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“I hate you!”, “You’re the worst Mom ever!” have you heard those words fly at you from your child’s mouth?  For me, one of the hardest things about being a single-mom, is becoming a dart board.  Do you know what I mean when I say that?  It is like all the hurt that is bottled up inside your kids, all the things that they want to say to their Dad but won’t or can’t, all the pain they feel over what has happened in their lives is shot at you, taken out on you.  You end up being the target for the darts of your kids hurt and sometimes, that dart goes straight to your heart.

This week just so happened to be a worse than normal week for that kind of thing in our house.  Sometimes, I know exactly where it comes from.  Sometimes it is legitimate hurt that my kids are trying to deal with and sometimes, it is just them using their circumstances as an excuse to get their own way and when that doesn’t happen, backlash occurs.  Regardless of which it is, having hurtful words hurled at you is heartbreaking. And when you are the only disciplinarian in the house, it only gets worse.  There is no break, no saying to your spouse…”you handle this one”  No one to back you up or support you in what you are trying to  do, and always the constant fear that you are doing it wrong and everything is going to blow up in your face.

I don’t know about you, but these types of weeks really wear me out.  I feel overwhelmed and when that happens, I often allow self-pity to begin to creep in.  As I know I have said before self-pity can be a very slippery slope, one that I don’t particularly like to get near the edge of.  By the time Friday morning rolled around, I felt pretty down.  Since I was pretty much all set at work and only had a few quick things to do, I made plans to go snowboarding.  Snowboarding is something I love, something that gives me much needed time to myself and much need time alone with God.  As I left work and headed out to the ski area, I took some time to just pray and really praise God.  Even though at first I didn’t really feel like doing that.  I wanted to complain and whine but instead, I just sang my own worship song and thanked God for who He was and for all he was doing in my life.  The more I did this, the further away from that slippery self-pity slope I moved.  By the time I as sitting on the chair lift ready to take my first run, I felt like a different person.  As the day went on and I headed home, I felt God remind me of few important things in dealing with this whole “dart board” scenario.

Most all the answers come from Ephesians 6.  Specifically in the passage on the Armor of God.

The Armor of God

^{” 10}Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. ¹¹ Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. ¹² For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.¹³ Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. ¹⁴ Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, ¹⁵ and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. ¹⁶ In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷ Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

¹⁸ And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. ¹⁹ Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, ²⁰ for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.

First I need to remember that I am not in a battle against my kids.  vs. 12 clearly tells us that our battle is NOT against flesh and blood, that means not against my own flesh and blood either!  Second, God has given us all we need to combat those darts.  vs 16 tells us, take up the shield of faith.  This shield can extinguish ALL the fiery darts of the enemy.  And no I am not saying that our children are our enemy, as we already established in vs 12, we know who our enemy is!  The enemy would like nothing more than to get me on that slippery slope of self-pity and he will use whatever means he can to accomplish it.  Last, PRAY! pray in the spirit on all occasions.  Prayer is one of our most powerful weapons and when combined with Praise as I talked about above…it sends the enemy running for cover!

So start each day with the armor of God.  Commit those verses from Ephesians 6 to memory.  Remind yourself of who the real enemy is.  Pray continuously.  Praise him always.  I love to recite Psalm 34 to myself.  It starts with “I will extol the Lord at ALL times, His praise will  ALWAYS be on my lips.”(Psalm 34:1 ,emphasis mine) Don’t allow the hurtful darts being thrown at you to undo you, rather use them to fuel you to a closer and deeper relationship with God.

Each year as the new year arrives, we choose a family bible verse for the year.  In addition to that I like to pick a personal verse as well.  This year, as I was reading through my Bible in One Year devotional by Nicky Gumbel, a verse in the New Testament passage for the day basically popped out at me.  As soon as I read it I knew this was my verse for this year.  It was Matthew 6:34 from the message translation, which reads:

“Give your attention to what God is doing right now and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.  God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”  Matthew 6:34 MSG

One of the things that Nicky said in the devotional was

“Think ahead, plan ahead, but don’t worry ahead.”

