it’s complicated

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

~ Reinhold Niebuhr

It’s complicated. This is a relationship status on Facebook. It’s a status that used to perplex me to some degree. I’m a pretty straight forward gal. Either you are in a relationship with someone, or you aren’t, right? Pretty simple.

December 2013, I believe I was baptized, fully immersed into the meaning of “it’s complicated.” Greg (my significant other at the time, now my husband) and I had been seeing one another for almost a year and this was going to be our first Christmas together.

I was so excited. I had not had a Christmas with a significant other for years, so this was going to be so fun and incredibly special!

I was living in Indiana, and he was here in Louisville. My sons would be congregating in Indiana because that is where everyone in their world/families would be for Christmas.

So, we started our holiday there, Christmas at my mom’s with everyone Christmas eve, then back to my place in Indianapolis for Christmas with my three sons, and then early Christmas morning we drove back to Louisville for Christmas with Greg’s kids, or so I thought.

You know those preset ideas we often get in our minds of how things are going to play out, and then they don’t? You know how we set our expectations on something and it’s like a gut punch when they go completely the opposite of our expectations? This was one of those times.

Everything was going beautifully, just as I had envisioned in my mind. We had a great time at mom’s, fun at my place opening gifts with the boys, there were no surprises, and things were rolling along as I had hoped and prayed for them to. Until they weren’t.

God often allows curveballs in life to do things in us that often wouldn’t happen if we weren’t pushed out of our nest. Because He created us and has walked our journey with us, He sees way ahead of us what we need and the challenges that are going to be really difficult, but necessary to help us live our best lives.

photo credit: Jen Theodore @jentheodore

Most often those challenges are straight up hard, but good, or as Lisa Whittle calls them in her new book releasing next week, the hard good.

The longer you live you will begin to see the paradox of the hard good.

I confess, I did not put it all together exactly this way until I listened to author, Lisa Whittle, read an excerpt from her (above mentioned) book this past week, and as I continue with my story from Christmas 2013, I will try to explain the hard good in my life.

Stick with me.

So, here we are, Christmas morning, December 2013, and I am like a twenty-something girl packing for my first Christmas with the man I love, thinking I am number one in his life. I, of course want everything to be perfect so I ask him what I should pack to wear? Is their Christmas formal or casual? (Yes, this matters to a woman)

He says, “definitely casual, you won’t need anything dressy.”

So, like a foolish giddy girl, I pack leggings, big frumpy/chucky/comfy sweater, wool socks…you get the picture…definitely nothing fancy.

I grab “fat clothes” for the day after Christmas eating, and we head out the door driving separately since I live in Indiana and will eventually need to get back home.

Three hours later we arrive in Louisville. We rush in and start preparing for my first Christmas with just Greg and his kids. Or so I thought…

Now, in order for you to understand the context of the rest of this story, I need to explain that Greg has been married twice before me. He has three awesome kids from his first marriage to Kristin, and two awesome stepdaughters from his second marriage to Judi, who passed away from breast cancer in 2011.

Now, where I am going with all of this, I want you to understand, this is me being completely transparent and vulnerable here, and in NO WAY is this intended to draw pity for me, judgement towards Greg, or to say one negative thing about Greg’s ex-wife Kristin, or his deceased wife Judi.

All of this is to reveal how there is such a thing as the hard good and it’s complicated and to reveal how God uses the hard good to develop our character.

So, back to the story…knowing all of this, understand that I was already struggling with my own insecurities. I had barely dated in ten plus, plus years, so trust, and the fear of being a fool again was terrifying to me.

I was NEVER first, the only woman, or even really loved in my first marriage. So, I desperately needed to know I was first to him.  

photo credit: Nate Neelson @nate_nessman

Greg’s ex-wife is a beautiful woman and very much a part of life with his kids, this was foreign to me. My ex was not in the picture in our world.

The home Greg lived in (the home we live in now) was the dream home of he and Judi, everything in the home was and mostly still is, things they brought into their marriage, and being the loyal man Greg is, the house was full of pictures of Judi and of the two of them together. All of this was already a huge stretch for me and my insecurities.

We went about preparing the food for our evening Christmas dinner, finalizing all the wrapping, and last-minute preparations for our first Christmas with his group, and finally we were ready and waiting for the kids to arrive. I was in my leggings, wool socks, hair in a messy ponytail, and wearing my massive frumpy sweater…

and then he drops the bomb!!

