Away Too Long

ASHAMED.  GUILTY.  REGRETFUL.  FOOLISH.  LOST.  EXHAUSTED.

Well, here I am.  I’m back.  I wonder if you remember your ol’ pal Ava?  It’s only been 262 days since my last post.  I guess you could say that I’ve been a bit distracted and preoccupied since I last wrote.  Okay… Maybe obsessed and consumed are better ways to describe why I’ve abandoned my beloved WordPress family.  I doubt you guys even noticed I was gone, but in truth, I have really missed connecting with you as you mean more to me than you may ever know. 

Folks, I love writing more than you can imagine.  I sometimes struggle, more than I’d like, with devastating feelings of  inferiority and am, beyond the shadow of a doubt, my own worst critic, so it’s significant when I tell you that writing is something that I know I do well.  I know that it’s a gift that God lovingly bestowed upon me and I feel so connected to Him and wholly alive when I write.  So naturally, I don’t do it like I should or want to.  I mean, I am codependent after all and am typically consumed with fixing and serving maladaptive people and simply don’t nurture the things that are edifying to “me”.  I am self-sabotaging and sometimes downright self-destructive,  so it stands to reason that I am not going to do anything that would build me up, right? 

Now, you all know, if you know me at all that brevity is not a strength I possess.  I am too wordy.  I don’t know when to shut up.  I am uncomfortable with awkward silences and feel the need to fill the void with verbal vomit.  Admittedly, my posts are usually way too long.  This one won’t be too bad, so fear not.   Just know that I am having a hard time finishing anything I start as of late.  I feel that I just “need” to submit one post, connect with you, and get myself back into the habit.  It’s imperative.  This is becaus, there are people in my life who–despite my best efforts–did not get the memo about my awesomeness.  My Dad is one such person.  There is nothing that I will ever be able to do or say that will change his pervasively low opinion of me; for some reason, he just cannot see my heart.  You however, see my heart!  You’ve seen my filth, you’ve heard me bitch and moan, and you’ve watched me making colossal mistakes BUT you loved me in spite of that.  That’s major!

Several of you like Grandpappy Sky, Diane, Rod Arters, Arlene the Queen, Sabrina, and Scott Williams  I feel like I know personally.  You make me feel cherished, and I certainly cherish you.  You all inspire me to be a better version of myself.  I dearly love you and am so thankful for your presence in my life as it has served great purpose.  I am going through some struggles that I am working on harder than I think I’ve ever worked on anything.  I have been in bondage for so many years, particularly where my need for love and approval from unloving, disapproving men are concerned.   I have been addicted to sex and love.  Guys want to f@#k me senselessly, but they don’t want to commit to me and they sure as hell don’t want to fight for me. 

I officially reached the end of me and surrendered everything to God with my “entire” soul about 4 days ago.  Before that, the devil was whispering (more like screaming) lies into my ear… again.  When the bottom fell out a little over two weeks ago the fear that I was going to end up just like my mother, dead by my own hand at a young age, was in my face like never before.   After all, we seem to be twin souls.  Moreover, I can still envision the look on my father’s face and hear the sincere disgust in his voice when he’d say, “You’re just like your mother.”   I grew up thinking that being like her was an awful thing.  I’m not so sure it was though…

 I love the Lord more words could ever express and when I make a promise to Him, I take it seriously.  Therefore, I simply will “not” make a promise to God that I know that I cannot or may not keep.  With that, I am fasting from sex, including getting my freak on with myself, which I don’t mind telling you, “I quite enjoy.”   My power tools are about to be locked in my attic.  I am also fasting from booze, which makes me do really, really regrettable things that are out of character for me when I am feeling emotionally fragile and vulnerable. 

I was seeing this guy for about a year.  I stayed too long in the relationship (more later on that).  I could have walked away with my dignity, but “no”.  I did not.  I am fasting from my addiction, not to him, but to what he represents in my head as I have recognized that he, like so many before him, are mere symptoms of the root cause of my problem.  He was just a personification of some really old, deeply repressed shit that I never really knew existed in me.  Nevertheless, all lines of communication (e.g. text messages, phone calls, Facebook, etc) have been blocked and I will not make any attempt to communicate with him in any fashion.  The only reason I have the strength to do this is simply because of my affection for God and desire for Him to be number one in my life.

