


I didn’t want to go to Mass today, not at all. I woke full of flashback invaded dreams, remembered. I so wanted to curl in upon myself, drown in going away. Away from remembering, away from life. Stay in bed and pity my past me. To go where the victory of Christ is partaken of? Nope.
I wanted to be done, this journey seems never-ending at times. I will have my footing, then, wham, bam, I am down again. Down of heart and weary of mind. The final count to feel welcome. 1…2…3 she’s out!
Yep, that’s just how this morning was.
I was so lost in the feelings, the overwhelming emotions my child me suffered that my adult me wanted to throw in the towel.
I dreamt of the using and taking, the abuse rained down on me… thing is that wasn’t what was tearing at me when I woke. In my dream I was sitting alone, after, so forlorn. I was crying, not because of what was done to me, rather, because I couldn’t seem to dress myself. My clothes were inside out, a jumble at my feet and it felt as though I simply couldn’t do it. I cried that no one was there after, that I was so alone not only in the abuse but further abused as those that could and should have, didn’t as well.
Rather turned a blind eye, a deaf ear and an indifferent heart.
So, I had me a good cry to the Lord and begged Him to help me care in the now. He did, I still didn’t feel it, but He reminded me that I needed to go. I imagine my Guardian Angels wings whooshing as they propelled me forth. I certainly didn’t go in my own power.
Mass. The remembering and celebrating of the greatest sacrificial gift, ever. Mass. Where my Christ endured for me the very thing that I feel this day, betrayal. Mass. He to suffer again and again what was then for me in the now, flashbacks. Mass.
One of the hardest yet most helpful things for me as I heal has been to revisit the abuse and see my God there. Find how He was with me, yield the whole truth of then to Him that He be with me now as He was then.
This is what I was really wanting to hide from today, I wanted to give up and not do my part of the work in my healing. Imagine if my Lord had given up? Had called forth all of Heaven to save Him from the cross? He could have, yet He yielded, “Not my will, but thine be done.” He uttered to His Father.
So, there I was at Mass. A quivering, emotional mess, kneeling and crying, oh, so tired.
Then the homily was shared. Father to talk of how much we have to be thankful for. The beauty of life and creation ours to see, hear, experience.
It hit me then, all along I was heard, I was seen, someone was far from indifferent.
God my Father, Mary my Mother and Christ my Brother and Savior not only were then with me but are now.
I am home, now is safe, I have oh, so much to be grateful for.
For I am no longer then.
So much assailed me yesterday. So many emotions found me. I was upon the sea of them, floundering unto drowning, lost.
There was no life boat, nothing to cling to that I could see. How could I ground myself if beneath me was simply more tears, if the sadness was drowning me, if the anger stirred up the storm even more and I was all alone in the vastness of it?
I was drowning I was sure. For each time I opened my mouth to call for help it seemed naught but more of the emotions rained down to be swallowed til they were swallowing me.
I wanted to simply let go and sink. To stop fighting and just be done. I didn’t care of the depth was dark and lonely, to let go would end it I was sure. I could journey elsewhere and forget, even if elsewhere required drowning, so be it I thought.
Yet, I couldn’t. Not the real me deep down inside, the part of me that knew my God was in this storm. To believe He is in control of all my life means the storms as well.
So…
I turned my face to the Heavens as the circumstances of this storms creating pelted me, the lightning flashes of the anger I felt seemed to be striking me as I was tasting the salt of the tears I was drowning in. I let them come. I accepted the anger as mine to sit with. I acknowledged that I had a right to be so, while asking the Lord to cleanse me of it.
Then I realized that the sadness was being fed of the anger. That they were the stirring of this storms wind and buffeting. I though I will drown from within so I must let it all out.
I cried, again and again as my body curled in upon itself and wept with me.
I was adrift and alone.
I was lost and weary.
I wanted to stay this way and wait for a hand to reach for me, for someone to come and see me and be with me, I wanted a person to know.
In my wanting of this I was really doubting God was enough. I was saying I know you are in my storms, Lord but I need more that just you.
How human of me.
God wasn’t having any of it.
He pursued me, all the while, He does that.
Finally, from the depths of my despair I looked up.
Finally, I cried within, “Save me Abba.”
He scooped me up, pulled me close and sat with me. The storm raged still, but seemed less pelting for He overshadowed the brunt of it. In His embrace I found it was ok to cry. It was safe to feel the sadness and that the anger wasn’t worth the energy it pulled from me.
Now I am beyond this storm, and I am ok.
Alive and still me, weary but safe.
It isn’t the end of the world, the sadness is real but the rainbow is already spreading across the sky. Tomorrow is real and beckons, one that God already has in His hand.
So sadness and anger, all of the emotions of life are safe.
