Not What I Planned on Writing

I had my blog all planned out in my head, in fact I did it  yesterday, but was too done in by a trip to the doctor in Atlanta to even think about sitting up and actually typing.

But I knew what I was going to say.

All that changed when I listened to a voice mail from one of my dear friends:

"The biopsy finally came in. It's cancer."

I burst into tears.

Sometimes I really hate this place.

This world is full of pain, loss, grief, sorrow and tears, tears, tears.

And we have it better than anyone else on the planet.

I know the situation we are in is our own fault, we live in a fallen world because of the free will given us by our Creator.

It really isn't my home, which I forget when things are going well.

I lay in my bed, crying and telling God I didn't like this, I didn't want my friend to have cancer. And then, of course, I cried for myself.

Most of the time I keep all the bad stuff of my pain in perspective, but today, everything just flooded.

I'm better now.

But I still hate this place sometimes.

Ambushed by a Broken Heart

Emotions amaze me.

Today I was in a Bible study, and during it, the youngest of us tearfully started telling us her husband of thirteen years had announced he wanted a divorce.

And suddenly, I was thrown back into my own history. The anguish, the grief, the suffering I went through many years ago when  my twelve year marriage finally broke, the last feeble thread fraying beyond any kind of recovery.

Tears sprang to my eyes as my heart rate sped up, my stomach churned and I began to shake. I thought I was going to start sobbing.

I pulled myself together because she is the one with pain in the present. Mine belongs in the past, and stays there almost always.

I truly thought I'd never feel that pain again.

After all, I have been re-married for nearly twenty-nine years. Husband is nothing like the one who really doesn't deserve to be called husband anything, even ex; he doesn't deserve the honor or title of that word.

I guess seeing that young woman's raw sorrow, the look that said, "I don't know what I'm going to do." broke my heart all over again.

And through my broken heart for her, I felt my own, where the scar lives. I may have healed, but the scar is there.

If you are a praying person, please pray for this young woman. She has a long way ahead of her full of the kind of misery you can't understand unless you have lived it.

Time will make her heal. Perhaps she'll find another man who will actually be a good man, a real "Husband", as I did.

But her scar?

It will be there forever.