I’ve been in a space lately that feels heavy. For quite a few months, it nearly sent me over the edge. It nearly ended my life. I started therapy and things got better. Then life happened. My therapist switched practices, I stopped going. Life got really busy. I had trips, started a new job. I have a family and household to maintain. A husband to love and a beautiful little girl to nurture and raise.
Distraction has always seemed to be my easiest answer. Distract myself from the pain. I have slowly pulled away from writing because of two main reasons. 1) I put all of my feelings out there, as honest and raw as they could possibly be and was shamed by my family and told I needed to stop talking badly about them. Apparently thats all they gathered from me pouring my heart out into this blog. 2) Every time I try to process my thoughts and emotions, my brain feels like a disc thats scratched and keeps on skipping. I feel stuck. So I’ve pulled away from social media. I’ve limited access to mine and my families lives… my daughters life. I removed all photos of her from social media and it might be one of the best choices I have ever made. I just knew it needed to be done. I started reading my Bible daily. I started spending an hour (at least) a day studying for my state certifications to advance in my career. I started going to the gym consistently. I started sewing more and using the creative parts of me that I have felt like I lost.
I turned 29 about two weeks ago. It was one of the hardest things I’ve been through yet. It brought back a lot of hurts and feelings. And with each passing holiday, event or family visit in town that I am excluded from, it hurts more. I wrestle with understanding how I can surrender fully to the Lord. Over and over the Lord tells us to trust Him, do not be afraid, rely on him and not ourselves. Yet sometimes it doesn’t feel like an attainable reality. Distraction is nice, but it doesn’t fix anything for more than a short time. There is so much that I know the Lord has seen. And I KNOW He will reveal the truth. But I wrestle daily with the fact that no amount of apologies will ever make up for this pain I have experienced. I withhold sharing details because I know the Lord will handle it. But it’s not easy. I have been made to look like a villain. Only communicated with privately because showing public communication apparently means choosing a side. It’s not easy. This pain goes SO incredibly deep. I would never treat anybody the way I have experienced. I cannot even begin to fathom it.
And while I have been mocked and outcast by some, I have been welcomed and embraced by others. Showing me, I’m actually not crazy, sensitive or hard to love. For that I am forever grateful. People who showed up in the middle of the mess to hold me. Friends who became family by choice and not obligation. In some ways, it feels impossible to trust the Lord to restore what my heart longs and what has been lost. In others, I see his goodness all around me. I know the Lord does not make promises He does not keep. I know he is good and loving. And with every moment that I wake up in tears or see something that breaks my heart all over again, I pray that my first instinct would be to fully embrace the Lord and fully surrender my desires to Him.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my recent read of the book of Ecclesiastes. In Ecclesiastes 3, it talks a lot about how for everything there is a time. A time to mourn, a time to dance. It reminds me of the fact that as difficult as it is, it is okay and even necessary to mourn the things I am. And that it may be a long grieving process. I am not broken just because its not fixed immediately. One of my favorite quotes from John Green’s The fault in our stars is “pain demands to be felt”. And it does. I can’t help but think that this pain is a foundation, not only for how we will raise our family and break generational curses, but for someone else who will see my story and say “Hey, if God brought her through it, He will deliver me too”.
The Grace-filled Home 