ALIGNING STRENGTHS

“Put your back into it!”

“Foot Forward, be ready!”

Watching your footwork, blocking, parring and rolling along with slipping and countering are all moves studied by boxers.

Moves that help them discover their weaknesses and find their strengths.

Defensive moves to offensive.

Fascinating stuff to read that God is using to teach me too.

I woke this morning with something someone said to me once rolling around in my thoughts, “I need you to align your strengths with the Lord, too, not just your suffering”

I truly had no idea what this meant, read and reread it so many times, asking God  to show me.   

He has and is..    

Today He gave me this vision…

“My Guardian Angel, Angels actually, for I am surrounded of them. How they fight for me. I see them now, in battle, defensive with swift swords and eyes ablaze. They never falling back in fear or doubting the victory will be theirs. The stand tall and true, backs straight and shields ready. Fear does not control them, they know they have the advantage, the power from on high.

Thing is, I see myself as well, and it isn’t a pleasant picture. I am in the center of my defenders, cowering. Down on my knees, head hid as I peek out. I am not viewing my wall of defense as that, rather I shiver, looking for a break to happen. I expect them to fail, am sure that I will be breached.

“You are wrong!”, my Heavenly Warriors shout at me with a mere look.

I cock my head and ponder this, looking down upon me. I see this armor of God I am clad in. It has seemed so heavy that I was unaware of what this new weight was. Not the pain and abuse gone by, as I thought, but my new me clothed to fight. I simply haven’t been putting my back into it, I have been choosing to hide.

“Do it!” the clanging of their swords command.

Uttering a plea, to my Commander and Lord Jesus Christ, for strength, I rise, slowly yet steadily to my full height. I am taller than I  can fathom, the mighty coursing of my blood sounds in my ears with each sure and steady beat of my heart.  It was I, my fear, that was the breach. Victory is what is happening around me. How I long to taste it as well, put an end to fear and doubt, being used and discarded.

My Lord nods at me as He motions to the fray.

A smile plays around the corners of my mouth as I nod back.

I am ready, I have strengths that are more than my weaknesses and an army to fill the gaps as needed. This battle was fought and won. upon Calvary, the blood shed for me then ensures my path onward, upward and forward.

There is no going back unless I choose so.

I don’t, not anymore.      

I kneel, one last time, here amid my Angels. I kneel in surrender and humbleness before my Lord. I bend knee to He who is worthy and gratitude. I kneel with strength and assuredness as He helps me rise and says, “Go forth, Tammy Anne of God, you are mine, freed to win.”

“A SOFT PLACE TO FALL”

I spent part of my morning just now scrolling through the link to a church I used to attend, one I left under duress. I thought that I would like to visit there, just show up out of the blue.

No reason, just because.

Or, so, I thought.

But, Abba, is showing me there was reason.

Wrong reason.

No, it’s not wrong to want to see old friends, to visit and remember, as long as it’s for the right reasons.

Mine isn’t.

No, I want a soft place to fall toady.

I am ashamed to think that I would sacrifice my Communion time with my Lord, in my Home He has me in here, for this. For arms of old and love gone by rather to be desired more than Mass, more than the gift that the Eucharist is to me.

But, I do.

I want to belong in the way that I have belonged for long. Old connections, remember this and how about when we did that, kind of way.

A soft place to fall, this is the way a blogger describes her home for taking in unwanted, abused children. That the battle still rages for them but bringing them into their home gives them a soft place to fall.

Abuse never gives a soft landing, healing doesn’t much either most of the time.

I fall on face, flat and hard so often

Did lots this last few weeks.

I feel bruised and beaten, weary and worn, I won’t lie.

I am tired

I want to go home

I want daddy to make it all alright and momma to hold me

I want to fall and give up standing

I want to yield

Point fingers at those in the past, “You left me, after promising to help me.”

Thing is, that is all the pain talking, the loneliness seeping out and the past feeding now

So, I won’t visit these friends today, that would just be a band-aid

Instead, I will heed my best Friends call,

“Are you tired? Worn out? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Matt 11: 28-30 MSG

My Jesus call.

I will come to Him, fall into His gift of the Eucharist, of His life for mine.

I will see Him upon the cross and know, He too desired, then and there, to go Home to Heaven

To fall into the arms of the angels right off that cross rather than bear it,

He didn’t yield and neither shall I, because of Him.

Momma Mary, she took Him off that cross so lovingly, gently and full of sorrow for all He endured.

She will hold me too, today, if I just ask and let her.

