Hello All,
I took a walk in our front yard this morning and wrote the poem at the end of this post. My heart has been heavily burdened with all the loss I've seen on the news lately about the hurricane/flood damage in Houston. I grew up there. I spent all my school years there and, from what I have seen, it will never be the same again.
It reminded me of the time my mom's storage facility - which happened to be my grandmother's store - burned down. A couple of kids decided it would be fun to set it on fire and 24 hours later, many generations of memories were up in smoke. Literally.
I prayed. I prayed for clarity on all the pain that the storm stirred up. I prayed for peace for those who have lost so much. I prayed for healing in my own heart as I still feel the sting of the losses I've experienced.
Right there, in the middle of my prayer, while standing in front of a rosebush, admiring a hummingbird, God spoke to my heart about plural marriage.
Really.
When we first learned about plural marriage and began to actually live that truth, it was very much like a storm. Let's just go ahead and say it's more like a hurricane. Or a fire. You choose your disaster. I don't mind calling it that. It FEELS like a disaster to the mind.
It comes in, makes drastic changes, and then you are left with ashes or rubble. This has been my personal experience and I've heard it from countless others.
We do not choose the hurricane. We do not choose the fire. It comes. It's out of our control. Life-changing truth is like that. The art of living AFTER the storm or the fire is not to focus on what we lost. It's to focus on what remains and what we can build.
The truth about plural marriage is that everyone is affected by it. No one - not the husband, not the first wife, not the second wife (or the third or fourth) - gets to go back to "life as it used to be." It's an all or nothing choice we make. We submit ourselves to the storm or the fire because we trust the God who brought us there.
Sometimes, the losses - both real and imagined - are devastating.
We can choose to spend all our time mourning the loss of our great-grandfather's rocking chair (an item I actually lost in the fire), or we can be so sad that we won't ever be "alone" with our husband again (or ever in the case of non-first wives) OR we can be grateful that we are alive and we are together. We can choose to figure out who we are going to be NOW with the tools and resources we have at the moment, not the tools we had in the past.
The loss is so real. For most, it really does feel like a hurricane or a fire. We die to the life we had to explore and build a new one. It's the only way.
As always, it's a matter of choice and perspective.
The storm comes. The fire comes. It takes what it wants and after you sift from the debris, you move on. You build and grow and make a new life. Together.
Thank you for your time in reading this.
Regards,
Ginny
WHAT REMAINS
The fire burned.
The building,
a legacy in a small town.
Post office.
General store.
All in one.
I ran barefoot
on the dirty wooden planks
we called a floor.
I spent hours
with my grandmother
as she sorted mail
and rang up customers.
After she passed,
it became storage.
Boxes full of precious
childhood memories.
And one day,
someone started a fire.
And in a matter of hours,
It was all gone.
Ashes.
The flood came.
Brought on by a hurricane
and days and days
of unprecedented rain.
It washed away entire towns
and devastated
the fourth largest city
in the US.
Washed away.
Forever.
A part of me wants to focus
on what we lost.
In the fire.
In the flood.
Things that mattered.
Generations of memories
and heirlooms
simply gone.
Never ever to return.
The best part of me
(that tiny scrap
I keep hidden from the world)
Knows that the thing to do
- the thing we must do -
is focus not
on what we lost
but what we will do
with what remains....
I took a walk in our front yard this morning and wrote the poem at the end of this post. My heart has been heavily burdened with all the loss I've seen on the news lately about the hurricane/flood damage in Houston. I grew up there. I spent all my school years there and, from what I have seen, it will never be the same again.
It reminded me of the time my mom's storage facility - which happened to be my grandmother's store - burned down. A couple of kids decided it would be fun to set it on fire and 24 hours later, many generations of memories were up in smoke. Literally.
I prayed. I prayed for clarity on all the pain that the storm stirred up. I prayed for peace for those who have lost so much. I prayed for healing in my own heart as I still feel the sting of the losses I've experienced.
Right there, in the middle of my prayer, while standing in front of a rosebush, admiring a hummingbird, God spoke to my heart about plural marriage.
Really.
When we first learned about plural marriage and began to actually live that truth, it was very much like a storm. Let's just go ahead and say it's more like a hurricane. Or a fire. You choose your disaster. I don't mind calling it that. It FEELS like a disaster to the mind.
It comes in, makes drastic changes, and then you are left with ashes or rubble. This has been my personal experience and I've heard it from countless others.
We do not choose the hurricane. We do not choose the fire. It comes. It's out of our control. Life-changing truth is like that. The art of living AFTER the storm or the fire is not to focus on what we lost. It's to focus on what remains and what we can build.
The truth about plural marriage is that everyone is affected by it. No one - not the husband, not the first wife, not the second wife (or the third or fourth) - gets to go back to "life as it used to be." It's an all or nothing choice we make. We submit ourselves to the storm or the fire because we trust the God who brought us there.
Sometimes, the losses - both real and imagined - are devastating.
We can choose to spend all our time mourning the loss of our great-grandfather's rocking chair (an item I actually lost in the fire), or we can be so sad that we won't ever be "alone" with our husband again (or ever in the case of non-first wives) OR we can be grateful that we are alive and we are together. We can choose to figure out who we are going to be NOW with the tools and resources we have at the moment, not the tools we had in the past.
The loss is so real. For most, it really does feel like a hurricane or a fire. We die to the life we had to explore and build a new one. It's the only way.
As always, it's a matter of choice and perspective.
The storm comes. The fire comes. It takes what it wants and after you sift from the debris, you move on. You build and grow and make a new life. Together.
Thank you for your time in reading this.
Regards,
Ginny
WHAT REMAINS
The fire burned.
The building,
a legacy in a small town.
Post office.
General store.
All in one.
I ran barefoot
on the dirty wooden planks
we called a floor.
I spent hours
with my grandmother
as she sorted mail
and rang up customers.
After she passed,
it became storage.
Boxes full of precious
childhood memories.
And one day,
someone started a fire.
And in a matter of hours,
It was all gone.
Ashes.
The flood came.
Brought on by a hurricane
and days and days
of unprecedented rain.
It washed away entire towns
and devastated
the fourth largest city
in the US.
Washed away.
Forever.
A part of me wants to focus
on what we lost.
In the fire.
In the flood.
Things that mattered.
Generations of memories
and heirlooms
simply gone.
Never ever to return.
The best part of me
(that tiny scrap
I keep hidden from the world)
Knows that the thing to do
- the thing we must do -
is focus not
on what we lost
but what we will do
with what remains....