Now I don’t know about you, but I am notorious for worrying ahead.  Not only that, but I excessively plan ahead for what I am worrying ahead about!  That is not only exhausting and unnecessary, but is actually completely pointless.  As Jesus tells us in Luke chapter 12, vs 25-26

“Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life ? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?”

Jesus makes it pretty clear that worrying does absolutely nothing to change what is going to happen.    One of my favorite quotes is from Corrie Ten Boom who said;

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but it empties today of strength” Corrie Ten Boom via Bible in One Year

All worry does is ruin our day, get us worked up, and  cause us to miss out on the amazing things that God is doing in the present!

Now, I have gotten better over the past few years at leaving more and more things to God, because when you get put into a situation where you are just completely overwhelmed and at the end of yourself, you then realize…I can’t do this and you cry out to God “HELP!” But there are still times when I allow myself back into that pattern of worry and excessive planning about what I am worrying about.  It is then that I need to remember what my verse of the year reminds me of…..and the bottom line of that is: Trust God!  I need to pay attention to what God is doing now, at this moment in my life and not worry about what may or may not happen in the days, weeks, months, or even years to come.  I need to remember that my future is in his hands.  He is a good father and I am his daughter, whatever he allows not only will he help me through, each step of the way, but he will also bring good out of it.  So why worry?!

Well here we are staring down another New Years Eve and for most of us, we are saying we are glad to see this year go and we look forward to what a new year can bring.  As I was doing my devotions this morning, and I looked back at what I had written last year I found this quote from Oswald Chambers

“Leave the irreparable past in His hands and step out into the irresistible future with Him”  From My Utmost for His Highest.

Then as I logged on to my computer, I saw in my facebook memories that I had written something about that quote last year too.  Here is what I wrote:

“Hard to believe another year has come and gone. My son said something in the car yesterday that was so true, he said, “today was a great day and a terrible day” I responded by saying “that’s every day…we can either focus on what went wrong or we can focus on the blessings God gave us.” I think many of us feel the same away on New Years Eve when we look back on the year…we are glad to see the year go because of the bad things that happened during the year…but each year has its share of good and bad, it all depends on where our focus is. Oswald Chambers wrote “Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him” So today, as you look back on the year, leave all those bad things that happened where they belong, with Jesus, and start the New Year knowing that God has a plan for you and be willing to follow Him into it. In the new year, I am going to be doing that, following God into some of what I feel He is leading me into, starting with creating a blog. It will focus on Faith, Family(specifically being a single parent) and have some fun stuff thrown in as well. I will post the link here on Facebook once I start! Would love to have everyone check it out. Thanks!”

As I sat down to write this post a smile came to my face. I hadn’t remembered that I had even said any of that last year and here I am coming up on the one year anniversary of my blog.

There is so much truth in remembering that God is the one who holds our future in His hands. It is His job to lead, our job, is to follow.  That is how he created us.  As Sarah young said it in her devotion Jesus Calling..

“I designed you to have no sufficiency of your own.”

or as the Bible puts it in John 15:5

“….apart from me you can do nothing.“

We like to think that we are in control and as we look toward a new year, we may feel like this year was out of control and next year is going to be better.  The truth is…every day is out of our control, but no day is ever out of His control.  What has happened over the past year, both the good and the bad are part of His plan,  and as I said in my last post He promises us that ALL things will work together for our good.  

So however you look back on this past year.  You probably can say something similar to what my son said last year..this was a great year and this was a horrible year and although it may feel that way, remember that we only see a piece of the puzzle, but God made the puzzle.  He knows every step of our journey.  As we move forward into this next year, lets leave the past where it belongs, in His hands, and lets move forward into the future knowing that while the journey may be hard, we never walk alone and the view from the top is worth it.