So, I will visit my friends, sometime, but when I can with a right heart.

Simply as friends.

Now, I must go and sit awhile with my Papa, God, that my heart be right when I go to Mass soon.

Home there, to Him, His presence and keeping, His arms sufficient, my present home the one He is building.

I am home, always, everywhere, with my God.

I fall into Him alone.

In His mercy and grace He always to catch me.

“Greater is He who is in you (me) than he (Satan’s tool, false belonging) who is in the world.” I John 4:4 KJV

LOVES ME, LOVES ME NOT, LOVES ME

Love, what a conundrum…

Least it used to be, not as much these days.

Abba is maturing me to understanding love.

The what is and what isn’t of it, from the me part of giving it to the receiving end.

It is so much more than I fathomed even while it is far lesss than I perceived.

It isn’t about touch or words really, not how I thought it was

I don’t have to hear it to know it exists, it is greater than words

Finding it in touch does happen but isn’t the wearwithal for experiencing it

No it is more complex than that, found in the breadth of friendships and the existence of life

I am seeing that nature surrounds me of it, sunrise beckons me with it even as moonlight lulls me to sleep wrapped in it

Love is everywhere, in everything

All inclusive, for love is God and God is love

I was taught that love was a two-pronged fork, one to give wrong the other to deny

I sure came out twisted from this

I so positive that if someone isn’t giving me all of the attention I want, then they don’t love me

If I was starving for love, I would desire touch of any kind, hurt me even, because that was all I had known as a child.

Use or neglect, love being the term spoken when used of a father

Unknown to me safe and secure love, from a touch withheld of a mother.

love wasn’t what I lived, i was told so, but it wasn’t true

I like this love definition I am finding

It is comforting to know I am cared for in more than touch

I am valued for my mind, my emotions and my input

I am someone worth loving in the right way, loved by deed and action, cared for in providing, wanted around

Love is really all of these

Touch to stem from the relationship in a godly way

A kind look, a smile aimed at you, a question of, “How are you?”

Thinking of you and how can I help, that’s love too.

Genuine love

I like that simply being in someones presence suffices

The freedom it gives me to love back in the same way

To love right

To stem from giving rather than getting

That’s Abba love

That’s my Jesus love just like He gave me

Momma Mary, Papa Joseph and all of heaven-sent love

I couldn’t love my God more, I know how much He loves me

I feel it even though He isn’t visible to me,

I find it sitting in His presence, listening to His words, resting in His peace

He is love

Thus I have had love all along

Thank you to all of you who have loved me through this healing, still are too

Loved me in my need and want, my give me and hold me, given the lost child within what was missed

In the end it has been your love of Christ that has healed me

His love lived out that His love show me this truth

I, Tammy Anne of God, am loved

with an everlasting love

beyond form

in existence.

“My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.”

1 John 4:10 The Message

THIEVING

                                                                                                                           But he said to me,                                                                                                                                                                                                       “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”                                                                                                                                                      Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses,                                                                                                                                                                                     so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.                                                                                                                                                                                                                            2 Corinthians 12:9 ESV

This morning I woke up feeling lost and alone. Trickles to slowly track their way out of the corners of my eyes and pool in stains upon my pillow.

I don’t panic anymore, when I wake up with feelings, they are what they are but I am only what I allow them to make of me.

I laid here awhile with Abba, just letting the trickle flow, no more hiding allowed, holding in only creates pressure til I blow.

I am tired of blowing up.

Abba is showing me how these trickles are release, how they can flow from me, collected of Him and become this stream of healing waters. He shows me how I can lie within them and rest, not worry about their source as He purifies them. The frozen icecaps of emotions denied, bound up and locked away melting to be these crystal clear waters of now.

Now

This is where He has me, showing me and teaching me that I am His now girl.

The tears and running still now as I say this, for He is showing me this morning that I have been a thief.

Thieving to survive much like a child on the streets of Calcutta does

Mine to be an emotional thieving

You see I can be with folks in all the wrong ways, past ones.

I want family and I can pretend others is mine

I crave touch and I can watch someone getting a hug and draw from that to satisfy wishing it was mine

I steal smiles sent others way and pretend they passed me by on the way to them

I thieve to survive emotionally

In the end robbing myself

I have so much love in my life from not only my God, but people too

I am no longer hidden away or cast out

I am inside

So I must choose

I must break the bonds of these old habits of survival or they will rob me of now as then did so long ago

It is so hard to let go, to say I am me here I am and what you can give is sufficient

I am oh so childish in wanting so much more, all of people

Help me Abba to make You my all that I turn to you

For hugs and holding, a whisper to my heart, the twinkle of an eye upon me

I don’t want to live off of stealing anymore

Open my eyes and heart to the treasures surrounding me that are already mine

Take my eyes off of wants

Purge me of my selfish give mes

My childish perspective of need

Hold me tight

Teach me right

I yield, to You, this day…. my sin of thieving.