Did I mention I invited Kristin (his ex-wife) to have Christmas dinner with us?

I could probably stop right here and most women reading this could fill in “the rest of the story.”

I now have a complete understanding of the “it’s complicated” status!

Suddenly I can’t breathe.

I don’t want to be there.

I want to go home and be alone.

EVERYTHING in me wants to run away as fast as I possibly can, and I could have, I had my own transportation, but something in me, that nudging of The Holy Spirit, challenged me to stay, to push through my “feelings” because I know from scripture, feelings are a terrible master.

A few more hours later the kids start arriving, and they are dressed up in holiday fashion, even his son was in dress pants and a polo.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

Then his ex-wife arrives and yep, you guessed it, dressed to the nines! She looked amazing!

There I was, frumpy me.

NOTHING about this was going as I had envisioned.

NOTHING.

As the evening went on, I was going through it in a daze. Not knowing how I ended up in this position, at one point I was literally sitting between a memorial of Judi with a very large portrait of her that was set up on the piano, and his beautiful ex-wife Kristin, even taking pictures of her with their kids in front of the tree that Greg and I decorated with the ornaments from his life with his other families.

I wanted out of there!

I wanted to run away.

It took absolutely EVERYTHING in my being to stay!!!

I am so glad I didn’t run.

photo credit: Nathan Dumlao @nate_dumlao

This life is complicated. Hard and good can coexist in the same place/situation.

To paraphrase Lisa Whittle, living in the tension of the hard good is experiencing both extremes at the same time, absence and presence, loss and gain, deep pain and deep love, past and present, and present and future.

Greg and I have been together, it will be nine years in February 2023, married for four years now, and I can assure you there have been many, many hard good moments.

Life is full of paradoxes, of hard good moments and with age I can clearly see how God repeatedly uses those Ying and yang moments to make me a better person, to stretch me, and to grow my heart and my faith.

I can think of many hard good moments, and I can see clearly now exactly how God used them for good in the hard, for me and for others.

Here are some examples of, “living in the tension of the hard good…”

When my ex was getting married again, some of his family stayed in my home that weekend. Hard for obvious reasons. Good because I love my sons and it was best for them in that moment.

When my sons half-siblings were born, particularly the first one, they struggled. They were somewhat excited, confused, and didn’t want to hurt me by being excited. God put it on my heart to “break the ice” for them. In order to help the boys, God put it on my heart to buy a baby gift and go to my ex, and his new wife’s home with the boys and the gift, and hold their new half-sibling.

Hard. Not because of the baby, because my ex and I were not in a friendly place. Good because it gave my sons the “permission” they needed to accept their new siblings and not feel torn.

Christmas 2013 was not what I had planned, hard because of the previously mentioned challenges, yet good, because God used that hard good moment, along with many others I encountered as our relationship grew, to develop my trust in Greg, to empower me to overcome so many insecurities, and to deepen the roots of the relationship Greg and I were building.

Turns out I can live with knowing and honoring Greg’s past life, and I can be confident there is still a place for me in his heart, and as a stepmom and a bonus mom to the kids from his past.

“Demanding that only one thing can be true at the same time will hinder [me] from living a full life,” Lisa Whittle.

Hard things can also be good.

“If you want to have a full life, you have to accept its nuances. Sometimes life will have you laughing five minutes after you have cried. Sometimes you’ll be mad at your circumstances and still grateful to be alive.” Lisa Whittle

God does not expect us to do this on our own. In fact, to be honest, we can’t. I am not super woman. I fought and still frequently fight the Holy Spirits’ conviction to choose to accept what I cannot change.

But God…He knew we couldn’t do it alone. That is why He made a way for us to overcome through the power of the Holy Spirit.

photo credit: Tony Eight Media @tonyeightmedia

Philippians 4:13 tells us, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” It’s important to understand the context of this scripture and how it applies to the hard good I am referring to.

“The apostle Paul wrote the book of Philippians, and this verse in particular was important, especially given the context that he was using it. Paul had to preach the gospel despite the challenges he faced. He had experienced a wide range of circumstances and had to hold onto his faith in the Lord Jesus. He was beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, and endangered by many things.”