Enough is enough. The journey that I am embarking on with God is not going to be easy for me.  However, I am afraid that if I do not overcome it, that I may die.  I do not want to die.  So I’m fighting harder than ever this time. 

My goal is to write about what God is revealing to me, at least over the course of the next month, particularly since I am in the Word like I have honestly never been in my entire life…  I hope you’ll stick around and listen to me get honest about my not-so-pretty, insanely unflattering junk.  I believe that pain and the human will to survive is universal, so I’m betting that you may see yourself in some of my stuff. 

Nevertheless, I just want you to know that I love you… and that I’m so thankful for you.  I pray that you’re all still out there.  As it stands, I am feeling a bit:

ASHAMED.  GUILTY.  REGRETFUL.  FOOLISH.  LOST.  EXHAUSTED.

 

If loving you is wrong I don’t wanna be right!

-Ava Elizabeth Wisdom

 

I CHOOSE to Praise Him…In Spite of My Circumstances!

PRAISING GOD THROUGH THIS STORM

I love the above video.  In the song, “Shackles”, Mary Mary boldly sings, “Take the Shackles off my feet so I can dance.  I just wanna praise Ya!” and sings things like, “I’m gonna praise You through my circumstance!”  

It’s been a while since I’ve written.  There’s a definite reason for that.  I guess there’s no better way to say it, “I’ve been in a dark place“.  I wish I had the strength to shake some of this stuff off, but I don’t.  Sometimes major life circumstances get us down.  However, one thing we can do is to CONTINUOUSLY praise the Lord for the blessings that He has given to us.  Our flesh has a tendency to focus wholly on the things that are going wrong and on the hurt and sorrow our hearts feel.  Beloved, this is just want the Enemy wants us to do!  But we can make a conscious choice to praise God through our darkness, heartaches, and through our times of fearful uncertainty!  And be advised, when we praise God through our adversity, we confuse the hell (pardon the pun) out of the Enemy!

I just found out last week that my beautiful home is in foreclosure.  This is the first home the boys and I have ever owned.  We built it approximately 4 years ago.  I picked out everything in it, down to the color of the grout for my ceramic tile.  It’s my sanctuary.  More than that, it’s my children’s sanctuary.  We also had a roommate move in last week.  I moved Jonah, my little one out of his bedroom and gave that room to my new roommate.  Jonah and I are now sharing a room.  Each time I come home and press the button on my garage door opener, Jonah and I are faced with a garage full of all his things.  This breaks my heart…but not Jonah’s!  God has done something in his little spirit and he actually feels excited about the whole thing!  Jonah, who is just 7, chose to trust in the Lord and praise Him through all of this change.  If my baby can do this, so can I and so can you!  

The bank won’t take my payments anymore, so we are just going to save up what we would normally pay toward the mortgage.  And, I have an appointment on Wednesday with a bankruptcy attorney.  Through all this, I realized that home is where my babies and I are.  Shoot, we could move from luxury into a trailer park home and I know we’d be OK.  It would hurt us, and it would be an inconvenience, but the Devil will not steal my joy nor will He put a wedge between me and the Lord!

I have thought a million times about going back to work in a strip club.  And don’t think that even prostitution hasn’t crossed my mind either.  I have made a living on my looks in the past, but I refuse to do it now!  I want God to bless my efforts!  Further, I want others to see that, while I am suffering, I can still shine the light of Christ!  I choose to praise Him!  My water was shut off a while back and I have warrants for my arrests because of traffic tickets I can’t pay, but I choose to praise Him!  

My boyfriend has been away from me since mid-June and has been living back in Las Vegas.  He is living in hotels and gambling incessantly; he’s constantly drunk and I know he’s even been doing drugs.  He assures me how much he loves me but yet hasn’t taken my calls or responded to my texts in days.  He could very well be with another woman and my heart aches from the pain of the loneliness, rejection, and constant abuse…but friend, I choose to PRAISE the Lord anyway!!!  After all, he is the only One who can deliver me from this cesspool of drama.

