I will trust in you...

I have been so focused on things of daily life that tend to create drama.  And yet I always seem to forget that behind all the day to day drama there is more.  And that more is possible for everyone, not just those who's lives are all together.  Yet maybe even more important is the fact that the more includes those of us who have fled, feel abandoned, or any other bump in the road you can think of.  

In my world, it seems that all I have been finding are the bumps in the road.  These bumps seem to just be swallowing me up whole most days.  So, how do I handle these bumps in life?  Well I would love to say that I just walk thru them and don't think twice about what is happening.  But that would be a lie.  You see for each and every bump in the road; I feel them, I remember them, and of course I never forget them.  That might be seen as a good thing, and yet where would be the story in feeling, remembering, and never forgetting if they were just like old photographs of relatives you can't seem to put a name to?  No, these bumps are much more engraved inside of me in the same way that some people remember Pearl Harbor Day or even the Day the Towers Fell.  

And as far as them being faded pictures, I can only dream.  This is like looking at perfectly in focus still life or even home movies.  No one has aged a second from the moment these bumps were engraved.  And with that...  I find that it is not so easy to trust.  Trust might be a word we all throw around... but trusting in other people is a step that I have been burned at more times that I want to think about.  And sadly it is usually by those in my life that I hold most dear.  Honestly who wants to relive the moment your husband tried to kill you again every single day since it happened?  Never mind remembering a conversation with someone long dead that enforces the idea that you are worthless and unwanted?  That by failing in your own life that you brought physical pain to their life?  Or that you lack of perfection destroyed the self esteem of someone who you knew you needed to love?  And even going as far to hear that your love for someone required a price so steep that God whisked them away from this earth because of it?

You see, while we desire to live in a culture of free love.  The ability to chart our own course and even control our own destiny...  We can and do leave behind a trail of damage from our desire to get ahead.  And yet I am going to guess that you are thinking, that no one can be that cruel.  Love never hurts.  But it does, and it can hurt so deeply that it can change the world we live in.

And while I would love to explain in many different ways how I have been hurt, there is one that right now is much deeper than any other.  And that is the relationship in my life between expressing emotions and the desire to show how together I am that I don't need any help.  But it really isn't that I don't need the help.  I wish I could open my mouth and say hey can u help me pay this bill or even do you know someone who shovels walks so that I am not stuck in my house each time it snows.  The problem is the asking for help requires a level of trust.  A level of trust that just is not within my grasp right now.  And that level of trust then is also so keenly noticed with the fact that I don't feel safe.  Yet a lack of safety isn't due to a physical war.  It is the product of the idea that we never let down the walls to let people know where and how we are weak.  It is just much safer to move forward and never let anyone know they hurt you.  Sadly the more I have done this, and so of it was a direct result of a physical pain inflicted upon me for having expressed an emotion, the easier it has become to take each and every moment that I have been hurt, or even wondered if I would get hurt, and to find a way to package them up and lock them away in the vault of my memories.  

You see, this lack of trust has set up the cycle of:

1. I find a bump in the road.
2. These things we like to call emotions start to find a way inside me.  They feel like they are starting to bubble up inside of me.
3. And then I do an assessment...  Is it safe?  Am I going to show where I am weak?  Or is this letting someone in this life too close to the castle walls protecting my vault?

And with this cycle, I am starting to see that the sound advice that I do hear...  I question, just because of the world trust.  And it is not even being asked to trust a person here on this earth that is living.  It is trusting in the simple fact that if I turned the boxes over to God...  What could he do to help me?  Why do I deserve any help?  And what risk is it to me, taking a step to trust, and possibly start to see my way away from all the bumps in life that I have neatly stored and organized?

While I have no answers... and currently more questions... Maybe this is a start towards that critical step of I WILL TRUST IN YOU... WHEN THE WEAK SAY I AM STRONG IN THE STRENGTH OF THE LORD... I WILL TRUST IN YOU.

