When He moves....

For once in my life, I'm gonna spare you the details of how the end came, but come it did.  At eight this morning a U-haul pulled out of my driveway headed to California.  There was a hug, and then that was that.

I thought I'd take this harder than I am.  I mean, brother, am I spent.  I prayed over this thing hard.  I don't think I've ever wanted something to go the way I thought it would so badly and there was some praying without ceasing.  But with that, there were words that I genuinely meant:  "Not my will, but Yours be done."

I'm satisfied that it was.  Here's why:  

I never look at my Facebook memories, but I had an inkling to do that last night.  The memory I saw was from a page called Believe for One More Day.  Well, at that point, I had one more day.  The meme in the memory said something about God has a Suddenly for you.

About ten minutes later, the suddenly showed up.  I was hoping for a suddenly, there was a change of heart.  Suddenly, though, the people helping my house guest move became house guests themselves.  Their reservation mysteriously(?) vanished at the hotel and there was no room at the inn for them.

God was in the middle of the circumstance.  It did not go as I believed it would, but in the light of day today, I got to examine some of the things that have happened over the last seven years and how those things changed me.

I had a conversation with my ex-wife about that today.  I'm certainly not the man I would like to be but I am headed in the right direction, I think.  I shared some of those thoughts with said ex-wife and she didn't disagree with them.  She's probably mad that it took me all of this to get to be what I should have been when I married her.  Back then, I was impetuous, selfish, rude, and a spendthrift.  Today I'm not those things.  It took the last seven years of this to get me to be that way.

Notice too, the number 7.  It's God's number for completion.  I know this and I made it clear that if the door closed literally, the door closed.  I gave her a couple of pieces of wisdom yesterday when I asked her not to do this.  One of the things I told her was that you can make choices, but you can't pick the consequences of them.  She told me she knew that.  The other thing I told her was that the enemy of best is good.

She didn't understand that so I explained to her that what she was doing might look pretty good, but it wasn't best.  I told her what she was doing wasn't best and surprisingly, she acknowledged that she also knew that.  In the end, though, she opted for good.

This all happened quickly. I liken it to the time my ex and I were finally able to get divorced.  For about three years, it had been all but impossible, for many, many reasons.  When it was time, it happened quickly.  Much the same happened here.  It was time.  It happened quickly.  And I'm kind of here in this odd space of relief and bafflement.

I have the experience of trying to buy the house earlier this year to fall back on though and I'm grateful for that.  God was faithful throughout, just as He was in this circumstance. Prayers were answered and the no I got on the first house led me to be exactly where God wanted me.  I have no less expectation this time.  If this was just about the "ask" then the ask was pretty important.  I was pretty hurt this morning.

And then I cleaned the house.  I washed the bedding and made up the guest beds.  I put a new quilt on my bed.  I had held off hanging pictures on my bedroom wall because I'd hoped for more than what I got.  I took a hammer and nails and made my bedroom mine again.  I repaired the power cord to the adjustable bed her puppy chewed.  Bucky got his bed back.  The puppy chewed it, too.  He's laying in it now, next to my bed, where I'm at.

I went shopping for a coffee table and area rug.  I have to do more shopping.  I fixed myself something I wanted for dinner and watched a little football while enjoying the fireplace.  I have a cozy home.  I'm very blessed.  I'm also mostly over it.

It's not the first time she and I have been down this road.  It is, however, the last time.  One of the things God has been emphasizing to me in the last little bit is setting healthy boundaries.  For my own well-being, I had to make it clear that this one was it.  I think knowing that it was God's will, His way, His timing is helping.  I should sleep tonight.  And each day will get better.

The more I know God, the more I wish I could understand of Him.  I don't even try to understand this.  I can't make any sense of it short of Spiritual Warfare.  Of the ten gazillion ways God could have resolved this; this was the way He allowed.  It's odd to me too, but this week, He just kept telling me to stand.  I think I did.  There were a few times it was close, but even on shaky legs, I stood.  

There's peace.  In my house and in my heart.  And sadness. Partly because it's a rainy night.  But Jerry is next to me, which is unusual.  Tom is curled up at the foot of the bed, as is Moo.  Buck is asleep in his bed on the floor by my bed.  The house is clean.  No puppy is biting his tail or terrorizing the cats.  I'll miss the puppy but I think I knida knew, so I didn't try to bond with him too much.  He was her dog.  I have mine.

And the last thing I want to share is this:  In the end, I think everyone who weighed in was right.  I know I followed where I was led.  I know God brought her here as an answer to a prayer.  I came to realize I was mistaken about her feelings for me, but I know that I loved her.  Period.  In my bathroom, an abridged version of 1 Corinthians 13 hangs on the wall.  It reads like a list and I loved her like that.  I've never loved anybody like that before.  But I know how to now. One thing I could never make anyone understand was that I had to make a choice to do that.  All the crazy stuff meant something.  And none of us were entirely wrong about the rest of it.  I knew what some of y'all knew.  The thing I could never convince anybody of was that I was just trying to do just exactly what God told me to do with her, which was to:

Love her.  

Period.