THE OTHER SIDE OF MY HEARTBEAT

 

 

My heart, a mystery unto me all these years I have lived.

Even more so it seemed as my healing progressed.

In the beginning of this journey it seemed to be missing, just a hole where it belonged. When I would stumble upon it I to have no idea what to do with it. To hold it in my hands left me full of sorrow as I looked upon its bruised and bloody pulp. If I strived to lovingly return to self it would shock me into past. jolt me awake to all endured as a child sending me fleeing and hiding as those memories, now alive, overwhelmed me.

My hearts very aliveness to seem my greatest enemy.

To claim my heart was to find me.

How scary this was.

Little me, toddler me, child me… all rejected

Growing me, teen me unto woman me void of touch, lost of heart.

Oh it was there, within my frame for such is our created being.

Yet, in my mind’s eye, it was gone…     

Endurance having replaced it, survival the flow through my veins…

How deeply I hid my heart, to save me, to save it.

Handed off from one abuse to another as it was secreted away with each.

Lies to self the oxygen needed that a fake existence emerge.

A child to cope by going away from even self.

This is the side of my heartbeat I have been traversing.

Finding bits and pieces of then as God led, pulling my heart from hiding that I feel it’s true beat. Accept the truth of its being mine as it was placed back within me. Such a painful journey as each beat coursed through me, each throb tied to an abuse, each memory a horror unto its self.

Wanting my heart back was not desired, allowing God to do so, simply because Abba always knows best, was hard and ugly work. Focusing on Calvary and the truth that Jesus experienced the same was where I stayed.

Here also is where I was healed, here is where I found me, here is where the end began.

The wrong side of my heartbeat.

Death while living, dark in the day, cold and lonely always. Heartbeat slowed that I not exist to me.

Bit by bit I have been waking up to me, to the fact that I am now not then.

Bit by bit learning to sit still as I simply feel, beyond the memory to my being there, experiencing what was my truth of then as it woke my heart to the other side.

Now.

The right side of my heart.

Life. Living while enduring possible for Christ is with me, His light going before me lighting even the darkest of days. Hispresence the warmth when cold blasts find my heart, His arms enough to show me I am never alone. Heartbeat to race that it seemed it would explode, He to sit with me even in this that I learn it won’t. My heart need not be hidden, it is safe to carry it within me, for He guards this as well. He desires to teach me how to do so as our hearts beat as one.

I still hear my heartbeat knocking from time to time these days. Gentle taps of  my childhood hiding. Ones that are begging their turn to be seen and heard. At first this scared me to realize what I was “hearing.”  I can feel so spent with soothing myself of the pain and using, the discarded times.

But I am learning that feelings don’t hold the power, God does. He gifted me with the ability to feel just as He did all of His creation, thus He is also teaching me what that means. How to be human and give Him the control, to turn the fear for self into compassion for others who are facing theirs. I am learning to look on others emotions gone haywire beyond the impact they have on me and feel for them instead. How great their own wrong side of their heartbeat pain must be.

Having my heart back is changing me, having Christs heart wrapped around mine transforming me, as only His power can.

I no longer panic when these heartbeats come knocking.

Rather, I invite them home.

Allow each memory its visit held in the arms of God, soothed of my Mother Mary, Christ’s Momma lovingly shared with me.

Then we say goodbye. Some to stay the side of Heaven to heal in light and love, others to come home to me that they be used of God.

Papa, God, tells us, “As a (Woman) thinketh in her heart, so she is.” Prov. 23:7 (KJV)

I am thinking now, thus my heart is too.

I am thinking whole is good, thus God is making me whole.

Whole of heart, body, soul, spirit and mind.

Whole in Christ alone

 

The right side of my heart,

His side.

 

 

FINAL PHOTO CREDIT

https://pilgrimcenter.wordpress.com/category/prayer/pilgrimages/

The church’s crypt marked the site of the fourth station where Jesus met His Mother as He carried the Cross to Calvary.

BIRTHDAY 2015

Today is my birthday, my Saint name is Anne, and I just read that Tuesday is the day dedicated to Saint Anne. A birthday gift from Abba, I think. I am Tammy Anne of God, redeemed to a new heritage, rebirthed in light and love.