This morning an interesting thing happened as I was waiting for the bus with my kids.  My daughter is currently studying The Protestant Reformation and The Renaissance Era in her Global History class.  They had been talking about Henry VIII so she started singing this little song that they had learned from a Horrible Histories video in elementary school. You can watch by clicking if you are interested.  Anyway…one of the lines in the song talks about how Henry ruined the lives of his wives.  For some reason this morning, my daughter thought it would be funny to replace Henry’s name with her father’s name at the part about ruining the lives of his wives.  Well since I was/am his only wife thus far, I said.  How do you think that he ruined my life?  I asked if that was really how they felt.  They both said no, and said that actually in a lot of ways they felt like things are better this way.  Now I personally feel that way, but it surprised me that they said that.  My husband and I never fought, literally, I can probably count just a few times in our entire 13 years of marriage that we ever actually got into a fight. We got along great and we did everything as a family.  I honestly thought that they would love nothing more than their father to be back home.  So it was a bit surprising to me that they would feel that way.

However all of this brought about an opportunity to speak some much-needed truth to them as well as myself.   The truth that we were experiencing without really realizing it.  That is the truth of Romans 8:28

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who^[ have been called according to his purpose.”

Often I think we miss the “ALL THINGS” portion of that.  It doesn’t say, good things will happen to bring about your good, it says that in “ALL THINGS” God works for our good. That means even in the bad things that happen to us, God is working for our good.  So as they walked out the door, I said, that is why the bible says .”..ALL things work for our good…” we are seeing that biblical promise in action in our lives.  What a great way to send my kids off to their last day of school before Christmas break.  What a great way to head into Christmas, knowing that just as God kept his promise to send  a savior all those years ago in Bethlehem, He is the same God today and He keeps his promises!  All of them!

Back in August, I wrote a post titled Another Stair Climbed (you can read it by clicking the title).  Recently, I climbed yet another big stair for me.  This may sound silly to some people, but since my husband left 3 years ago, I have not sent out family Christmas cards.  The first 2 years I did nothing.  Last year I did manage to send out a few funny cards, but I have not been able to bring myself to send the usual picture cards.  This year, I figured out how to use the timer on my camera and spur of the moment, we took a picture of the four of us in front of our Christmas Tree.  It actually came out pretty good and I decided this was the year I was going to have family photo cards made up.  Like I said, for most people this is no big deal, but to me, it not only represents another stair climbed, but another step in the healing process.

Going through an unwanted and unexpected divorce is not just heart-breaking, it breaks things inside of you that you didn’t know could be broken.  Healing is a long process that looks different for every person.  I don’t think when I started this journey, I realized just how many stairs there would be to climb or just how slow the climb would be.  I am not a patient person by nature, but God has used this journey to not only help me to slow my pace, but to be more patient with myself, my kids and in turn with others.  He has also taught me how rely on Him each step of the way.

I don’t know what your healing journey looks like or where you are on your staircase, but I pray that you would take a moment as we come to the end of this year and look how far you have come.  Rejoice in where God has you on that staircase and thank him, not just for bringing you this far, but for the promise that one He will never leave you on that staircase alone.  The promise that one day your climb will be over as  Jesus returns and sets everything right!  That is our ultimate hope, that is the destination of the staircase.  So no matter what step you are on keep climbing, look to God to be your strength and look ahead to the new year with the joy of knowing we are one stair closer to our destination.

Nearly 2 weeks ago,  on November 26th, marked the 3 year anniversary of the day that every woman, every wife, every child, prays to never experience.  It was the day my husband sat my children down, as I sat by with tears streaming down my face, and told them that he was leaving.  As long as I live I will never forget that day.  I knew it was coming, I had known for several weeks, heck I had even chosen the day, because he had wanted to tell them on a Sunday night the weekend before Thanksgiving and I refused to do that to my kids.  I said he could wait until Tuesday night, so they had all of Thanksgiving break to recover before having to head to school.  I can remember the prayers I prayed, the tears I cried as I begged my husband not to do this, as I begged him to consider counseling, as I cried out to God to please fix this mess.  No amount of pleading moved my husbands stone heart and none of those prayers were answered.  Well at least not in the way I expected them to be answered.

As I sit here today looking back on the past 3 years, I see things quite differently than I did then.  It is as if I look through different eyes, and in a way I do.  I am not the person I was 3 years ago.

