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Gumption


I am a little disappointed in myself for the lack of posts on my blog. Lately I’ve only managed my Five Minute Friday posts. The main reason for this is lately I haven’t believed that “one is just a number.” I don’t feel qualified to tell other people how to move forward with their life because I’ve been spending so much time in the past.

Last Tuesday I had lunch with X. What I thought was going to be a get together centered around hearing about his new job and his recent trip to New Orleans turned into a post mortem on our marriage and details about his current life that I really didn’t want to hear. I needed to hear them but I didn’t want to. And the funny thing is, I thanked him at the end of the lunch, knowing that what he had told me was what I needed to hear to move forward.

But as I’m wont to do, I focused on the downside and wallowed in the fact that I heard things that I didn’t want to hear and it evolved into a pity party that lasted for days on end until I was even getting sick of listening to myself whine.

Then I went to church on Sunday and the sermon title was Gumption. My pastor told the story of the man who laid by the pool of Bethesda for 38 years waiting for someone to help him into the healing waters. As I sat there, I imagined Jesus saying to me as he said to that man, “Do you want to get well?” I imagined him a little frustrated with me over my insistence on focusing on the lack instead of the plenty. At the end of the service, I decided to pick up my mat and walk – to walk away from the end of a marriage that, if I’m completely honest, was not good for me. To walk away from comparing my life to others and realize that I have been given far more than I deserve. To walk away from waiting on someone else to heal me and to realizing that all I have to do is believe and God will make my heart whole again.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the day X went to court and ended our marriage.  I could do what I usually do and mourn the life that I had planned for myself and waste more time living in the past. But, instead, I am going to gather up my gumption, pick up my mat, and do my best to look forward to the life that God planned for me and trust that it is going to be so much better than anything I could ever dream for myself.

One is just a number. It may take gumption to trust that but I know it will be worth it in the end.

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