Thank God for small groups!

I should be going to bed but I wanted to post a small preface to a longer post tomorrow. Yesterday I attended the Focus On Parenting conference here in Colorado Springs at Focus on the Family. It was A.MA.ZING!!!!!!!! I learned so much! Have you ever been somewhere that you just knew God was calling you to? A place where you just knew he brought you to in order to tell you something? Something that will help you grow?

That is how I felt yesterday. The registration was money I had a hard time spending but I felt God pushing me to fill out the registration. I told Soapy I needed to go, that with the current stresses of our life and the road block I have found myself at lately in parenting with Caileigh, I knew God wanted me there to learn something. LEARN I DID!

We heard from several speakers and over the next few days I will blog about each one. I think it's important to give them each their own time becuase they each had so much to say.

I realized a lot about my own personal struggles. Struggles I think I knew I had between me and God but was easier to deny until now. I realized I feel let down by God, that I was hurt, my life has not turned out the way I thought it should. I didn't have the perfect husband, the perfect marriage, the way that perfect marriage made a perfect family......seeing a pattern here???? I have felt that the hurts and hangups of my past were God's way of punishing me for something. That maybe I didn't deserve a Godly husband and a happy marriage. That I didn't deserve a close knit relationship with my daughter and the children I have lost were in some way punishment for something I had done to let God down.

I am here to say, nothing could be more wrong...screwed up...TOTALLY TOTALLY off base! I know that! I have always known that but the hurt I have felt through events in my marriage have caused me to have trouble trusting. Not only trusting my husband (which is very unhealthy and we are MUCH better at now, we have been attending counseling ever since and I encourage anyone experiencing hurdles in their marriage to seek out a third party--qualified third party and talk it out. We aren't fixed by any means but we are working on it) but also trusting God to take care of me, my kids, my marriage. I realized it's easy for me to be engaged in a relationship with Christ until it gets too deep and then I back out. I feel trapped and vulnerable. At that moment I am transparent and that scares me. Scares me to think God could see me for me, all the sin I am and that He would turn away. That the hang ups I have created for myself are too much, the way I project them into my marriage and how they affect my parenting.

I got home last night and my dad sat down to hear about the conference. I told him what I was thinking and he told me something that stung but was very much the truth, "Christy, your problems in parenting and between you and Soapy have nothing to do with them. Your problems are a result of your troubled relationship with God. You can't blame this on anyone or anything else, this is your problem." He was right. After thinking on it last night and being faced again with this idea in our small group study this evening, I realize the conflict in my relationship with God directly affects my relationships with others. It causes me not to give over my marriage and my children to God because I fear losing them too. I fear God not caring for them the way I want him to. The irony is, God's will is not determined by my desires. I have to give up all to Him and rest assured that God is going to protect my worries. I have to know that what I hav been through is in no way punishment. God won't give me more than I can handle and if I had not been through some of these building moments I would not be growing my relationship with God.

My small group tonight allowed me to really see how my insecurities with God are affecting my ability to be a Godly wife and mother. I so desperately want to be both but first I need to work on me and my relationship with the Big Man upstairs. Once that is right, the rest of my relationships will benefit and thrive from it.

Good night. I know this probably came off as mixed ramblings but I will sleep better with it off my mind and on paper. Goodnight! :)