“He was able to overcome all these things through the strength of Christ. Paul was a man who traveled a lot as he preached the gospel, and this meant that he couldn't get cozy in one place. This required the strength of Christ because moving disrupted his life.”

“Being content is not easy especially when you are living in lack and trusting God to meet your needs. You will need the strength that only comes with Christ. Your strength will fail you, but God's strength won't.” (Real Meaning of Philippians-4:13)

Paul is just one example of people throughout scripture who lived the hard good, that place of tension of doing something really, really hard, but also knowing the good in the moment of the hard.  

The greatest example of living in this tension was Jesus.

Jesus left heaven and came to earth as a man to experience all that we experience. He was rejected by the very people He came to save. His Heavenly Father turned away from Him on the cross where He was left to die a humiliating and excruciating death.

Jesus experienced both absence and presence of His Father, loss and gain, deep pain and deep love, past and present, present and future, all at the same time.

“It’s hard to accept something we wish were different, but when we do, we exchange pain for freedom. Accepting what you did not want or ask for can change us for the better, but it does not mean we affirm what we didn’t ask for.” ~Lisa Whittle

A perfect example of this would be our kids and the choices they make that we don’t agree with, and we can’t change even though they might impact our lives.

In accepting those decisions as theirs, we receive freedom, but that acceptance doesn’t mean we affirm what we have to accept.

I began this blog with The Serenity Prayer because I find relatable applications to living in the hard good.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
forever in the next.
Amen.

~ Reinhold Niebuhr

photo credit: Milada Vigerova @milada_vigerova

The following five points are paraphrased from, Five Timeless Truths from the Serenity Prayer…

1.  Acceptance is not laziness.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change”

When we focus on things we cannot change, we waste physical, emotional, and mental energy that could be directed elsewhere. Accepting that there are some things we cannot change does not make us complacent. It’s really a leap of faith — an ability to trust, to let go and have faith in the outcome.

Before I surrendered to the hard good of living in the home Greg and Judi found and made together, I was missing the gift of the beautiful property and house I am now making our home. I wasted A LOT of energy fighting this before letting God have it and change my heart. I almost missed the blessing.

“You can live with things you didn’t ask for. Gratitude doesn’t require preference. It requires acceptance.” Lisa Whittle

2.  We must have courage to change ourselves.

“…courage to change the things I can…”

Begin with me, Lord. Often, our deeply ingrained habits are our own worst enemies, and simply identifying them is half the battle.

Since habits gain power through repetition, it takes real focus and perspective to take a look at ourselves and our habits and ask…

“Is this how I really want to live?”

The act of introspection is nothing less than an act of “courage.” I had to dig really deep to identify and own my behavior after we first got married.

I was angry to live in “their dream home, with all their stuff.” God opened my eyes to my spoiled, entitled heart, the hurt I was causing, and how it was building walls between Greg and me.

   3. Hardship can be good for you.

   “…accepting hardships as the pathway to peace…”

Life is complicated. It’s not black and white. It’s loss and gain, deep love and deep pain, past & present, present and future, all at the same time.

Every person confronts obstacles in the course of his or her life.

When we view these obstacles not just as frustrations or failures, but as opportunities for growth and learning, we can move beyond our circumstances.

Greg brought a lot more into our relationship than I did, not necessarily bad, just things I found frustrating and requiring more from me than from him.

When I stopped seeing them as “obstacles” but instead opportunities for growth, our roots began to deepen.

4.  Surrendering requires courage, too.

“…if I surrender to His Will…”

Society thinks to surrender means to cave or it is a semblance of weakness.

Surrender is an act of faith and trust.

The wisdom of the prayer lies in exchanging a life of endless “what ifs” for a life of trust in powers beyond ourselves.

5.  Happiness is attainable — now and in the future.

… that I may be reasonably happy in this life…

Today is a gift.

We aren’t promised tomorrow.

At a time when our culture measures happiness and success mostly in terms of money and power, that word “reasonably” stands out as an appealingly modest definition of a successful life.

Rather than wondering why we aren’t happier, or picking through every minute aspect of our lives, the prayer asks us to focus on the present, “Living one day at a time” and “enjoying one moment at a time.”  

Give yourself and others grace when forced to live in the hard good. It’s complicated. No one escapes this life without its paradoxes.