[tmwhalens]

I found this site through an article here about God's timing. I responded to the article, but before I could do so I had to register for this site.

The reason I am creating this thread is that I do so with the hope that others who have experienced having loved ones taken away (not by death, but as consequence) by God, might come to an understanding that God tries to warn sinners of the negative effects their actions are having on those that they love dearly. When we sinners have not 'listened' or 'seen' his warnings, he puts big neon lights around his warnings and says "If you do not stop now, this shop will close". By "shop" I mean the affected relationship. That could be your spouse or your child. It could even be a friend or an employer, or even your health. For me it was the first two shops that closed.

God had been trying to tell me that the direction I was going in my life was not one that my wife and son would be continuing with me in. One day I got home from work and a note was on the kitchen counter, my wife saying that she had taken our son somewhere safe. We were having problems with our heat and hot water, and I was sitting at home (just before I'd gotten that job) consumed by my own miseries and with the process of changing myself into something completely alien to my wife and son (transitioning from male to female with hormones). I should have been out trying to find a job.

Instead I thought that all of my problems were because employers didn't understand me. They weren't hiring. They were too far away from where we lived. We only had one vehicle. I wasn't really a man. (yes, it's amazing the lengths sinners will go to justify their failures in life). The excuses go on and on and on.

The reality was that my wife and son had left me. There was no longer the sound of the chickens running from the coop to meet me when I got home from work. My son wasn't peeking out the kitchen window, leaving handprints and slobber all over the glass, as I was pulling up the driveway in my truck. The silence when I walked into my house was deafening. I 'knew' right then and there that my life had changed forever. It HAD to change.

It was after a brief panic of yelling for my wife and son, and checking the telephone to find that all telephone numbers and caller ID's had been erased from the phone, that I 'knew'. It was time to give it all up. My act wasn't working. My efforts to conquer all my internal demons and grudges and resentments of the past were all for not. That was the moment that I threw my hands up to the Lord and basically said that it was His turn to do something with me. That I had proven (twice before) that getting touched by the Holy Spirit isn't enough. That calling yourself a Christian doesn't even fool yourself.

There had to be something more. That is when God spoke to me and said that he had been trying to get me to go to church. This is big stuff, so listen up! My wife had been urging me to go to church with my son, even if she wasn't there (she worked weekends as a nurse). I always dismissed the idea of going to church by saying that we should all go to church. Somehow I had gotten the idea that the whole family must go to church. It never occured to me that the Holy Spirit works in YOU; not partly in you and partly in your son or wife. He is completely there for YOU, ME and everyone else. He is everywhere.

At least a couple of times a week I write to my wife and let her know how much I love her and my son (I know she reads my emails or someone in her family does), and how things are going in my life. I hold out hope that she might forgive me and want to be a part of my life again some day. I pray that the Lord might show her that I am not the same man she left, and that I am a better man than the one she married. I AM on both of those accounts. And, the only way I know that is that I have been living my life for the Lord since 12/04/08 and have begun to see His word through His eyes, that when I interact with the world now I am interacting through Him.

I am completely amazed by how God has changed my life. Everyday I wake up with a calmness I didn't have before I gave into Him. I make my bed. I hang my clothes up when they're not being worn. I do the dishes BEFORE the sink gets anywhere near to being full. I keep trash our of the truck. The list goes on and on and on. I do these things gladly, out of appreciation for the second lease on life that the Lord has given me. They aren't 'chores' anymore, they are part of 'being a man'. I suppose some might say that I should be ashamed of myself, that I should be depressed and that I should hope like hell that she won't try and get full custody of our son or that I better not hope she files divorce before I do (I'm in Kentucky, she's in Massachusetts), but I don't feel any of those things. I have learned, finally, that the person that my wife left no longer exists.

I know that my love for my wife and son will never die, whether they are with me or not, and that the Lord will take care of these things. All I need to do is stay close to Him, work everyday for Him, and 'listen' to what he has to say about my life.

Everything will work out in the end, I have total faith in Him.