On that day, 3 years ago, 2 days before Thanksgiving, I didn’t know how I would make it past the night, let alone through the week and I never expected that now, 3 years later, 2 days after Thanksgiving, I would look back on what happened and see anything good.  But yet, that is exactly what I see.

As I look at where my life is now, I realize that only God could have orchestrated what has happened.  I look at my kids and although their road has been hurtful and hard and often paved with more tears than I can say, I see a dependence on prayer…a dependence on God. As I look in the mirror, I see a woman I never thought I could be.  I spent years of my life, made many foolish mistakes, and did everything I could  to avoid “being alone”.  While I can say, I would not have chosen this path, God always knew the path I would need to walk to bring me to the place I am today.  A place that helps me to know that no matter what path I am walking, I am never alone.

As I look back I also see something else.  I see the sovereign hand of God using the hurtful things that were done to me and my children to bring about good.  I am often reminded of the story of Joseph(you can read more about Joseph here in my post Waiting=Training).  I am sure as Joseph was in the middle of his bad circumstances, he couldn’t always see the plan that God had for him. However, he knew where his hope lied, he knew that he could trust God and that God would never leave him.  God brought him through every bad circumstance, every evil thing that was done to him and He used those circumstances to bring about His plan and purpose for Joseph’s life.  It was because of this that in Genesis 50:20, Joseph is able to say this to his brothers:

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people^[a] should be kept alive, as they are today.” Genesis 50:20 ESV

Too often today, people forget that God is sovereign in all things.  That means He is sovereign over sin as well.  We sometimes think when someone sins, especially against us, that they somehow got one over on God or that God didn’t know that was going to happen. God knows every detail of our life.  NOTHING takes Him by surprise.

“You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” Psalm 139:16 NLT

Barbara Duguid, in her book Extravagant Grace, talks about God’s sovereignty over sin and the way in which He “…uses what He hates.to bring about what He loves.” She goes on to say that

“God is also completely sovereign over man’s sin. From the first sin in the garden onward, Scripture shows us a Creator who hates sin but has never once been surprised or caught off guard by the wickedness of His creation.”    

Joni Erikson Tada says it like this, “ God has determined to steer what he hates to accomplish what he loves.” (via Extravagant Grace by Barbara Duguid)

When I remember all of this, it reminds me that God is sovereign over the evil that was done to me and my children just as he was sovereign over what happened to Joseph.  It reminds me that while we make poor choices that lead us down sinful roads, God will always get his way in the end.  It helps me to look back and already see the good that God has brought about through it..  It also gives me hope that if God uses what he hates for good, he will use the sinful choices my husband has made to bring about good in his life as well.

Three years later I can begin to see how what was meant to harm me and my children, what was meant as evil against us, God can, will and is using for my good, my children’s good amd his glorious purposes!

In my living room is a large picture window.  In the morning during the late fall and winter months, the sun shines brightly through this window and heats up the area in front of it.  That is my favorite place to prayer and do my devotions during this time of year.  One reason is because it is warm and my house is generally a little on the chilly side.  The other reason I love it is because when I close my eyes and face out towards the sun, I can feel the warmth penetrate through my whole body.  Not just physically but spiritually…lighting up the darkness. I always feel this extra closeness to God as I kneel quietly in that spot.

Often, I like to have worship music playing in the background as I pray.  It helps to keep my mind more focused and stops me from thinking about all I have to do that day.

This morning as I was sitting on the floor in this spot, listening to music and praying, the words of one of the songs really struck me.  The song is King of Heaven by Hillsong United. (you can listen by clicking the song title) The song does an amazing job of describing the birth of Jesus.  The lines that really struck me this morning were :

The other day I did something that I rarely do.  I just opened my Bible at random and read a verse.  Normally, I follow a reading plan and a devotion plan so I don’t just open my Bible to a page and read, but this day for some reason I did.  The verse that I came to was:

Proverbs 23:26.

In the MSG translation it says:

“Dear child, I want your full attention;  please do what I show you.“

Well you can bet that got my attention!  I went over and read the NIV and it said:

“My son, give me your heart and let your eyes delight in my ways,”

Now as I read the verses surrounding this verse I came to realize that this statement was one of a father warning his son about the dangers of getting involved with an adulterous woman.