As long as I stay and walk hand in hand with my Master.
I am…
I do….
I will.
In the daytime there are stars in the heavens, but they only shine at night.
And the deeper that I go into the darkness the more I see their radiant light.
So let me learn that my losses are my gain;
to be broken is to heal;
that the valley’s where Your power is revealed.
-Bob Kauflin, “In the Valley”
I have been on a journey of late, one of finding me some more. It has been hard and long, arduous. I feel the stretching of it still, like aches in my emotional muscles. A good ache even while it throbs.
Oh, how it does so! So many emotions have been awaken these last weeks. Those that have tripped me up and some that I never knew existed. To much feeling so oft, so much I was left floundering in them , too many I told a friend.
“Yes, she said.”
Can we sit with that a while? She said, “Yes.” to me.
“Yes,” you have feelings. “Yes,” they are a lot. “Yes,” you are allowed to feel. “yes,” and it’s ok.
To me, Tammy.
It was like a get out of jail free card.
In abuse feelings aren’t recognized except as an opportunity to turn them again us. Our abusers to make fun as they taunt us. To laugh and heap on more abuse if we show our true feelings. Hence we learn to bottle them up, hide how we feel and even lie to ourselves.
But, she said, “Yes.”
This a key that gave me so much. Bolstered me to say to myself, “Yes!” as well.
“Yes,” I feel this, “Yes,” these feelings are mine, “Yes,” I can accept them, process them and grow from this. I can be me unto more, rather than less.
Best part? She didn’t leave me hanging, wondering, “Ok, so they are mine and too much, but now what?”
I never was taught how to feel, to soothe myself or face the avalanche of them. My abuse taught me to cringe from me, run and hide, never ever to face them. I didn’t have a gentle touch or soothing tone, no looks of love or open arms… how was I to learn what all love shows when no love was there?
I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
No fault of mine, just truth.
Now, I know. I am finding the stars in the night that are showing the way to the light of day.
This friend shared with me one of the biggest and brightest stars gifted to us of God, the truth of our being free to choose to give the emotion to God. To turn to my loving Abba, Daddy, and say, “Here, Papa, I am feeling too much. Please hold this awhile and help me be ready to take it back when you have readied me. Soothe me, Lord, and prepare me. Strengthen me by Your example and be my strength then.”
He did.
He always does.
He is my present that He be my past, fill in the voids and blanks.
I able to live in my today for He is here, my past faced for He was there, my future safe for He is already there as well.
Past, present, future…
all mine to live.
*Psalms 19 1-2 God’s glory is on tour in the skies,
God-craft on exhibit across the horizon.
Madame Day holds classes every morning,
Professor Night lectures each evening.
3-4 Their words aren’t heard,
their voices aren’t recorded,
But their silence fills the earth:
unspoken truth is spoken everywhere.
4-5 God makes a huge dome
for the sun—a superdome!
The morning sun’s a new husband
leaping from his honeymoon bed,
The day breaking sun an athlete
racing to the tape.
6 That’s how God’s Word vaults across the skies
from sunrise to sunset,
Melting ice, scorching deserts,
warming hearts to faith.
7-9 The revelation of God is whole
and pulls our lives together.
The signposts of God are clear
and point out the right road.
The life-maps of God are right,
showing the way to joy.
The directions of God are plain
and easy on the eyes.
God’s reputation is twenty-four-carat gold,
with a lifetime guarantee.
The decisions of God are accurate
down to the nth degree.
*https://www.biblegateway.com/
I remember when I doubted myself, when I thought there is no way the abuse happened to me. Perhaps I remember wrong or the feelings are causing me to over react. It couldn’t have been all that bad, I am still here after all. I would say to my first counselor, “Why do you believe me?”
Looking back I realize now how much I was living my past. My reactions to things that others took as normal were always so on edge or set me to panicking. I had triggers everywhere it seemed. One doesn’t get that way without reason.
So, i would face those triggers once i recognized them, head on. I would slowly build my ability to do things i couldn’t by pushing myself. Wear a scarf around my next totally loose til eventually I could tie it, finally have it close to my neck. Wear it for it’s purpose without thinking and feeling and remembering the abuse.
Long road this is, still fighting the battle is some areas. Healing is that way, a process, one that may never be done this side of eternity. Such is the molding and healing of our Lord, all good, all to His glory, all in His perfect timing.
The last few days I have been finding myself on a new path of healing. My mind being opened to perceiving things differently, with more of a focus on the truth of my past.
I often feel, yes, I lived it. I don’t doubt that anymore but I think I am unaware at times what I lived. The true depth of it, the truth of my existence, the substance of it.
You see, some one has made a few comments that have given me pause. Mentioned how I how much I have suffered, used the word brutal to describe my childhood.