Silence

Years of noise have been replaced.  And yet I was not ready for how the noise came to be replaced.  I have been on a journey between abusers... and now those abusers are silenced.  And it was not a direct act of mine that took away the voices.  And yet in some ways there were some actions that started this chain of events.

I am seeing that in many ways my actions on the night my husband tried to kill me.  And in one phone call I started a chain of events in our marriage that would forever change not just my life, but also the lives of many people around me. And this chain reaction would not stop there... it is still moving ahead.

That night, I found that I could change the way things were happening in my marriage.  The small act of calling the police started this change.  And while I thought it was a change towards saving my marriage.  Now I am not so sure.  Death really doesn't scare me, and yet it is not something I am rushing towards.  But in a brief moment that night I found a level of fear that I still can't manage to explain.  But the process of staring down a barrel of a gun is to this day something I wish I could forget.  And yet I had to relive that night over and over in the course of the next year, and still even today.  

Yes the police came and took him away... and yet my desire to be the wife he wanted, no, needed...  I started the process of helping him to face the fact that he was arrested.  And yet in my desire to save my marriage, I took some steps away from him, and yet in the end came back to him.  I thought he was better.  And the months of reduced noise made me think that things were changing for the better.  In the weeks that we were back together, the voices returned in a much louder volume.  And in the end, I did make one choice that added to this chain of events.  And that one choice was to walk out and eventually put a greater distance between us in the hopes to save my marriage.

Yet he went to jail... something that I tried to prevent, but in the end could not.  And then I entered a period of quiet searching.  A time when I was in a safe place, or rattling around the house we owned together.  And yet I was only a phone call from a different type of abuse.  One that I also willingly submitted to.  One that in the silence of the days that I had lived, would draw me back and willingly give me a place to live.  A place with noise.

And yet now, that voice is not here.  I am again left with the silence that threatens to consume me.  The mother who gave me life is dying.  And while she also was a voice of abuse, I am not sure what is going to happen in the next months.  You see I am the one who has the power over her, and yet it is a power that I would never seek.  And at the same time I have to change my view point on where I am and what is coming.  Because after years and years... my journey between abusers is coming to a point of pause.  My husband is still in jail, my mother is dying, and for the first time in my life... I have to think about what is best not just for my daughter and her safety, but also about what might be best for me.  And that is a journey that I have never seen before.  And currently I am full of confusion and sadly emotions.  And the emotions are not just from what I am currently facing...  they seem to be a tidal wave of each and every event that I went thru in the past.  One that threatens to overwhelm me, and yet one I must face and move beyond.

And yet in this latest storm of life...  I have found a voice of reason.  One who has traveled along a great deal of the path that I have.  And one who from experience is able to listen, show me calm, and help me to start to see the path that the journey has for me right now.  And without this outside voice of reason and support... I feel I would be losing my mind.  And yet I know God has more in store for me.  I just do not know exactly what right now...  but time will tell.

Who am I?

It is a question I get asked so many times, and yet still really do not have an answer.  You see I have let labels define who I am for so long, even I wonder who I am under all the labels.

I am a:

daughter  mother  sister  cousin  aunt friend  survivor  victim  

And yet these words really do not define who I am.  I could start off by saying that I am a survivor/and was a victim of sexual abuse as a child.  I could continue to tell you that while the person in the legal world would be related to me at the time, they were never really a part of my family.  But do these words tell you who I am, or do they just inform you that as a child I faced a great challenge.

I could continue on this path and tell you that I have spent my whole life feeling like my mother never wanted me.  That I am a mistake.  And yet I know you will respond with God doesn't make mistakes and I am here for a reason.  But I still don't know that reason, and the feelings of not being wanted have never changed.

We would then come to the fact that I was a victim of rape.  And that the rape resulted in a pregnancy that in many ways I wish hadn't ended in miscarriage.  But how do you explain to your parents that you were forced to be a part of an act that you did not desire or even understand.  And yet know that deep down they really know something happened and still the murmurs are of your being cheap and allowing someone to have something that you were not allowed to give.

