HOT POTATOE

Today reminded me of this childhood game, the one where you pass the “potato” round the circle because you don’t want to be the one left holding it when the music stops. If you were you were the one out of the game, everyone to yell, “Hot Potatoes!”

No fun to be the one out.

I felt out today, like I didn’t know what to do with what I was left holding.

Me.

How I felt, the feelings from an interaction with someone.

I have been holding so many “Hot Potatoes” emotionally this last week that I truly felt I would drop this one.

I cry now just remembering.

How on fire my feelings were, so alive and just here. Learning to sit with them is so hard and yet I so want to grow. I know that I must claim all of me for this to happen, I must take my turn, hold onto all of me no matter how much it sears my heart.

For in the end it cautherizes the wound a bit more. Painful healing that is needed.

“Hot Potato.”

Looking back I know things the problem being it is so hard to feel them. I know I wasn’t being reprimanded for failing rather shown an area to grow in.

Thing is knowing and feeling are so far apart sometimes for me.

I know I please this person with my performance yet I feel so like I failed. I know I didn’t, so must put the feeling aside and embrace the facts.

Pointing out areas I can grow in isn’t reprimanding, it is supporting me in growing fuller into my job. Offering advice to how I can handle something better isn’t condemnation to how I have but a sharing of personal lessons that I find my footing better.

“Hot Potato”

I think I dropped this one tonight. Allowed the feelings to win. Cried while acknowledging I was ok. So much questioning of self, fear building that I messed up. Self loathing that I didn’t remember to keep after things for better cleanliness, pity for self followed by anger.

“Hot Potato”

Worth holding onto. One to keep close that the warmth of it remind me that I have come so far, far enough to feel. Just as I have learned to find joy and embrace peace as God intended so I must the glory of what was handed to me of God today.

Allow myself to feel, all emotions, good and bad. Hard or easy, right or wrong.

A Hot Potato, that is my “Potato.”

I am out, out of then and choosing to go away.

I am in though because, of this out.

Out of wrong.

Into right.

 

 

BULLS EYE TO PIN CUSHION

 

Sometimes visual is scary, sometimes it is more than I like. Sometimes it alone brings the tears, sometimes I drown in them.

Bulls-eye kind of drown, as they hit the very nerve of the happening, pierce the shell of me and drive themselves deep. I look upon my self to see them thee, wound upon wound upon wound. Arrow after arrow having hit its mark. If I move, each will only embed itself deeper, pain to emanate out and out and out as the hurt burrows and settles with the bone. to grab hold in an attempt to take them out awakens my voice, silent screams of agony. To sit with these arrows is pain, yes, yet to remove them is more than I know how.

This is my past vision of me, a child who was a target, always. Arrows of many kinds to fly at me, always tipped in poison, that they cause the most damage as possible. Arrows that where let fly at me purposely, aiming always for me heart.

My heart, me.

Arrowed me.

I feel lost this day in this vision, all of the pain of those fiery darts of anger, words hurled in hate, hands in grabbing and eyes upon eyes upon eyes piercing.

I find myself this day remembering darts of then, of my abuse. Arrows of now the bearers of these.

I think this is how my Jesus must have felt upon the Calvary Tree. How He too was a target, hands to literally drive the first ones home in the nails they heartlessly used to secure Him there. The laughter and jeers, the spitting and cruelest of all arrows. directed at Him. Hands upon His form, letters the feathers finely crafted that the words fly true, He hanging there, bloodied, beaten, wounded beyond endurance, His physical form used up.

Yes, He knows just how I feel, I feel how He felt.

Thus I cry more, here and now as well as then and past.

So many darts found their way into my Jesus too. I must focus on this, that He has been here as well, that He hung upon that cross, stayed the course of Calvary that I know He understands. He bore the darts so I can let them fall from me. He carried this pain I feel oh so piercingly when they the spear entered His side. He, He, He.

Who am I to look upon my suffering and self and allow it to lose me? His so much greater, yet… He stayed Himself, for me, with all of Heaven at His call. He endured unto death unto life.

I have endured, now it is time I die to that, time I embrace the life of now.

Come down off my cross, lay it at the foot of His.

Arrows still shall fly all around me, but my Lord is more, His sacrifice has freed me that I can move. My hands no longer bound that I can use them to defend self and my hearts words set free to command them to drop before they ever find their mark.

I look to my Savior just now, tears falling from a fresh wound, an arrow having somehow found its way deep just yesterday. I feel that I cannot move, But my Jesus is showing me otherwise…

“He is upon my cross, behind me. His arms spread wide too. I look down where my heart should be, so sure that I shall find naught but an empty hole to see a radiance glow. His Imacculate Heart sending arrows of love instead, they piercing  lights of love instead. A balm of Gilead. I do not need to see behind me to know the expression upon His countenance, I feel the understanding His eyes carry as He brings His arms forward, mine freed now as well, wraps them with mine across my chest and holds me tight. We are no longer upon my cross, He stands with me and promises we can stay this way awhile. I can rest in this embrace as I bring home to Him all of the parts that need seeing.

His arms are strong and sure, safe and secure, they open, hold and love every lost and lonely, bruised, beaten, used up and forgotten me.

Nothing that has been is more than Him, no abuse greater than this my Great Physician knows how to heal.  

I see these arrows now for what they are.

Pinpoints of memories that Satan desires I feel as the arrows of then. They are not. I will not be Satan’s target anymore, I am not the helpless child I was then no matter haw many arrows he sends to convince me otherwise.

In Christ, I am more.

