Keeper of the Safe Haven

I found myself in a very awkward situation this week, more so, my own safe haven had been breached, my morals questioned, and my faith thrown back in my face.
Let me further exploit the situation just a little... I was very heartbroken when I shared a feeling, a situation, a circumstance, that to me, was different, with a person who I very much respect, and that feeling was passed along to an unintended third party. There was nothing more to that situation than a feeling and it needed to end right there. As I have become a young woman of God I have learned many hard lessons of what to say, what NOT to say, and when to say it, regardless of my level of commitment with someone. I have also learned that messages, emails, texts, and lack of verbal communication are the worst ways to communicate when you are feeling a certain way about something. As many of you read this, you will take my blog one way versus your neighbor down the street who will take it another way, that is life, and well, my answer for that is, so what. God didn't make us to walk around with manuals to pass out to everyone we encounter and he didn't create us to say "I apologize if this offended you" at the end of every conversation we engage in. He created us to learn how to grow and to respect people and to respect, love, and cherrish that they think, feel, love, and learn differently than we do, than anyone does.  And we are to leave it at that.

"And the tongue is a flame of fire. It is a whole world of wickedness, corrupting your entire body. It can set your whole life on fire, for it is set on fire by hell itself." James 3:6

I breached another woman's "safe haven", she thought I breached her "clique", her "homies", the people that she loves. When in reality, we as women just take everything over the top, to the extreme, and we want to right the wrong as soon as it has entered the doorway. And, as a consequence, sometimes our mama bear tendencies, our encouragement, love and explanation becomes way too much for the average woman's insecurity to bear. We do worse by our friend, by offerring information that we are just not quite sure what the other person meant, we try to keep it general, tender hearted, trying to see all sides of the corners at the table. Now this works, obviously, when you have the other person who can see all sides of the table with you, but sometimes that doesn't always happen, and you end up taking a severe lashing for, what boils down to, miscommunication. Bad days, sleepless nights, our own personal lives get in the way of trying to understand what someone was trying to communicate to us and we disregard it the second we hear something we don't like, we hear an unspoken truth, a negative has entered the picture, and we revert to... "that person is out to get us, to judge me" <- Now, there is a big word that has been watered down so much its unbelievable, to "judge" someone. God did not make us to be "judges" of anyone and He certainly didn't come down here and give me the rightful wand that says I can "judge" anyone that I want, what?? Because I love God? NO. But He did give me wisdom, grace, compassion, and mercy, and by those tools do I chisel away at a situation that I feel may not be exactly what I want or need and I use that knowledge to decide whether I want to continue in to more situations like that.

"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." - Luke 23:34

Now, back to my warrior mommy moment of being the keeper of my own safe haven. I think it probably took everything in me to not have a breakdown moment in front of my nine month old, because now, I was the shunned girl, betrayed, rejected. I was furious inside, tears ready to roll, but then I looked at my baby girl.. I looked at her while I focused on feeding her her dinner and in to her warm bath and on in to her cozy pajamas. I could tell that she was sensing something wasn't right, she was in need of protection, love, assurance, security, that mommy was going to protect the safe haven. Those welped up tears went away, that rage (that if I were about 5 years younger I would have been very unlady like to someone) disappeared, the hurt, disappointment, frustration went away with each cackle, laugh, and splash my baby girl made in her bath tub. I AM the woman who watches over her home, I AM the woman who keeps peace in our safe haven for my family, the walls to my home are barriers against any misconstrued feeling trying to force its way in. In times that we just want to fall out in the floor and have a crying, big mommy baby, pity party, God gives us the strength to say "Not now, not this time, you have bigger tasks to tend to" and He is so right.

"A man's wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense." Proverbs 19:11

God sees everything, even when we feel like no one understands what we mean, where we are coming from, our own stupid struggles we face, and quite frankly, get pretty dang tired trying to explain what we "meant" to every person on the face of the earth. He knows our hearts and He knows deep down where we come from and where we are truly trying to go. And we do not hold that over anyone, when someone has hurt us, we do not take offense.

“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things,
      and desperately wicked.
      Who really knows how bad it is?
 ¹⁰ But I, the Lord, search all hearts
      and examine secret motives.
   I give all people their due rewards,
      according to what their actions deserve.” Jer 17: 9-10

Lisa Schipansky