NEVERLAND

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.    

 

DAUGHTER OF THE DAY

 

But friends, you’re not in the dark, so how could you be taken off guard by any of this? You’re sons of Light, daughters of Day. We live under wide open skies and know where we stand. So let’s not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let’s keep our eyes open and be smart. People sleep at night and get drunk at night. But not us! Since we’re creatures of Day, let’s act like it. Walk out into the daylight sober, dressed up in faith, love, and the hope of salvation.

1 Thessalonians 5:5-8 (MSG)

Daughter of the Day, I heard this phrase at church last week. It struck me then and has been with me since.

Daughter of the Day.

It made me feel secure at first. Safe. I was overwhelmed with gratitude to Abba, God that I am safe now from the darkness of the abuse. That I need not fear the descent of night anymore or the darkness of memories.

Daughter of the Day, His day, light and love mine, here and now.

As the week passed I felt it even more. An awakening is happening. I am as one emerging from a cocoon, from Darkness into Light, from Night into Day.

All of me is awakening to this truth, to being alive, Night always meant death to me, of body, feelings and my existence. Day would often bring a continuance of those horrors so I was trapped in night. Living in darkness of the truth of even my.

No more.

As a Daughter of the Day I feel me. I am finding how amazing life is and discovering myself.

It started with washing my hands. I to be enthralled with the feel them, the emerging of the bubbles while rubbing them together. The water so crisply cold or warm. I splashed it on my face and marveled at the wonder of being clean, feeling clean, wanting to be so and knowing I can.

Sounds ridiculous to many of you, and that’s ok, it is only for those who never have had that the understanding exists. I am thankful there aren’t more that havent.

Now?

my body is awakening. I am finding a deep love of music to the point that I dance with it, hang on the words and smile. Hunger finds me that I cannot ignore it and full follows with a realization that I can eat whenever I want so its ok to stop when my body says enough. The way emotions flow from head to toe, waking up to feeling my body. Knowing when I am tired and need rest. Not judging myself harshly or pushing to hard. Even understanding that my mind to has it’s limits.

I am a Daughter of the Day. His Day, My life His.

Tammy of God, awakening to all that living is.

 

WAS, WASN’T/IS, ISN’T

 

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

 

For though they are now

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

This I am good at

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

So, I lift my head

Open my eyes

To see

What is

What isn’t

To shatter the lies

With the truth

I am not alone

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

I look rather upon Momma Mary

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

The  mirror cracks

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

 

Pieces to lie at my feet

The colors of now

Reflected in them

A rainbow

Of love within

 

 

 

Upside down

Turning right side up

 

 

 

IN THE TELLING

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.”

 Romans 8:34-39 (MSG)

I AM BLESSED

I am weighted down

full of the abuse gone by,

the memories invade me

a stream of visits,

a turnstile of arriving,

never-ceasing

past remembering of that

which sank me lower to lower                            

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

I went to my can…

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

I was still trash to her,                             

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

Momma Mary is smiling at me,

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.

“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

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.

REBIRTH

Ah, what an awakening, physically and spiritually.

I woke this morning deep in the arms of God, emotionally so within the presence of heaven and my family there. How I still feel the womb like holding and peace beyond understanding.

As I sat with Papa, He awoke within me this…            

I am within the womb of my earthly mother, for she is my mother, naught can change that. It is she who carried me physically within her womb while so full of anger that she was pregnant with me. A hatred for me that I existed directed at me not because I was me, rather because her life was as it was. Yet her emotions flowed to me just as did her essence of life, my me fed of her as I formed.

Thus I found my first me

Now Abba is showing me the truth of my beginning as it is held within his healing hands.

The vision is this…

I see myself within the womb but not within my mother’s body. I am held by the hands of God, for it is He that formed me and did so right emotionally just as he did physically. The very womb I floated in He holds out to Mary, who is there with Joseph, arm about her shoulder. They too reach out and place their hands upon this womb I am within.

I hear all of heaven rejoicing as Christ extends His hand. This touch of his redeeming to be gloriously red, as His shed blood pours forth to replace the flow of what was. A red of redemption clears the shadows of self from my forming eyes as a renewed vision is being crafted, saying all else needed.

I was created as all are, within a human womb, but blessed to be held in the very arms of heaven. For salvation transcends all that was to be, foils Satan’s attempt to claim me, one of God’s children

A curse to be transformed, a blessing to be birthed.

Me that blessing, as all babes are.

                                                                                           Today I begin anew.