So, today, the Lord put yet another person in my path and led me to believe there really is “something” to this whole idea of sharing past traumas in order to heal yourself.
I don’t know. That’s not like me, you know?
I don’t share.
I smile. I pray. I help people. I work my butt off. And I love with my whole heart.
But I don’t share.
Never have. It’s not that I’m trying to be a recluse or a hermit, though I’ll admit I do kinda fit the mold. It’s just something ingrained in my being, to the core. All the way.
I guess that started with training from my Daddy. (I was always a Daddy’s girl…) He taught me things like “Never trust ANYONE” and “Don’t stare anyone in the eyes unless they speak to you first” and “Never ever point when you’re in public, you never know that you might be pointing out a murderer and they’ll think you know what they did”.
He taught me to fix my own vehicle because he didn’t want me dependent on a “no account man” someday. So I was changing brakes and timing belts and water pumps at fourteen years old and still wound up in an abusive relationship for four years.
Not that that’s actually part of the trauma, even though it is, in a weird sort of way…
Why would I want to share it anyway? If I can just push it back and push it down and keep it all packaged up until I get far enough away from it, things should be good, right?
I mean, it’s all in the past, and there’s nothing back there that can help the here and now. Makes sense to me to just leave it stuffed down and buried. Like, you don’t bury a dead person and then dig ’em up and drag ’em around with you. That’s just stupid, right?
But these people that God has shown me, there’s really something to it for them.
So, I reason within myself, it’s for them and that’s between them and God. Not everyone wears the same size shoes, and not everyone gets release from the same measures.
Besides, there’s an awful lot of water under the bridge. But an even greater amount behind the dam.
That I built.
By myself.
For my protection.
See? That’s exactly what I mean? I sometimes feel like I’m a living adaptation of “The Wall” by Pink Floyd (for any of you who are old enough to remember it) only without a lot of the moral deviations. Well, maybe, maybe not, depending on how far back we’re willing to go…
I’ve been told that when I’m ready, God will use it to help someone else. And He did, at one point, I think.
When I met my best friend and we started an online group, way back in the “MSN Groups” days, for victims of domestic abuse. Both she and I had been in abusive relationships, but we had no idea where God would take it and what He would show us through it.
Thank God, we got to see many a deliverance and I’m lucky to still have some of those girls in my life, to see the glory God is allowing them to walk in.
But as for myself, I’ve been the never-ending circle of not getting far enough away to get out of satan’s grip. Or so I say.
I remember my Mom use to say that she’d surely go to Heaven someday, because her whole life had been nothing but hell on Earth.
Funny how things like that stick with you. Funny how those are the things you remember the most, and how even now, as a grownup, it still hurts the same as when she said it. Even though I didn’t realize what it meant then…
But, nevertheless, that was then, and this is now. If ever something were going to help someone, I sure wish it would get on with it and let me out of the cycle.
Or is it that I’m still in the cycle because I haven’t shared?
But wouldn’t it embarrass me and a lot of other people if I shared it? Wouldn’t it make life harder for some people? I could change names and places, but those who “know” would still “know”…
Does that make sense?
Kudos if it does, because it never does to me.
Just when I think I’m onto something, that I’m understanding where God is taking me this time, then something else gets slammed shut and I’m left with empty hands and a hurting heart.
Things I’m not a part of anymore, always slipping around the corner, threatening, even though I’m not doing anything wrong.
Old acquaintances that I’ve left in the past, always begging to get back in, only to do me in once again.
Situations that I have no power over, but people think I should stick my nose in it anyway.
Every time something else happens, and I find myself clawing to get out or away from it, I can’t help but to think that even Abraham had to leave everything he knew and was familiar with behind and trust God somewhere else.
But, at the same time, I feel trapped. When you have a family, and furthermore, when you’re not the head of the household, there just isn’t much you can do. Throw in a teenage daughter who doesn’t want to leave the love of her life and you got a family that’s not going anywhere.
<sigh>
I shouldn’t complain, I don’t suppose. It is so much worse for so many people that I don’t even feel like I have a right to complain. Wasn’t it Paul himself, who prayed three times for the thorn in his side to be removed, but it wasn’t. It was a messenger of satan, yes, but God left it in place so that Paul wouldn’t think more of himself than he ought to.
Is that me?
Is this life I live the thorn in my side that I’ll never get away from?
Maybe Mom was right? Maybe sometimes life is just a hell on Earth until we get to our final destination.
I don’t know. I’m never really quite sure of anything. I try to live today for today, forgetting what is past and pressing on to the mark of the high calling, where ever that is.
I know God won’t leave, nor forsake me.
All Out War! 