision.  Holding this knife.  And looking around for God to “provide a lamb”.

I couldn’t plunge that knife that day.  I had to wait and see if a lamb showed up in the bushes.

The next day, still struggling with all the thoughts… I get another moment of silence.  I remember myself still standing with the knife in the air… and I tell myself, It’s time.  Your lamb is not coming. You must kill it. 

And I physically raise my arms and bring them down in the motion of lowering a knife into some unseen sacrifice.

Then I see myself, turning, leaving the sacrifice on the altar and walking away.  Tears streaming.  It’s dead.

I have no desire to go back and get it.  But, I know myself well enough to know I might try.  And I might find myself dragging the dirty, smelly, dead thing around again.  Trying in my own human strength to make it look alive.  I don't want to, but I know I am very capable of it.

I know that God is the only one who is capable of giving me the strength to leave it there.  He is the only one who is going to be able to bring life to where there is no life.  He is it.

I found this verse to be quite interesting…

“By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.”

Hebrews 11:17-19

In my mind, I reason… God can raise the dead.  I believe that.  I have that faith.  I do.

Pam

It doesn’t matter.

That’s my new theme.  It doesn’t matter.  It would take about 10,000 words, and you would all fall asleep reading about how I came to that theme in the past week.  I’ll try to condense it into 1000 words or less.  Or at the very least 3 or 4 blog posts… sheesh… Sometimes I just want to be funny.  You know, write about funny things like the dead animal carcass’s that the dog keeps dragging up to our house… oh?  That isn’t funny… I wish I could just sit and write a post and make it funny.  Too much seriousness over here sometimes, I am ready for a change.  I need a change.  So, here is hoping I can share some of the stuff I’ve been learning and experiencing for God… You won’t fall asleep or exit my page before I’m done, and maybe in the next few days I can move on to other topics… at least for awhile.  I know I am ready.

Last week in my very first Vlogemotion, and when I wrote about swirling & whirling emotions, you could see very plainly that I was at such a loss.  It has felt like my destiny was to deal with all these emotions every time my ex-husband came around.  That somehow I was stuck. 

Honestly, I didn’t see how even God could get me out of the state of mind I found myself in.

I sat in a counseling session on Thursday saying, no I don’t want to feel this way.  Yes, I want to surrender it.  BUT, I don’t see how anything is going to change.

As we sat quietly waiting on the Lord to answer my heart’s cry, I felt Him saying, “You don’t have to understand it Pam, Just let Me do it.”

One of my biggest struggles is my desire to understand and be able to wrap my tiny little human brain around a All Powerful Untamable God.  Sounds so foolish when I say it out loud. But, it’s real.

So, I’ve been learning about just letting God heal without me understanding the “how” or “why” of it.

How?  He’s God.  He Can.  He Will.  If we will let Him.  Oh.

Why?  He is God.  He loves me.  No reason.  He just does.  Cause He’s God. 

It doesn’t matter.  It just is.

Oh.

I could write a whole post on a couple of other issues He has been speaking to me about.  Maybe I will.  What He has been teaching me on sacrifice & Laying things down,  What He has been speaking to me about thinking I could “fix” or “save” or “change” someone.   Huge things.

Uhg.

I get so frustrated with myself.  That same old thing of wanting to understand, also manifests itself in a pride that says, “I want to learn it once and get it and not keep making the same mistakes over and over again”.  Ugly thing that pride.

I find it all over the place these days.  Places I never wanted to find it. Places I didn’t think it could encounter.  Another of the places I found pride this week is in this whole promise of restoration I have been talking about since HSSH left.  I found that as I wait, I get more and more nervous that maybe I have been wrong.  Maybe I told the whole world I believe God is going to do this, and maybe He never will!  And I find pride… because in those thoughts I find myself trying to justify HSSH’s actions, and growing increasingly frustrated with his actions, because they don’t match what I believe God wants to do, and if he doesn’t do what God wants him to do then I look like a foolish idiot who is wasting her life believing something that is never going to happen.

So it’s about me again.  PRIDE.  UGLY.  Blah!!