I must say I was perplexed at this.  Why would God want me to read a verse talking about that?  I was the one hurt by the adultery of my spouse.  So I asked God.  I asked what he wanted me to see from this.  His answer was very clear and honestly, a little difficult to hear.

First I felt God was telling me that he wanted my attention on Him, not on my husband, nor on the woman he had left me for, or the woman he is currently with.  I also felt him tell me that He wants me to do what He shows me to do.  What is that exactly?  Well what has God shown me?  Love, patience, sacrifice, forgiveness, kindness, goodness….obviously the list goes on.

Yikes!  Was I doing those things?  Was I showing those things to my children in regards to their father?  I asked God how? How can I do what you show me?  He replied, give me your heart, give me your full attention, keep your eyes on me!  Allow the Holy Spirit to be your guide.

I realized that many of us who have had to deal with adultery spend far too much time focusing our attention on it and especially on the “adulterous woman” We may have even been able to forgive our spouse for what he has done, but it is a whole different story dealing with the woman who invaded your life.    We may think far too much about her, we may allow ourselves to bash and trash her.  The truth is, we often allow this woman to turn us into someone we are not.  I felt like God was reminding me that I need to remember to beware of this.

I took some time to ask God to take my heart, to mold me into what He wants me to be, to stop focusing on the circumstances that I see regarding my husbands current lifestyle and to instead focus my attention on God, giving Him my full attention. The truth is when we do that, it is easier to see our own faults and our own sin, which in turn allows for far less judgement towards our spouse and their significant other.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that what was done to us is ok, or that it wasn’t horrible, because it was horrible, and God sees our pain and holds every tear we have cried. But, we have to remember that God is not only loving and kind, but he is just! We see his love and his justice meet at the cross.  It wasn’t just other peoples sin that Jesus died for it was mine! And as we read in  Romans 12 vs 19, vengeance belongs to the Lord.

“Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord”.

Place your spouse and anyone else involved into the hands of the Lord.  Then, turn your attention to God, give Him your heart, delight in His ways, fix your eyes on Him and then His peace and His presence will consume you and leave no room for bitterness, anger or revenge. He wants my heart,  He wants your heart…give it to Him!

The eleventh hour.  It is phrase that goes back to biblical times and according to dictionary.com the phrase means, the last possible moment for doing something.  I am sure in all of our lives there are times when we do things in the “eleventh hour”, like that project for school or work that is due and the night before you are scrambling to get it done when you had a month to do it.  Or running around like crazy right before Christmas to get all the gifts bought and wrapped.  

Now myself, I am not much of an “eleventh hour” person.  I don’t like waiting to the last minute to do things and I don’t like rushing around.  It doesn’t mean I never do it, but I try not to because it causes so much stress!

But what about when God shows up in the “eleventh hour”?  Like that bill that is due  and you have no money to pay it so  you cry out to God and the day before the bill is due somehow, the funds seem to come in.  Have you ever wondered why he so often seems to work in that way?

I recently had an “eleventh hour” experience with God.  As I believe I mentioned in an earlier post, my job was going to be ending and I was nervous about how I was going to pay my car payment.  After a week of worrying about what I was going to do, I prayed and sought God about this and eventually just left it in his hands and was at peace that He had this covered and whatever happened, he would help me.  Then just a week or so before my last day, it turned out that another position became available where I worked and I was offered the position.  It was fewer hours than I had been working but would be enough to cover my car payment and also give a bit more time at home to get things done before winter.  Now I know that God in his sovereignty already had this worked out long before I was told that my temporary position was coming to an end, but he waited until virtually the last minute to let me in on his plan.