Yes, I will fail, yes some may find their target, but that doesn’t make me them or them me.

No.

I can pull them from me, nothing but a bothersome prick of a needle, and look up with the biggest smile as I drop them,

“Take that Satan! You tried, you even hit the target…

But…

my Jesus deflected it, so really…

you missed!”   

?

I am the desert, thirsty, dry, parched

For what I know not

I feel the heats intensity

The beating down of wanting

Weighted of the longing

Sourced out

I am the desert lost within myself

North to lead south as east confounds west

Spinning compass gone haywire

Which way is right?             

How do I find what is needed to quench my hearts thirst?

Where am I in all of my confusion?

Or am I really quite the opposite?

Am I the dessert?

Am I so full that I am drowning?

I feel so much

I know not where to go with it

What to do

It is as being lost in a desert of an ocean

Floundering to stay afloat                                                                                                                                                                   Love, the waves, crashing upon me

Storm brewing as I die of this thirst

For I know not how to open myself to the quenching of love

Who will love me?

Pull me from these depths

Save me

Simply show me how    

Life was meant to be

I understand why children need so much repeated soothing

For I am as one

Not knowing these feelings      

Alone and flooded

Drowning

Collapsing in upon myself

The sea to swallow me whole

That I lie upon its bottom          

My desert returned

I have learned to forgive

I have found loves touch

Still I float

Forlorn

Forgotten

Alone

Left

Not outside

Rather inside myself           

FLASHPOINT PARADOX

A flashback invaded my sleep this last night. I to awaken lost to me, floundering in its rememberedness of then. Full of fear and drowning, tearless at the shear wrongness of this memory.

Flashpoint found

That which ignites

Flashbacks are so Flashpoint, always, for me

How I recall my first, the hiding it led to as fear gobbled me whole, controlled me that I ran. I driven to make myself invisible, unheard, gone. A fear intense beyond intense, full of remembered pain and suffering. It no wonder that I hid from it as a child of 6, hid to protect me and my baby brother. Yet hiding only lasts so long, can only if one wants to survive. To physically stay under the house meant no food. I recall not minding that for myself, but my brother needed to eat and was in so much pain.

                                                                       So I crawled out, endured and his some more. Just hid in daylight, inside myself.

A hiding that followed me as I grew, becoming more than the safety net the child invented it for.

Now more of a gateway to more abuse being accepted, my growth stunted, my hiding unknown even to me.    

Til one day, my Papa, God, knowing I was ready and strong enough in him whispered to me, “I see you, my little one, it is time to unhide, with Me.”

Oh how I recall those beginning days of my healing. How patient my God was with me, how just there the one He was using to help me find safety and bravery to show myself. Day after day to lead to a bit more, a peeking out to one foot across the threshold. I envision that day I finally took my first step, the barrier within only an inch crossed but behind me just te same. A doorway crossed. One that over the next few months taught the lost, beaten hands always wrong with me, that it wasn’t meant to be that way. I found arms that were merely for holding, closeness that was rest and safe. Acceptance and peace, a peace I was allowed to rest in. A door open, day or night, just for me. I blossomed in that time, grew up some in all I had missed. Learned that even when that time ended because seasons change, that the truth of that time wasn’t going away, never would.

That’s so amazing to me, even still. That I am loved, me, tammy.

I realized then that all Flashpoints needn’t claim me. I learned the way any child does, by experiencing many in the years to follow. Mistakes made but always upon always God to provide me with a someone from His people to live Him out to me. Doors opened at all hours, arms only a knock away morning after morning to send me off to school with warmth and love. I to not even remember all the times I came knocking but welcomed just the same. A hug with a sigh that was oh so sweet to hear, a breakfast shared, warmth provided when the flashback claimed my body, my coldness noticed.

Times when I would run, literally, to a friend in my confusion. Sit at her feet and cry out the not understanding of my actions or those of others.

Welcomed when I couldn’t even remember who they were, just that they loved me. Helped to grow in the Word through study, hand-held as I grew, keeping it safe and true.

Til Abba used all of this to bring me home to where I could be kept.

Home to here. To those to help me free me inside as much as these before did me outside, that Flashpoints not send me scurrying.

You see, my flashpoints are good to happen in that they ignite reality, painful past, yes, but only to consume them. Staying in God to enable me to lose the flashback rather than me. All my family of God gone before to be the anchor of fresh memories I can turn to that I stay seen, heal a bit more.

It is a bit harder today, than sometimes. with this being a memory not found before. With me being so visual that my flashbacks are in pictures not words. This one tears my heart open and causes a cascade of tears for little me. I could so easy become lost in the stench of the water, the game taught wrong, the sheer foulness of someone doing such a thing to a mere babe.

or…

I can turn to now memories, reach my tiny arms up and out, just knowing that there are so many who see me in this horror, who flash eyes of God’s wrath upon the scene and reach out to lift me so gently from the water, wrap me in the softest towel of safety and hold me close. Love me right and whisper, “it is not your fault. He is the bad man, you are such a sweet, good little girl.”

They are showing me sunshine now, running and playing, that water cleans and being clean is ok. They want me to care for myself, to rest and grow, eat enough and right. They see me and accept me, teach me when I make a mistake to see it and learn, to accept I am not perfect nor need be.

They see me, so much so that hiding wouldn’t be possible even if I tried.

Know why?

Cause they see with Abba eyes, feel with Abba heart, reach out with only His goodness and leading their fuel

An Abba Flashpoint that cleanses, purifies and make it all alright

 

dream or no dream