I’ve got to get out of this utterly painful relationship but I guess there’s an intrinsic yearning that I have inside of me to be loved by a man.  I feel SO bitter that other people have husbands and I don’t!  I want a companion to love and to be loved by!  I want to have someone to split the bills with!  I want a male role model for Jeremiah and Jonah!  And for GOODNESS sakes, I want to be able to get laid every day and it be an act of worship unto the Lord…rather than a sin I commit inside my own body!  I know that last one didn’t sound too Godly… But hey, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have that edge!!! Please pray for me.  Please pray that God and only God, and only God will fill every deep desire of my heart.  Obsessing over my boyfriend feels like idolatry to me.  I don’t want anything to come before God!  

Speaking of that, I am reminded of one of Beth Moore’s sermons (I adore her).  She asked the question that Jesus asked of his disciples: “What is it that you WANT?”  Really, what is it that you really, really want that you perceive that you don’t have?  What is it that your heart yearns for?  “That“, she said, “is the point of spiritual warfare in your life!”  And oh, how right she is!  Let us not live from a cycle of lack!  When we do we give the Devil a powerful foothold and it greatly affects our relationship with our Father!

So, what it is that you want?  What do you think is the point of warfare in your life?  Where are you leaving an open door for the Enemy to attack you?  Pray for God to strengthen you in that area, and don’t forget to praise Him through the storms life.  I’ve never felt more blessed in my life when everything seemed to be falling apart and I praised Him through it anyway.  I hope you’ll do the same.  He will never leave us or forsake us.  I know this, and I hope your heart can internalize it too!

Before I end, I wonder how I can pray for you?  If you have any prayer requests, please share them with me.  I having been praying harder than ever lately, and I’d love for you to be able to get in on some of the action!

God bless you, Beloved.  Keep your eyes fixed on the Cross.  Trust me, If “I” can do it, I know you can to!

ALL my love,

Ava

Love is a Gamble…

“To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce hope in the loved person.  Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.”  

-Eric Fromm

In essence, love is a gamble.  I decided that it’s like the lottery.  If you don’t play you simply cannot win.  The problem is that I’m almost 40…and to date, I have not won.  

I knew that the relationship that I have been in was astonishingly toxic, but this evening I learned that I am completely and indescribably disposable to this man.  I recently loaned him a sizable amount of money.  I know, I know…how pitifully stupid of me.  Another codependent attempt to help someone I thought I loved.  My intentions were wholly pure.  But why do I keep falling in love with unlovable men?

I recently lost my job.  The new job that I have taken will reduce my pay by $30,000 per year.  I made this loan in good faith, feeling (somewhat) confident that he would honor me by paying it back.  After all, he was the one who solicited me for the money.  The loan was one of those white-trash payday loans that will incur 30 percent interest every two weeks until the principle is paid in full.  I feel sick.  My financial situation is already bleak…and logically it’s about to get much worse.  I need a miracle…and a roommate!

I love the quote by Rollo May that says, “The opposite of love is not hate; apathy is.”  Indeed my friends…indeed.  This man grew completely cold and apathetic in regards to me after I loaned him the money.  I haven’t seen him since and might be lucky if I received one or two texts a day.   He insisted last night that, “a text is the same as a phone call.”  Really?  

Tonight I merely asked if he planned to pay anything toward the principal, as tomorrow is the deadline.  He said things like, “Fuck off, loser.”  and “fucking fly“.  The beauty of the situation is that I do not love him anymore.  After all, if I were to label something like this “love” I would expect to be immediately placed in a straight jacket and tossed into a padded room.  I may be dysfunctional, but I know what love is.  This certainly isn’t it.  Love isn’t supposed to hurt.

One thing I do know though is that, in spite of my recent spiritual disconnect, God loves me.  As a matter of fact, His love is all the love I need…  I want God to be my husband.  However, those words are easy to say, but hard to really internalize enough to make my heart cry out for and accept His all-consuming love.  I have often times cursed God simply because He is invisible.  Faith take a lot of work, and this woman here has been longing for a pair of tangible arms to hold her for as long as I can remember.