As I look back over my life, I can see countless times where this has happened.  Where God showed up in the “eleventh hour” doing something beyond what I ever would have thought.   I feel like God does this to grow our faith, to help us to learn to trust him, and to keep us from becoming “eleventh hour” Christians.   You know what I mean… when we whine, cry and complain.  When we do everything except go to God and then when all our options are spent, when we are at the end of our rope, at the last possible second, then we cry out to God. When we do that, all that happens is we spend a lot of time anxious and stressed-out rather than at peace and content.  The quicker I turn to God with a problem, the quicker his peace descends.  As Paul puts it:

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 4:6-7

The more I learn to trust God, the easier it is to do so and the more peaceful my life is.  Also, I believe that God wants me to remember that He is in control.  Sure I could have gone crazy looking for a new job and I could have lost sleep over how I was going to pay my car-payment, and trust me, there are plenty of times when that is exactly how I respond to trials. But I am learning that when I give something into his hands, when I trust him to lead me, when I trust that He has a plan I know nothing about, I can rest in peace because I know that he is taking care of me.

I don’t know about you, but I would much rather leave the “eleventh hour” to God and come to him as soon as a trial arises.  I want to seek him first in every situation that comes up in my life.  Before I complain, before I try to fix it on my own in my own strength, before I ask this one or that one what I should do, I want to be on my knees asking the only one who not only has the answers, but is also the only one with the power to change things. I want to always remember that apart from Him, I can do NOTHING!(John 15:5)

Fall is finally here and for me that means getting out my fall decorations. I love to decorate my house for different holidays and fall is one of my favorite times to decorate, second only to Christmas.  However, over the past 3 years, there has been something missing from my decor.

At the end of my driveway is a lamppost which I always cover with a colorful fall garland made up of orange, red, and yellow mums as well as colorful leaves.  For years, in front of the lamppost have stood 5 scarecrows…one for each member of our family.

The scarecrow tradition started many years ago when my husband and I drove to Louisiana to go on a cruise.  We stopped at a mall along the way that had this huge home store.  There we found this scarecrow that we just loved.  We shoved him in the back of our car packed with all our luggage and there he stayed until we arrived home from our trip.  We joked about how we drove all that way and came home with something we could have bought at a local store.  Anyway, we decided to name him and picked the name Lieutenant Dan.  And yes, for those of you Forrest Gump fans out there, he was named after that Lt. Dan.  You see we were always ones to quote lines from movies to each other and at that time, we had watched Forrest Gump more times than we could say and often quoted lines from it to each other.  One of our favorite lines involved Forrest offering Lt. Dan some ice cream as he lay in the hospital bed after losing both of his legs.  And so, our scarecrow became Lt. Dan.  When we arrived home, he graced the front yard of our home through-out the fall season.  When we moved to a new home Lt. Dan came too and again we found the perfect place for him out at the lamppost.  By this time, we had 3 kids as well, so we decided that Lt. Dan needed a family, so we found him a “wife” and 3 small scarecrows one to represent each of our kids.

Now over the years, the weather took its toll on Lt. Dan and we had to replace him, but we never got rid of him. We retired him to our shed.

The year my husband left, the scarecrows were already up and I left them that way, but as fall rolled around the next year, I didn’t know what to do.  It seemed too painful to put them all up, and not any better to put just 4 of them up.  To me putting just 4 of them up felt like I was announcing to the world that I was a single-mom trying to get through the holidays on my own.  So I just didn’t bother to put any up.  Last year, the feeling was pretty much the same.  This year, as I went to the shed for something and saw Lt. Dan standing there, I thought back to all those years ago when we bought him.  I realized that I again this year, I couldn’t put the scarecrows out.  It was just too sad.

As I thought about this, I realized that no matter how many years go by there will probably always be some things that are just too sad to do.  And you know what? That’s ok.

Going through something as painful as unwanted divorce isn’t something that you get over easily.  Nor is it something that you can put a timetable on your healing. And honestly, just because you don’t want to do something doesn’t mean that you are not healing.

Sometimes, growing means realizing that some traditions just need to be changed.  I realized that this year.  I realized that it was time to say goodbye to Lt. Dan and stop torturing myself each year with deciding whether or not I could handle putting up the scarecrows.  So although I haven’t gotten to the point of throwing Lt. Dan away, for now, I can say goodbye to him and the scarecrow tradition and move forward.