I have always loved to write. Looking back over the course of my life, I see the stories I would start and then leave hanging. At the time I would write, I would, most times be overwhelmed by what was going on in my life. I couldn’t or maybe I wouldn’t have ever told people nor family or friends how I truly felt, it would have exposed a weakness, a vulnerability that I instead would keep hidden and tried to bury. Just seemed as if I told anyone the deepest parts of me I would be told yet again that I needed to see a doctor and get some “happy” pills. I didn’t want “happy” pills. I wanted to feel my pain and remember. Not in a martyr kind of way, in a lesson learned kind of way.
If you check the date of my last blog, it’s been almost a month since I last wrote and I have been putting off writing because I was being led to this story I’m about to share over and over again. I argued with God I didn’t know what to write and this story came up. I argued more and this story came up and I even started another story and this story came up. I guess God is telling me it’s time to let it out and it’s time to obey what I’ve been hearing. Ironically in church today, that was pretty much the message..hear and obey. So this is me, doing just that and I bet when it’s done, I’ll be happy I listened to the Daddy who knows me best.
It’s an unfinished story from May 16 2011, written in the very early morning hours. I titled it “Beginnings,” but I’m not sure why and every time I read it, I cry and I thank God I’m not where I used to be, and that He is leading me to a place of total healing. It really comes as no surprise that my Father should want me to reveal this as we come upon chapter 4 of Renee Swope’s book—A Confident Heart. Chapter 4 is titled “God promises hope for my future despite the pain of my past.” I read this chapter once before and then I put the book down for several weeks before I could read more. Those of you who have read the book or are going to be reading that chapter this week will understand. So, here’s a glimpse into part of my painful past….
“Wow, would you just look at all this stuff. Her stuff, stuff she collected to make herself feel good, decorate her home, make people feel welcome….stuff she collected to fill a void that to this day she has no clue what for. BUT, she has learned that even with all this stuff, she feels empty, hollow, a shell of a person. 48 years old and she still has no clue who she is, what she wants, or why she’s been allowed to take up space on this earth, when there are so many with dreams untold that have vacated this earth for reasons unknown. But here she is, here she sits, typing to no one but herself. It feels good to get it out, to tell someone or in this case something. The hole opens, the words pour out and she waits for the hurt, the pain, the tears, the godforsaken emptiness of her soul to be heard, to be healed, to be forgiven….except, she knows that deep in the depths of her soul, that first and foremost she needs to forgive myself. Not absolution, never total absolution because she never wants to forget the person that took advantage of everything that was handed to her, who thought the grass was greener on the other side, who indeed coveted what someone may have had. She was shameless in her quest to fill the emptiness that she felt for sooooo many years. Her appetite was insatiable, incoherent and reckless. She cared not for the souls in her path that could suffer the consequences of her own destruction and in doing so, now care nothing for the person who stares back at her from the mirror she can’t stand looking into. She is the worst kind of person, the kind who obsesses about the negative no matter how hard she tries to make the positive the focus of her being. It matters not the legs, the arms, the heart, the brain, that work perfectly, it only matters that the trials and tribulations have left her void of any hope of fulfilling her destination. She breathes, but she knows not the reason breath was breathed into her lifeless body by God himself. The whisper on an angels’ wing that sent forth her soul to become the person someone meant for her to be. She lost her way, she laughed in its’ face and she never felt emptier, and she never wanted anything more than the light to be extinguished from her soul to make the pain of her own stupidity go away. Except it’s never that easy, there’s a lesson to be learned, a lesson to be passed on to a generation that might listen, a forgiveness from within that might help foster the life to be lived move forward and not forever backwards. It’s so easy in the moment to react to a situation and only focus on what you feel is the best thing for all involved and how easy is it to forget the vows that connected you to another human being.”
Actually when I go back and read some of the stories I wrote I wonder….who wrote that?!! But the woman who wrote that, cries not for the person she is today, she cries for the brokenness that God saw fit to reach down and save…she felt unworthy….He told her she was His and she…..I am worthy.
Blessed to be Broken 