UN-KIDNAPPING SELF

“We are gifted with glimpses of God’s glory and grace and truth.

In our experiences of love, we see, “The Word become flesh” with our own eyes.

Most often the experiences go deeper than words can convey, but we strive to use them anyway

to capture the essence of Whom God is and what it means for us to know Him.

Sharing our experiences keeps them alive and helps them act as witnesses to glory of the Word became Flesh.”

http://www.loyolapress.com/assets/Bookcovers/80181_word-became-flesh.swf

Someone I value being a part of my life made an interesting comment to me the other day, one I have sat with in prayer with God much. Prying for a deeper discernment of it, the meaning of it in relation to my life, past, present and future.

The comment was this, “You can choose.”

I, Tammy, can choose.

Really? Me? that is what I thought at first.

How is this possible? “My whole childhood, my marriage, my life has been void of choosing,” the next thought to hit me.

“I have never had a choice.”

This is the wall I ran into when this was shared, the interesting thing being that I saw this wall before I hit it, could emotionally gaze up its height and width and not feel closed in of it. Even when not visible I could sense its boundaries, fathom that they are there because of what was but that I, TAMMY held the poser to change them. I , Tammy, possess the RIGHT TO CHOOSE.

Thus began the un-kidnapping of self. Me of me. Yes, you are reading this right. For it is I who now was the one holding myself back, imprisoned as one who has been locked up for so long that even with the door wide open the fear holds one from walking out. At least within the jail your fear knows what to fear, without to be unknown.

But, you see, I was wrong, my friend right.

“I may have or not have had a choice in the past, it really doesn’t matter to now, for now I DO!”

Will I cower behind the walls, those erected by my past abuse or will I scale them, run the length of them and knock them flat empowered by all my healing journey?”

I CHOOSE THE LATER!

By God’s Grace, His Redeeming Mercy, His Presence in Me and My Life I am freed to choose.

Have been choosing for awhile really, just in an unaware way.

So I am revisiting past abuses as God brings them to remembrance, not seeking them out but allowing Him to lead.

The one I woke to was this, “I am cowering, cold and lonely, feeling forgotten and discarded, within my tin can. I look upon this portion of my childhood fro the perspective of without not within anymore. I am not that child, I am Me, Tammy and I see this part of me in all her pain. She sees me too, eyes full of questioning, that I can be smiling at her. We are one so read each others hearts. Yes my eyes, say… yes, you can do it. She tilts her head in thought, wonder at the mere fact that she can think beyond her abuse. We link hands as together, as one, we slowly rise up within to push the lid aside, stand up to our height. I lift her that she feel the closeness of touch, hold her tight to dispel the aloneness and whisper, “Good choice, little one.”

We step out of this can of then and walk away… as I set her down that she too may experience the freedom her own legs bring her, we turn and look back.  She smiles up at me, she understands, it looks like nothing more than what it was.

Lies.

Together we turn as we whisper as one, “We choose to not believe, to not live, to not be the lies.”

We are skipping now, revealing in our freedom.

The Son warming us, the Spirit lighting the way, all of us un-kidnapped of God

“Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see—how good God is. Blessed are you who run to him.”

Psalm 34:8 (MSG)

UNBROKENS BROKENNESS

 

I saw the movie Unbroken today. How I found parts of it more than I could bear to watch, literally to turn away and hide my eyes as I covered my ears. This man bore so much torture and abuse, day in and day out. The knowing it was a true story is what awoke the emotions in me. A few times during the movie I contemplated leaving, yet Abba compelled me to stay, whispering softly that He had a purpose in prompting me to come watch it. You see, I did so quite spontaneously, as I was leaving Mass today. Simply felt like God was saying, rest today and heal and here is where.

I have learned over the years of my healing journey not to question or doubt where I am lead, for the most seemingly pointless, small or random has been pivotal to my progress. So it was today.

As the Lord helped me to cringe less the emotions flowed. I still struggle with feeling, the intensity of it, floods me always, overwhelms no more but still feels so close to doing so. Each crack of that stick I felt, every blow hit home with me. I understood his cowering in defense as he endeavored to shield himself. How I could read the confusion in his expression when doing as asked led to more abuse. The torturing of the mind and emotions as bruised and scarred as the body, as the abuser sought to break his spirit.

This is where he remained unbroken, promising God that if He would be His strength that he survive, his life would be His.                         