When they said this it got me to thinking, wondering what does that word actually mean, especially in relation to me. I didn’t like what I found.
I looked at each of these words and thought, “Does this fit, Lord?” He to prompt me to say this out loud, “My childhood was savage, my childhood was cruel and vicious, etc.”
I said them, all the way through, crying. Gentle tears of accepting the truth that it was. I asked Papa why I needed to admit this to myself? Why can’t I just say it was hard and uncomfortable?
He answered me, as He always does.
It’s simple really, not the process, but the reason. How can I say I have given all my pain and suffering to my Lord if I don’t claim it to yield it.? I can’t. Just as the path to Calvary is seen in all it’s pain and suffering that we truly understand so must my abuse be for me.
So I have been sitting with the emotions these words awake. Sitting with god and yielding them to Him. In the process I am finding my gratitude to Him is swelling as well. His powerful touch of healing on me and in my life even greater than I fathomed.
My childhood was brutal,
Yet, so was my Lord’s crucifixtion..
and…
look at How God uses that!
*http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lull
I had a flashback in my sleep last night. Yes, they can happen that way. Ones dreamscape to become the abuse relived in the mind. Sometimes when life takes curves and turns into new territory my emotions and memories race alongside in an effort to heal by catching up. Hence, a flash back this time.
I am growing and as with all of us, growth means change. To explore these new area s of maturity, ones that I would have experienced as a child and teen, even some as an adult, if abuse hadn’t been present oft-times means a cleansing is needed. The old wrong must be flushed from my system that the new can take root and grow healthy and right.
Wrong to stop feeling right as God intended truth gains ground.
A hard process, a long one, but such a precious one in the transformation God is working, in my heart, mind and body.
So it was even with this recent flashback, for it was different than usual in that I didn’t wake to find no control. I wasn’t desiring to flee or hid, it didn’t scare me or overwhelm me. No, it was more of a struggle to move forward. I sat beneath the heating vent just to feel something present, full blast at that. I called a friend to know I told someone, that I could do that, leaving a message when she was unavailable.
Then, I went about getting ready for work.
Yet, I did so, in a lull. My mind foggy, thoughts drifting, processing drained.
I found myself in this valley of lull for quite some time, hours. Every action a conscious effort, I felt so drained.
My friend called me then, once she was free. What she said pierced this stupor I was floundering in. “Remember to pray, bind up Satan and all His stickiness,” as she oft-times puts it. I don’t recall her actual words, but my spirit knew from past battles.
My heart heard, “Fight the lull!”
The clouds cleared a bit then, when I hung up, and holding my head in my hands I breathed, “Papa, help me, please.”
A groggy prayer at best, but God always hears, understands our plea even when we don’t know what to ask for.
He spent the next few hours nudging me to cling to Him, hold tight that He could lead me into the light, a glorious light full of the warmth and rays of the Imacculant Heart of Christ. I feel the touch of it even now as I revisit, my Lord so close.
“Lull” a false calm in the storm
Satan tried to trip me up with this today. He failed. He always shall fail.
For no matter how blindly I may stumble, my Abba holds me tight, loves me tight and leads me on.
His voice to my abused and battered, child and woman, I was, all the lullaby needed to heal.
“This is what the Lord says— he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
i is stuck in Neverland these days
a place where it feels safe to hide
safe from the big people
secure from problems to big
where one can fly away at whim
laugh and play with abandon
forget
Neverland
but i know it is not real
rather a trap
a secret room in a game of hide and seek
me searching for me as i hides me
Neverland is more confusing than it is worth
pretending doesn’t make it real
i don’t have pixie dust to fly away from here
to lift me from this trappedness i feel
i scared to fly into the storm that separates
at the swirl of the feelings that sent me here
i find i can’t hide from them no more
i want to go home to me
i want to be brave and tell them to people
leave behind this ghost town of what was
so i need a ride
i never had rides before that i knowed where there
i do now
so to stay is to live a lie
so goodbye Neverland
i am journeying home today
starting even if it takes me awhile
my fairy wings are the back of m guardian Angel
i can even lie there and rest while the storm rages
my angel fights my Captain Hooks for me
i just trust
and believe in my momma Mary and papa God
remember that they want me home
they never ever wanted me to leave
goodnight Neverland
the land i was never meant to live in
home is where i belong
home in Jesus is where i am going.