God, I believe You said this.  But, It is not up to me to make it happen.  I don’t even understand what You mean when You say that You want to bring restoration.  I don’t know what that looks like.  I’ have created a picture in my head of what I believe it needs to look like, and as time passes and it doesn’t play out I get pretty freaked out!  I fear.  I get angry.  I try to figure out ways to make You do things the way I want them to be.

And then I find myself in a tizzy of pain, emotions, thoughts, feelings, frustrations, life sapping issues… and I don’t want to be there either. 

Show me How to walk this out YOUR way. How to surrender to YOUR plans.  How to speak boldly the truth and then let YOU do what YOU want to do YOUR way, rather than me try to make YOU into something my human brain can comprehend.

Forgive me, Father.  Thank You for being YOU.  For continuing to teach YOUR children, over and over again.  And for not giving up on me.

*******

I’ve been working through all these things with God.  Yesterday morning I got a call from HSSH.  I saw I had missed a call from him and my heart rate immediately doubled.  I cried out to God (and my friend Judy) that this is what I want to stop!  Why can’t I see his name on my phone without my heart jumping into this mode?

I was so frustrated with that.

I ended up calling him back a little later, when my heart had slowed down.  The conversation was okay, I did have to defend myself against something Jadon ha told him last week at the ball diamonds.  That was difficult.

He had asked to do something with Lucas for his birthday.  Lucas had a game, and Zach had a game.  So I offered either another night or he could come to the game & then take them out for ice cream afterwards.

That is what they ended up doing.

All day, and then as I saw them at the games, these little details kept coming up in my mind.  Little things that he had said, or did, or I saw.  I felt like God gave me the words, “It doesn’t matter”. 

I just kept speaking & thinking that as the night went on. It doesn't matter. It’s okay.  It doesn’t matter. This is good for the kids. It doesn't matter.

Truly if I am going to let go of all the emotions and frustrations of this I have to not get myself all wrapped up in the things he is doing that are driving me nuts and I believe are wrong.  I have to let go.  I have to let God deal with Him.  I have to let God do what He wants to do and keep in my mind that it is not ME that is doing this it is GOD.  It is not my idea for restoration it is God’s… He didn’t and won’t ask me to do it for Him…

As I woke up this morning, it hit me like a ton of bricks… I have peace.  I really do.  I am not in a swirl of emotions.  I survived seeing him, talking to him, and things not being how I wanted them… and I have peace.

WOW!

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,”

Ephesians 3:20

Pam

Originally Published at You're Gonna Miss This.

So, I’m not feeling angry…

…and that is a good thing.  Right?

Instead I feel pain. 

So, those are my choices? 

Hurt & Rejection or Anger & Bitterness.

The other night I was reading another portion of the book From Battle Scars to Beauty Marks by Ellie Lofaro…

“At that point, I didn’t hate him anymore.  I actually felt nothing for him.  I had no feelings whatsoever.  I didn’t hate him; I didn’t anything him.  That is really the opposite of love, by the way, not having any feelings for anybody.  Hatred means you are really tied in with very strong love and disappointment in the person you still have such deep feelings for. But you are so hurt you hate them.  I didn’t feel anything.”

Okay, so when you put it that way, I guess it is a good thing that I have these feelings.  I don’t want to be numb.  I don’t want to stop caring. 

But, I also don’t want to have to fight the mental battle between anger & love each time I am in the presence of someone.

God? Am I destined to live out this waiting time with all these feelings raging through me?  Is there no other way?

I had peace the other evening when HSSH showed up (not alone once again) at Zach’s game.  I had to fight for it, self talking, the whole time.  But, I did have peace.  My body did not react with physical anxiety.

The next day though, I was just so sad.  Hurt by the betrayal again.  Hurt by the smile on his face.  Hurt that he appears so happy and well adjusted.

Anyone walking by would have thought nothing negative about him.  He’s that smooth.

I, of course, know the truth.  I know the unresolved issues he is dealing with .  I know the financial issues.  The lack of contact he’s had with his children.  The job issues.  I know that you can’t build healthy relationships with people with all the unresolved things going on in your life.  Let alone the fact that you have turned your back on the God you made a covenant to serve!

Can you feel the conflict of emotions I am dealing with? 

God, help me.  Teach me to give them to You.  Help me survive this.

