Taking her by the hand.....

I don’t know about you, but there is something so comforting to me at the thought of Jesus taking that precious child by the hand. He could have just said, “little girl arise” and she would have.  The picture of Him reaching out to her is beautiful, reaching out to help her up. He didn’t wait for her to use her own strength to arise, He was aware of her weakness. He gave her His strength.

I believe with all my heart, that is how we move through our pain to healing.  Only In His Strength. I get so overwhelmed at times with the love and grace of our God. I would be perfectly content to stay in that sweet place of being overwhelmed by Him. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28.

  I learned healing comes through working through the pain. It’s a necessary process, painful at times, but oh so worth it.

When I went back to my next session of counseling, she had gone over my questionnaire, developing a path of treatment to help me untangle all my emotions so that I could get to the other side of my pain. 

As she went over what she had learned, I was shocked at how dead on she was with my emotions and struggles.  My memory of my childhood is horrible at best. I remember the bad, but when something is mentioned that should bring me joy, I can’t for the life of me remember it. I sometimes feel there is a lot of my childhood that I must have just checked out from. So as we begin this process I am told when we suffer trauma, especially as a child, our stress levels raise, which causes our cortisol levels to raise, which in turn affects the area of the brain that holds our memories causing it to not develop. Ok, I get that, makes sense, but how come we remember the bad?

The next thing I learned was, sexual assault victims suffer from PTSD. I thought that was a war thing.  Which makes perfect sense to me now, the other day I was running and someone came up on my left side really fast, I almost clocked him with my elbow. He was running fast to catch his friend. He almost caught my elbow!

I learned that I do “check out,” emotionally and mentally. So many times during my counseling, Taylor would say, “Are you with me? You are checking out on me.” She explained that is a coping mechanism, and it is normal. When the memory or pain is too much, our brain just checks out. I guess that keeps us from completely losing our mind.

I learned I have gathered quite a few nuts on my journey. I almost titled my blog, “A Squirrel’s Journey and the Nuts I Have Gathered.” If I was an animal, it would be a squirrel. Have you ever watched one of them? They are all over the place, running to and fro, finding every nut they can, sometimes gathering more than they can carry.  They store them up so they will have plenty when the cold weather comes. For me, my nuts were all types of different emotions. After talking too many of you who have been abused, it is clear to me that we gather nuts that God never intended for us to. My nuts were, guilt, low self-esteem, performance driven acceptance, jealousy, people pleasing, shame, just to name a few. Unlike my fury friends, I didn’t store them; I took them with me everywhere!

I was beginning to understand the reason I had such a hard time sometimes showing emotion when someone was hurting. This bothered me so much, I wanted to grieve with those who grieve and sometimes the tears would not come. Sometimes our own sin can get in the way, I am not talking about those times. (I have had plenty of those times, trust me)  I had spent so much of my life shoving my feelings down that I had a hard time allowing myself to actually feel. I would check out… So many times Taylor would say, “How does that make you feel?”  And I would just look at her with a blank face. I had to learn how to allow myself to feel.  Learning that it is ok to feel and that my feelings matter, was hard, but good or bad, they mattered.

The last thing I want to share today is, I was beginning to allow myself to be completely honest with God about my feelings when it came to Him, that I felt He had let me down and wasn’t there when I needed Him the most. I don’t know why I thought this was a shock to Him, he already knew that. I was afraid that would make me a bad person, unworthy for Him to love. The one thing I feared the most, was allowing Him to break those walls that I had placed around my heart for protection. Fearing, if that happened, I would completely fall apart and never come back from that.(little men with a straight jacket and a padded room.) How in the world would I put those pieces back together? That’s when He reached out to me, offering His strength, saying, “little girl arise, I will put those pieces back together, don’t be afraid, just believe.” So, with my heart laid bare, eyes open, taking a deep breath, I looked to Him in my weakness and fear.  Let the healing begin....

Happy Birthday to my mom! 71 Today!!!