My thoughts are rarely organized (the joys of ADD) and it bothers me constantly (a gift of OCD). On this episode of “Lacy does blogging bad and will probably never share this out beyond the 2-3 humans who already have this link (hi y’all!)”, I’m just going to throw out some categories and ramble through my current thoughts. This should be nothing short of a mental mess.

Faith

• After a few months of wandering through church searching I’m feeling like maybe I’ve found somewhere that might just be where God has in mind for this next season. Hooray!
• I’m listening to “Theology in the Raw” currently, and have become a fast fan. There’s something about the way Preston talks about what is lacking/where the modern day church needs to grow that resonates deeply with me and my own recent experiences.
  • I’ve been hyper-aware and aching for the lack of true community/care within so much of the modern church. After a year of serving actively in a church, when I let people know I would be stepping back and that I was going to look for another church home due to my lack of community, there were all of 3 people who actually cared enough to say goodbye or reach out to me after, which I suppose supports my reasoning on the whole community thing. I do feel like I tried to engage the church during one of the worst periods of my life. I was an open book about my mess, but maybe that scared them off. I just want to someday see a church atmosphere where everyone can bring their mess to the table and not be afraid of people not wanting to go alongside them through it.
• I’m reading “A Glorious Dark” by A.J. Swoboda. So far I am loving how he has framed the Christian walk as embodying all three days of the Easter weekend: Friday as crucifixion day, Sunday as resurrection day, and Saturday as the in-between where the disciples must have experienced doubt, fear, and uncertainty of the future. He talks about how some churches put too much focus on a single day, and leaves others who might be walking through a time period that feels more like another feeling like they are somehow doing this following Jesus thing wrong. There’s another part where he talks about the book of Hosea along with a verse in Malachi where God talks about hating divorce, and his reasoning why was a sucker punch to the gut for me:

Israel, God’s people, has actually been unfaithful to God and has divorced him. Malachi is actually saying God hates divorce because he himself has experienced divorce. He literally hates it. He’s been there. God is a divorcé. God knows what it’s like to lose the love of his life to divorce.

“A Glorious Dark”, A.J. Swoboda, pg. 19

• All in all, I am feeling like the last few months God has blessed me with a rediscovered emotional draw and hunger for spiritual growth. Good days and bad days still come, but the trajectory is on the up and up.

Divorce

I really wish this topic no longer deserved a section in my brain, let alone my blog. The worst part of it all is there is nothing new here. The facts are still the same. He cheated. He lied. He left. He moved on. So why in the world do things still come up that force me to think about the life I used to have? This week it was being told that his mistress homewrecker fiancé got a job cutting hair at a salon in Thorndale. I swear, getting on with life would be 80% easier if I had no ties to a town where everyone knows everything, including what my ex is up to. Anyways, I get a text saying that someone who knows my mom went in and saw her and made a comment about how much he had downgraded. Sweet, right? Totally meant to be encouraging, I think, although I feel a little sick at the idea of being made to feel superior through putting down the whore who stole my husband a sinner in need of a Savior (dear Jesus PLEASE help me see her this way because it just isn’t happening in my brain like that).
Just that one comment made me pause and wonder if he was ever forced to think about what I was doing, who I’m with, or if I’m even making it through alright. Would he care at all if I was gone tomorrow? Maybe that is morbid, but when you go from “flesh of my flesh” to “blocked caller” in no time flat, these questions cross your mind. Every now and then I still have the temptation to write to him, to force him to face the feelings he can ignore while he lives a life where I was just replaced for another, but I know that at the end of the day it wouldn’t make a difference. He never wanted to face the weight of his actions, and if he stays where he is, he may not have to in this life. Yet I still struggle with anger. I hurt knowing that his family, and yes, they are bound by blood, knows that he had an affair and yet embraces her like I never existed. I wonder about the niece I knew and loved, and the one I will never get to meet. I will just be a distant memory, if that, erased so quickly. I wish I could throw all of these feelings and memories and junk out the window and never look back.

Misc. Junk and Ever Present Anxieties

• I could do a whole post on anxiety and how I should be focusing more on my trust in God than the fears but just dumping all of this out of my head in a mess is how I’m gonna do this so I can try to do more of that trusting thing.
• Work is hectic and I want to learn how to code more but have a hard time finding the time during the day and the energy after work to make that happen. I am not patient so my brain constantly tells me that this means I will never be good enough at coding to ever earn the respect of engineers which means I will never be able to move into a management or director level role. Super logical jumps here.
• I wanted to start a Twitch stream over a year ago and I still haven’t managed to do that yet either. Classic WoW is coming out and so is Borderlands 3, so clearly I need to get my priorities in order and somehow make this happen. Maybe I can develop plugins for my Twitch channel that I still haven’t set up because I’m all talk and no action. Let the mental anguish ensue.
• I’ve been wondering lately what good this rambling on and on in a blog is doing me, or the world. Would it be beneficial for me to just put this out there? Would it do more harm than good? Would no one even care while I just continued ranting into the abyss of the internet? Is this only cathartic to me but would be whiny, annoying, and pathetic to anyone else who stumbled upon it?