a 3rd Note

We ended the time together Thursday with a story:

Julie is a young woman who I see in my practice who asked that I share her story. She came to me as a new patient years ago when she was a newlywed and doing well. I enjoyed making sure that her sinuses were clear and she was doing routinely well.
Then one day, she came into my office, pale and broken and not herself. You see, her father, who had been so close to her, had just died suddenly. She wept and hurt and tried to get through it. But, she was now raising her baby and had lots to do, a job and a life and a husband and she really did not have time to grieve (or she chose instead to throw herself headlong into her life so that she did not have to think about her grief) so she tackled day after day.
After some struggles with burying her father, she seemed again to "hit stride" and be close to her usual happy life, with only some intermittent issues with anxiety. Then again one day, I saw her name on my schedule and when I walked into the room, I knew something was going on that was not good. She looked down at the ground, eyes red, tears flowing down her cheeks, her voice hushed. "Jacob has left me," was her only sad sentence. So, again she wept and cried and we shared the grief of the pain of her life. She seemed to somehow still function here and there for months after this. She began to go to try to involve God in her life some and yet her husband was really not interested in getting back together with her.
Then one day, she came into the office smiling and happy and much more her normal self again. She announced to me that she was just sure that she was supposed to be back with her husband again and that she was planning to go meet with him and announce her intentions to get back together, in spite of all that he had done to her and her little boy.
The next week she was back, the most beat down and sad that I have ever seen her - even wondering about the value of staying alive. "He didn't want me. He didn't want to get back together. He wants no part of me," were her words. Racked with pain, it seemed her entire existence was coming to an end.
We talked for a long time that day, and I began to remind her that she was a fabulous person, not because Jacob said so, or because she was married or because she was a mom or a daughter or because her dad said she was valuable, but because God made her as an amazing and intricate gift to the world. He made her just the way she is - she did not have anything to prove in order to "be someone" to God, or to me. She looked up, kind of not totally believing me. We prayed and she promised to begin trying to get in touch with God in new ways and to allow Him to be the One who gave her More to life.
She returned in a few days (I was checking on her because she had been having such a hard time the previous visit) and this time she still had a hurting look to her eyes, but she looked me in the eyes, and what I saw there was peace. She smiled when I came in...
She proceeded to inform me that she was already trying to involve God in her life more and she was beginning to realize that she had been searching for more in the relationships she had with her husband and her father. She felt that her entire self was tied up in these things and when she began to see that WHO she was God's child and that He loved her very much and not Jacob's wife or her father's daughter, she began to be more at peace with life. She still is not sure what direction her relationship will go - it is painful to her to see the destruction of so much of her life - but her changed perspective on life, pursuing God as her "More" instead of wife hood or daughter hood, has helped her so much already and her future is promising regardless of the path that her journey will take.
Now, by no means am I saying that being a good wife or daughter is a bad thing - it is a fabulous thing - but relationships with people, whether it be in Julie's way, or feeling as if you must always make everyone happy and always serve everyone, or feeling as if your life is over when your kids are out of the house and grown, must not become who you are. If they do, at some point in your life, you will have to face the fact that these things will never completely make you full and happy. If you do these things and make God the More in your life, you will find that these relationships have better perspective and when the troubles come, which they always do, life will continue to have meaning and purpose and there will be joy behind the struggles that you are having.
At More than more, we are continuing to try to find ways to experience life more fully, to get past the usual "more" that we find ourselves pursuing in everyday American life and that so seems to crowd out our joy and meaning.

We would love to have you join us 6/10 at McAllister Recreation Center - just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette, IN - here is a google map link

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=McAllister+Recreation+Center,+Lafayette,+IN&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=42.85226,91.494141&ie=UTF8&hq=McAllister+Recreation+Center,&hnear=Lafayette,+IN&ll=40.442505,-86.87439&spn=0.080738,0.178699&z=13&iwloc=A

6:45-8:00 PM - as always there will be free childcare for your kids!

Hope to see you there!