My life circumstances tell me that I am rejected, abandoned, and that I should just go ahead and succumb to this feeling of impending doom.  Praise God for the following scripture:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.  For he CHOSE us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.  In love He PREDESTINED us to be ADOPTED as his sons through Christ Jesus, in accordance with His PLEASURE AND HIS WILL–to the praise of his glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves.  In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with ALL wisdom and understanding.  -Ephesians 1:3-8

Now that is good stuff!  He adopted you and me!  He CHOSE us…before He even created the world.  He created us not just because he wanted to, but also for his pleasure.  And the part about His Grace… He LAVISHED it upon us with ALL his wisdom and ALL of His understanding.  I imagine God’s wisdom and understanding to be pretty intense.  It’s true that our human minds cannot comprehend a love so great.  So if He chose us…before the beginning of time, with ALL his will, pleasure, and understanding that means that He knew exactly what He was getting Himself into.  

He knew about our sins, our flaws, our bad, habits, and our insecurities.  He knew we would be beautiful, but beautiful messes, indeed.  AND HE DID IT ANYWAY!

So when a loathsome, abusive, spineless man comes along and tries to steal my joy (and my money)… I will remind myself that Jesus suffered died on a cross for me…and for YOU.  

True love will never come in human form.  I have to keep reminding myself of this.  No man can be all things to all people…just our Beloved Savior.  Let’s allow Him to be ENOUGH.

Blessings,

Ava 

I Will Fix You

“Codependency is defined as a psychological condition or a relationship in which a person is controlled or manipulated by another who is affected with a pathological condition (as in an addiction to alcohol and/or drugs). In broader terms, it refers to the dependence on the needs of another.  It also often involves placing a lower priority on one’s own needs, while being excessively preoccupied with the needs of others.  Codependency may also be characterized by denial, low self-esteem, excessive compliance, or control patterns.  Narcissists are considered to be natural magnets for the codependent.”

Some people like to find old, worn down houses and fix them up.  I do not.  I find that old houses are creepy and that they smell musty.  I’m also afraid that some old ghost could be lingering around, which is why I had my house built.  I am however a renovator.  Only, I don’t like to find busted houses and fix them up, I like to find busted  people and fix them up.  And I do it free of charge.

My favorite fixer-up projects tend to be men who are narcissistic sociopaths.  I mean I’ve dated alcoholics, drug addicts, gambling addicts, sex addicts, abusers, pathological liars, thieves, con-artists, cheaters, and undiagnosed bipolar persons.  The current man who I am trying to wean myself off lived in Las Vegas for three-year making his living from playing poker and living in comped hotels.  I had known him from when I was a stripper in my early 20’s and was once mesmerized by his long, dark, hair, his dimples, and his radiantly piercing blue eyes.  He drove a bad ass BMW, was high-ranking in his social stature, and he had this mystical je ne sais quoi that surrounded him.  As a matter of fact, he strongly resembled Leonardo DiCaprio.  My God he was deliciously stunning.

He and I connected last year on Facebook and the rest was history.  It wasn’t long before he asked my father for my hand in marriage.  He literally got off the plane and moved into my house.  Mind you, this is not something that I “do” as I do not like to bring men around Jeremiah and Jonah.  As it was, the boys loved him; he charmed us all–for a while.  Eventually the heavy alcoholism became apparent as did his gambling addiction.  I even had to hide my sedatives from him; I hid them in one of those vintage, cardboard jewelry boxes–the ones where the little ballerina pops up and spins around.  Every night when I needed to take my medication, I would be petrified that the sound of the music box was going to go off and that I would be caught.   What’s more, this man morphed into the most verbally and emotionally persons that I had ever known.  Hence, I wrote the following poem one sleepless night after he had left me (the first time):

You played me for a common fool,

You played me from the start.

I gave you every ounce of me,

I handed you my heart.

Words like blades you slayed me with,

Cutting me to the bone.

With you I felt a stranger in the place I once called home.

I walked on eggshells day and night,

Guarding my every word.

Each thing I did, each thing I said

Felt stupid and absurd.

But convinced was I your love was real,

Convinced I was your girl-

I soon learned I was ordinary,

To you a nameless girl.

A girl you “would not” fight for

With a heart you could abuse-

Your “promises” were hollow words,

You set me up to lose.

Abandoned and rejected now,

Cast out in a lonely spot-

I’ll never dance this dance again;

In love I’ll not be caught.