Do you see the brokenness before God that upheld him? His yielding the very source of his staying strong?

So it is with me. I am broken, I know this now. My parents choices of sin against me saw to that. How could I grow deprived of the essence of it? I couldn’t, not as I should have. My body matured and left me behind, my mind became my escape that I was lost, a prisoner of a childhood war. Scarred and weary, lost to another’s war.

Yet, just as the American forces came to the rescue of the POW’s so the forces of Heaven have for me. I was never alone, never abandoned or forgotten. This is a truth I know to the depth of me. Many times my angel stood between my abusers wrath and me as God stayed their hand upon me. Much was endured, yes, yet my spirit knows much more could have been that wasn’t. In witnessing the horror of another’s abuse I came to realize this. As his abuser fell apart emotionally I wondered what could have made him that way? I pitied him that he to was a victim to his choices, unknown to him, but true just the same. A truth I must accept in relation to my abusers as well.

The ending of the movie showed me why God had me stay.   

He returned home looking much as he did when he left, on the outside, not inside.  I too, traversed my childhood presented one way while living another.

As his family came forward they embraced him, they knowing in their hearts that he was more and less than stood before him. Tears flowed for the reunion but surely for the pain and suffering they knew he endured as well. How this has been for me as well, the family of God, earthly to have thrown their arms wide and welcomed me to healing. Taken me in while knowing there is so much unseen that needs love as well.

The greatest of love this man found in Christ he then extended to those who needed it most, his captors. He returned to Japan and sought them out that he might make peace with them through forgiving each and every one. My dammed emotions broke upon reading that, the truth to flood me that God would have me make peace with my abusers as well, within myself for now. Only He knows if more is needed but I leave that with Him for now.

God showed me heaven as He does so oft, brought me home to be with my family of God. Momma Mary, Papa God and my loving Jesus. How oft we sit together and how sweet and precious those times are. He showed me more though, reminding me that I have an earthly family too. The sweetness of His embrace to awaken within me this…

Someday perhaps my parents and I can embrace on heaven’s side. I can know the joy of telling my older brother I forgive him. Who am I to judge their choices, Jesus whispered to me, when He has forgiven me beyond mine.

I am no one without Him, His saving grace, mercy and forgiveness are my redemption.

So I am to extend to others, beginning with those it is hardest to do so with.

Prayer the key, always that opens the doors of my healing to crack this one as well.

Because of and by God’s power with in me and the Jesus’ redemptive blood I will pray for my parents and brother, for all those others who used me, bought me and beat me. It won’t be easy, I am thankful for the journey of my Lord’s life and the power of His Crucifixion example to lead me.

“Father, forgive them, they knew not what they did.”

Perhaps one day I shall experience running into my Momma’s arms, looking upon my Father’s hands as I hold them, Nodding to my brother as our hearts unite as family was meant to.

The joy to be for me, beyond the embrace, in the knowledge that they too have found forgiveness for themselves, yielded to God and been saved.

Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.

Unbroken is a 2014 American war drama film, produced and directed by Angelina Jolie, and based on the 2010 non-fiction book by Laura Hillenbrand Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. The film revolves around the life of USA Olympian and athlete Louis “Louie” Zamperini, portrayed by Jack O’Connell. Zamperini, who died on July 2, 2014, at the age of 97, survived in a raft for 47 days after his bomber was downed in WWII, and was sent to a series of prisoner of war camps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbroken_%28film%29

 

BEYOND THE NEON

I have noticed something about myself of late.

A subtle change that feels big, the kind that when put into words seems to beg the question, “And?” When in reality it is much like a flashing Neon Light. A sign that draws your attention simply because it is there. Blinking non-stop, bright, there even in the corner of your eye kind.

I feel like I have been this neon light. As if my me has been standing still while moving, pulsating with the colors of life, spilling forth in wonder, twirling about flashing, as I have found the rhythm of a childhood missed.

I have loved these colors, embraced them fully inside and out. My home is full of them visually as well as whimsically. Pinks and purples to greens and blues, they are all here representing the flowing  of my hearts depth of feeling,

A feeling of childhood.

Of happiness like  a smiley face sticker is how that happiness feels, almost that I am wearing one, which is making me smile even now. Remember I am visual writer, picturing just that now.

I feel as though I have been gifted with the glow of living, see myself pulsating as each beat of my heart feeds this through me, color flowing til it can’t help but b

Which brings me to my point, this is a child’s perspective in a way, one where life is lived in the cascading joy of simply being alive, the carefreeness of spinning round and round in a field, free to roll down the hill and embrace that moment in of itself while at the same time the flow of life moves you along.