Beth Moore really hit it on the head for me once again this morning too…

It’s Tough Being a Woman who can Balance Passion with Patience…

“Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion.  For the LORD is a God of justice.  Blessed are all who wait for Him.”  --Isaiah 30:18

Longing & waiting in this verse are the same Hebrew Word.  ‘The Lord Waits…blessed are all those who wait’

You don’t wait alone.  Longing is part of the waiting.  It wouldn’t be a wait without the longing. 

I found real freedom in the realization, THE LORD IS WAITING TOO!

When your prayer request waits, He’s waiting too.  There is something the wait is for.

It’s tough being a woman—but it is trust that turns it around!

Somehow, God is going to get this whole waiting & trusting bit through my thick skull… and you my beloved readers & friends get to join me in the journey… thanks.

In a couple hours I have another counseling session.  Maybe I’ll get a few more of these wild thoughts tamed! 

Pam

I Just realized God is answering a prayer.

I also just realized that I am not real happy with “how” things are being played out, as God answers the prayer! 

Can I laugh at myself?

Sorta?

For almost the whole time HSSH has been gone, I have been telling him that he needed to be the one that made the effort with the kids.  He needed to be the one that came and was a part of their busy lives, not expecting them to be a part of his “new” life (90 miles away from them)

This morning I realized something.  In the past week, HSSH has suddenly started making more effort than he has made in over 3 years with his kids.

That is an answer to prayer.  That is God.

So, why do I find myself feeling angry and upset by it?

Is it because it doesn’t look quite like I had imagined it would?

Is it because instead of embracing me and saying “you were right about this, Pam”.  He appears to be even angrier at me than ever.  (maybe because he hates that I was right?)

I am not finding the satisfaction in being right about this that I wanted to find.

Instead I am finding the pain of rejection.  Rejection of me.  As he embraces our kids.  I find it hard to handle.

I know it is right that he does this.  I know it is God’s Hand that is allowing this. Help me Jesus to not grow bitter.  Please Help Me Jesus to deal with the jealous feelings I have.

Maybe part of me got real comfortable with the “new normal” we were living.  And change is hard again?  Him living his life and us living ours was so much simpler.  Not that it was right.

The news is that HSSH has told the kids he will be coming to Zach’s game tonight at 5:30.

You know we need your prayers.

God Help Me to Keep Praying Your Will and Not Mine.  Help me to Walk Out Your Will…

I shared something I read yesterday on my blog Standing too.

Thank you.

Pam

More about Standing today…

Today I was putting a book away on the shelf and noticed another book.  I thought, did I ever read that book?  And I opened it to find I had indeed read it and underlined in it… I can’t remember when I read it, I know it was after HSSH left, but it’s been awhile.  I think I will read it again.

The page I opened to said this.  And I will underline what I had underlined in the book…

Oh yeah, the book is called. From Battle Scars to Beauty Marks by Ellie Loraro  “Portrais of Women Who turned Trials into Triumphs” (it says on the cover)

So, anyway, page 58, in the chapter titled “Joan: Waiting on God”

“I heard from God, ‘I am the I AM.  Press on. Press in.’  For the longest time all I kept hearing in my spirit was ‘Press’.  That is not exactly what you want to hear when you say, ‘God speak to me.  I’m tired.  I’m weary in my heart and my bones.’  But, it is what I needed to do, to press, to push, to stand.  In the midst of it, He has met me at every turn, granted strength for the day, and even given me a sense of humor.  And who doesn’t need a good laugh?

When you have put it all on (the armor of God), and you have prayed your heart out, and you have fasted your gut out, there is not a whole lot left to do but stand.  And it is all about timing and seasons.  Through the years and the tears I’ve learned that I’ve just got to stand.  I don’t have to do it well—I learned that too.  I just have to stand.

Now, when you are not pressing, you are standing.  But, I guess they are really intertwined.  Pressing sounds more active, but there are times that the pressing is emotional rather than physical.  I have to keep on keeping on.  It’s a decision; it’s a choice.  It’s okay to fall apart in the midst of it, but then you get back up.  It’s the ‘I fall down, I get up; I fall down, I get up’ approach to life.

I PROMISE I didn’t write that!  Someone else has lived a roller coaster of waiting on God like me.  God You are so Good to show me this!

Pam