I’ll build the walls around my heart;

You’ll never get back in.

I’m scarred for life, for the one I lost

Once called me his “best friend”.

So love those cards, the alcohol,

The pills and shallow bitches-

My loving soul now bears a hole,

My heart’s in need of stitches.

So here’s to your life of solitude,

Of Godlessness, and sorrow-

You robbed me of the dream of love

And darkened my tomorrows.

Remember me, as you saw me last,

With tear drops on my face.

I surrender the dream of my soul-mate tonight; 

For me love holds no place.  

When I wrote this poem, and I didn’t know it at the time, but I was suffering a complete and utter nervous breakdown.  Friends I’m not just using the term “nervous breakdown” as a semantic euphemism.  This was indeed, indubitably real and entirely physiological in nature.   I couldn’t eat or sleep for about 4 days; I lost 12 pounds in one week.  I couldn’t stay off the toilet, and my panic attacks were so physically intense that I could not operate my car or attend work.  I cried and sobbed for days upon days.  Eventually, I had to seek medical treatment in the form of late-night counseling visits and trips to my family physician.  It was a nightmare.  My mind knew what was going on, but my body ceases to cooperate.

How this happened is beyond me.  He had lived with me for just two, short months.  Still, 60 days of day in and day out can be intense, particularly because I firmly believed I had finally met my husband.  He didn’t work or have a car (supposedly all his belonging, including his chopper and his truck were in storage in Vegas); but he helped me so much around my house and helped care for my kids in ways that were unfathomable.  I was my best self when he was with me.

However, once he began gambling again, he became a different person.  I was working my tail off everyday and providing for the family financially but justified that it was a fair trade-off because of all the help he was giving me with the boys and around the house.  And in all fairness, my house looked like a tornado had blown through it before he came to my rescue.

However, to my horror, it turned out that he felt entirely and hopelessly trapped in my haven of a home.  WTF?  And the guy wasn’t stuck; I was carpooling to work with a friend each day so that he could have full use of my Hummer.  I gave him everything I had to give but in the end, it wasn’t enough.  So there it was, staring me in the face again: rejection and abandonment.  I became so concerned with his needs that I had completely ceased to care my own.  I was screwed.

Today I opened some mail (which is something I rarely do because it’s depressing).  Much to my chagrin, it contained two invoices from the North Texas Tollway Authority demanding that I pay $321.40 in toll violations.  There are photos of my car and license plate.  The problem is, I don’t drive in Dallas.  I live and work in Fort Worth.  And the dates in question are dates that I was working.  My mother was a cop.  I would never blow through a toll booth and not pay the toll.  I would feel like God was watching me and I promise you, I could simply not sleep at night knowing that I had done such a thing.  On the invoices, I counted 32 violations.  I’m not sure what to say or what to do at this point.  I suppose that some serious prayer is in order.

What’s worse we are still unofficially still seeing one another.  I absolutely loathe confrontation.  More than that, I hate being lied to.  However, I feel that both are in my very near future.

As a co-dependent you have to ask yourself, “When is enough enough?”  Am I that lonely and desperate to be loved that I would put up with blatant abuse.  He’s put me at risk legally now.  I’m going to sleep on this and see what tomorrow brings.  Nevertheless, I have had it.  I just hope that I’ve really “had it”.  Will he deny that he was driving my car and blowing through toll booths or will he fess up, apologize, and pay the fines?  We’ll see, but the outcome certainly doesn’t look good.

I’ll write more about the issues of co-dependency that I struggle with later.  There are many wonderful attributes about this man who I haven’t mentioned, and I wish to be fair.  However, I just really want to go have a smoke and go to bed.  I am fed up with myself.  I keep trying to find my happiness in the form of a human being.  In reality though, my heart knows that true happiness originates from a relationship with God and God alone.   I just wish that God would hold me with a  tangible set of arms.  He made me.  Doesn’t He understand my heart and that I want to be chosen and loved by a man?

My best friend, Addison and I constantly talk about how all these other women are married (except us).  We carry on and on about the subject noting that women with clubbed feet, missing teeth, and even those with body odor and swamp ass have husbands that truly love them.  When will God deem us worthy of having a husband?  What are we doing wrong?