Everything begging to be explored and embraced, full of why’s, when’s and where’s, that simply propel  you forward into more of life.

Neon, is how I would describe childhood as it is meant to be lived and embraced.

I have had my neon gifted to me as part of my healing. For quite awhile I am coming to realize. This gift has been one of time and patience, caring and kindness wrapped in an awareness of me. Memories created to replace those that never should have been that the brightness of them, their very existence to be what draws my heart forward.

Forward from Neon to Pastel.

I still love color but find the flashy and bright, isn’t always what catches my eye these days. I like the muted tones as well, the soft warmth they instill in me causing me to feel safe and settled.I now prefer to sit in that same field, to lie upon the field and find stillness as the clouds pass by slowly full of a caressing softness. The wind whispers to me if I but listen and the whole of living finds me.

I pause awhile even now, to find myself drawn to this field, within for now to be experienced sometime later. But, oh, how I am transported there even now.

Neon has passed as all childhood do.

Now, before me lies a field of wildflowers, begging crossing.

A slower journey this one will be, in the experiencing.

One of holding still a choice not instinct, where the stillness is a time of healing, as my me is awake.

Life to be embraced in the quiet moments, in the wisps of love sent my way.

I am growing up and I like it.

My soul set free upon the wind of my Father, God’s mighty healing gift of life.

As I am becoming Woman

“The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.” Job 33:4 (KJV)

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

Genesis 2:7 (KJV)

LET ME IN!

It surprises me how even just the thought of typing these words causes the fear to rise. My breath feels, oh, so short…the air around me inadequate to supply what it was created to. Surely there is no oxygen for me, not enough to make breathing possible. Not clean, fresh air for sure.

No.

To breath or talk is forbidden. Movement only attracts attention, so don’t move. To look at them? My parents?

No.

For to do so brought unwanted attention. Wrong, dirty and painful. Eyes and touch full of hate.

No.

Safer to be invisible.

So my little me learned as a child. More than learned, really. Rather, such was ingrained upon me. My childhood prison camp tattoo.

My No”s to be really my yes’s.

My mind to say yes, hide!

My body to block the external feeling as my heart did the internal.

It’s not cold, I am warm..yet how that possible? I am small and naked, outside, abandoned in a can. It is winter, as the hail rat-a-tats upon the lid. I focus on the sound to take my mind within, to journey away from present and hide in pretend.

NO! I SAY NOW, I WAS COLD!

I WAS LONELY, SAD AND FORLORN.

ABANDONED…

i was more than that then and i am more than that now, I whisper to my me, as i drift away.

This was my me of then, one that is doing more than waking up.

Yes.

i am moving. from then to now

from within to without

no more hidden from myself

cold exists, i feel it these days. It fascinates me that my eyes cry as they feel it too, stingy. My ears tingle, us too as my hands look the same but beg for warmth as well. A coat that once felt undeserved and stifling now wraps me in comfort and coziness. I even find I want a hat upon my head, i want ALL OF ME to feel this cold that they can embrace the warmth.

Warmth of heart and home, of belonging and seeing and existing to experience…

everything.

My parents left me out, in the cold, locked away from life…

My Papa, God is letting me in.

That’s what true Papa’s do.

In my dreaming this night I woke myself sure someone was pounding at my front door, only to find no one there. Yet, I was so sure i heard pounding. I stood there a moment confused then opened the door and looked out wondering who would be out in this rainy, wintry mix? i even checked the other doors as i was so sure i had heard that house rattling knocking. As i stood still and breathed the cold, crisp air, i looked up  The night dark, yet i felt safe. I shivered as the air told me it was cold, my feet reminding me they liked socks now. As i turned to go back in, realizing no one was outside that it must have been a dream, i paused, my hand upon the knob.

i smiled in my discomfort at my reflection in the window.

now i understood.

it was me knocking, little me from then.

for she knows now that she can look up and into eyes

YES

i can breathe as i walk, no more still    

YES

bundled up and warm, cozy even

I stepped inside then, smiled that i could.

i the one who shut and locked the door, only though to keep out the cold and night.

i inside.

Now i lie in my bed, sharing this nights healing journey. so full of Papa’s presence.

i shall go now, snuggle beneath my blankets, warm and safe. hold the love of God and Mama Mary close and sleep.

outside of me, inside of life.

my Papa’s Words my doorway out to in,

“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” 

                                                                          John 14:6 (KJV)