Then this path could continue in the fact that I have not really ever had a stable home or community.  I am a product of my age in this regards.  And with a father who was desired by the company that had the bid, we moved around a lot.  And in the course of these moves...  I was exposed to many different kinds of people and also had the chance to experience the inside workings of many different church choices, always with being Roman Catholic as the underlying melody that was played with the church of the move.  As I like to think about it.  So along with this, I learned that friends come and go.  And that sometimes even if you want to remain in contact with a friend... your parents can veto the idea.

Or you could even identify me by the title, Victim of Domestic Violence.  Or as of late, A Survivor of Domestic Violence.  And yet even these titles do not give a complete picture of who I am.  You see while I have spent the last almost 11 years defined by domestic violence, it still doesn't show who I am under the shell that I wear for the world to see.  And that is where the difference of the shell and the heart and soul that are inside are in conflict.

You see, I am all those titles.  And yet there is one title that identifies who I am better than any of these.  And that is when I identify myself with God and say/admit that I am a Child of God, The One True King.  That path alone gives me purpose and direction.  It gives me an ability to have a heavenly father who will help me and guide me towards his perfect will.  And while I am still all of the above, I also know that all the bumps in my journey will be smoothed out by God and one day reveal a purpose that is greater than I am...  One that will lead me to finally starting to understand who I am...

Can storms make us courageous?

#Courageous -

What does that word even mean?  Well I looked it up... meaning of courageous... and I am still no better off on what the word means... So I scrolled down the the synonyms...

bold, brave, dauntless, doughty, fearless, gallant, greathearted, gutsy, gutty, heroic (also heroical), intrepid, lionhearted, manful, stalwart, stout, stouthearted, undauntable, undaunted, valiant, valorous

Well... That helped a lot more.  And yet the one word in this that caught in my throat was fearless.  And lately I have been anything but fearless.  So how can I be courageous?  How can I be undaunted?  Let alone any of these other words...

Currently I honestly wish I could run into my father's arms and beg him to fix all that is falling apart around me.  And yet I understand that it is a dream, but never again will be a possibility with my earthly father.  He is in heaven.  And yet when he died, he left me with a task.  One that I took to heart.  And sadly it is one that I am now facing.  It is amazing how when you promise something at 18, and at 31 again say of course I will do this...  And yet when the time comes to fulfill the promise you are anything but happy about doing this task.

You see many years ago I promised my mother that I would face her death without fear.  And yet facing the possibility of it is creating a great deal of fear.  Because she never wanted to have huge medical interventions to keep her alive.  Her wish was to be at home surrounded by her family.  And as of late, that family is just me and my daughter here.  Thousands of miles separate her from the rest of us.  And others are within a hundred miles, but might as well be millions of miles away.  And yet it is this promise. made as a young lady out of love to her parents, that I am now facing.  Do I regret this promise?  Not really, and yet I can wish it isn't this year... please let it be next year...  And yet that is not relying on God.

And yet in the midst of this turmoil upon the already raging storms in my life... I am finding that I am being stalwart.  Let me tell you that it is the last thing I thought I could do in the face of the reality of death.  I am stalwartly seeking God, instead of food.  And while days like today I don't do as well as I know I can for God.  I am picking up the pieces and starting again the next morning.  And I am doing this because I know in this journey I am seeking God, because I will be honoring to the best of my ability my own mother's desires to die at God's time and not when modern medicine says it is her time.  And while I am fearful of what I know is coming... I also know that each day is a new chance to seek God and honor my mother by seeking God's path thru this storm.

And yes my mind is screaming at me to see if I can change what might come.  But I also acknowledge that we are all going to die at some point according to the will of God.  So who am I to take or postpone that time for my mother.  And if I am going to submit to God's will for my own life, I must also be willing to submit to it for my mother.  And while I may struggle with the days and weeks ahead of me.  I must be courageous in helping my mother, even when the words out of her mouth are reminders of the abuse of the past.  And while I am still fearful... I must learn to trust in God's will so that He can heal each and every wound between us.  So that together we might face her time when it comes as courageous women for God.