I stand before a mirror these days, many mirrors
For within I am but a House of Mirrors
To look within one is to see another
Stretching back to was and wasn’t, as far as my inner eye can see
Each mirror seems magical
In a curious sort of way
They show me then
To stare into one is to glimpse a was
While living an is
I have fallen down the Rabbit Hole
Where up is down, down is up
Then and Now having collided
It is so easy to keep my eyes downcast
To hide
To hide was safe, then
To touch wasn’t
Reaching out was fearsome
Withdrawing secure
My mirrors show me all of this
Hiding is not safe, now
For it will end all that has begun
Open my eyes
To see
What is
What isn’t
To shatter the lies
With the truth
So I can smile in all my then fear
I am surrounded of Heaven
Mama Mary beside me now
Holding my hand reassuringly
All of Heaven here
For many of my mirrors reflect my Momma of then
I was to not touch her
Never to look her in the eye
To want attention meant harm
“See me Momma,”
The unuttered cry of my child’s heart
She smiles back
This is safe
So I reach out
Hesitantly, unsure
I touch ever so lightly
To find no rebuke in doing so
My touch welcome
I accepted
Was and Wasn’t shattered
As Is and Isn’t remain
I have many such mirrors
Within my house of me
Yet, mirrors is all they are
Easily vanquished
The colors of now
Reflected in them
A rainbow
Of love within
Upside down
Turning right side up
So little can seem like so much sometimes.
This morning does. A simple dream, puzzled together of past and present, like an awakening.
These times are like rising from a fog, limbs heavy with the emotions of the memories as I must choose.
There are forces within, battling, you see. Past and present swirling about, vying for me.
These are the hardest of hard times for me. How I simply want to go back to sleep, to hide in slumber.
Waking is never easy these days.
Grounding myself in the present is what is needed, the only way out.
Abba is always with me, I have all of my heavenly family watching me and drawing me out, I see them and love them, beckoning smiles and arms held open, inviting really. I always look to heaven first, my true home, my heart’s sanctuary. This is my present truth, that which floods me with emotions that are present to drown out past, the angels sing the glory of our Lord, and I can open my eyes.
Yet, humanity is still where I am, thought I would love to sit at Heavens gates all the day, life calls. I am reminded, as I turn to embrace the day that my Abba has purpose for me here, I am honored to fulfill it and serve Him.
How much I am loved and seen and heard.
Heard being the one He is waking me too now, In the telling.
Someone told me a few days ago that I, “Can tell them anything, that they want me to.” How I have sat with these words. Such a flood of emotions flows from my head to my toes as I savor the, I, Tammy, can tell.
In the telling shall be no more secrets… no more hiding… no shame, no matter the horror…
In the telling I can free the nightmares that haunt me, loose the bonds of then… find release
In the telling lies are shattered that the truth of them burst forth, shiny and bright, dispelling darkness.
I feel these words to such a depth, “I can tell.” It is as a vanguard before Satan that shouts, “I am telling! You have no power, for Jesus loves me and has given me someone to tell! Go away, I am washed clean in the blood of Christ, I am innocent. It wasn’t my sin and it won’t become it!”
In this someones listening I am safe, heard and free of blame. I am given understanding and love, seen as a person not an object. I find that I have a voice, my feelings matter, consequences are not the end of the world and won’t bring me harm.
In the telling I feel so shattered sometimes, the gentlest of touches to take me by surprise, voices to reach me in the fog, as I find it clearing.
In the telling the fog will lose…
For In the telling…
I am rising with the Son.
“So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.”
full of the abuse gone by,
the memories invade me
a stream of visits,
a turnstile of arriving,
never-ceasing
past remembering of that
my bed to carry my frame…
imprinted upon it.
for I was no form
rather a mold.
shaped to serve their sinful choices.
there was no me there,
only survival
I was strong for I had to be to survive…
I was indifferent in an attempt to convince myself that it didn’t matter.
I was anger and sorrow intertwined,
filled up of others sin
that I…
boiled over…
with wrath at the injustice.
I screamed out, in all the wrong ways.
for I was not heard, not seen, a no one to them.
an object to be forced down,
every part of me ground up.
I hated their faces full of leering and wanting and taking always
with joy.
telling myself that if I curl up tight,
I can make-believe I am be within a womb
I can pretend tomorrow will be new’
that I am in the womb and will be reborn.
but, it never worked
and his toy.
each day a horror I lived
so I became anger at night
indifference by day
i survived, I did
but now I am weighted with the memories
seeing me,
seeing them.
they are like lead drowning me in my slumber,
crashing into my dreams…
waking me.
that I must pull myself from this lostness…
this fog…
find me.
then I can be full of truth instead.
I resist the urge to go to where peace is,
to curl up outside, safe…
to be waken in love and gentleness,
to be found this time,
wanted and soothed.
I am going now, instead, to sit and be in Heaven awhile
she knows and is whispering, “Come.”
she will wrap herself around my nakedness
Abba will stand guard.
I can go home now…
to them
home.
it feels as somewhere I have never been,
that now I am.
and oh, how, precious beyond precious, it is.