I WILL BE OK

 

It is amazing to feel pretty… to think maybe someday God will bring a man into my life that will enjoy my company. I am astounded to realize I want to be free to be me, no more defined by others, I was always alright with that, thought I wasn’t worthy to have an opinion or free to choose. Now I know and feel I am, I am someone just like everyone else, it is an amazing discovery. It feels like I am saying this wrong, I just like being me and embracing the gift of being female, make up and pretty dresses, all that stuff.

I have known and felt the love of Christ in my life, the hand of Him through so many of those who have and are journeying with me on this journey of healing. Abuse leaves such scars, especially when it is heaped on one after the other, now I am waking up to finding my body without those scars. To seeing myself as God does, pure and beautiful, unworthy but still loved, I can give yet am worthy to receive. Joy is mine to claim, hope for what God created me for as a women, more than to be used, pushed and thrown out. I am someone not only as a human being but as a woman. I can feel attractive and it isn’t haughty, I can enjoy a man’s company simply for that. I can learn to dance, laugh out loud and share my thoughts, some day I may even have my first kiss and I like that feeling. Guess I am saying I feel alive. Confused some, but oh so alive.

TammyAnneofGod

 

I HAVE TO LEARN

I have found my lost years in a new way lately, not a pleasant one either.

I am finding that I, “Have to learn.”

Learn like all children do. Things that seem natural to you are so not for me.

All grown up means sharing and putting others first, I am finding I feel quite selfish sometimes.

All grown up means I listen, not just to hear the words but to put them in practice.

All grown up meant acknowledging where I fail and changing that.

If I am grown up I will see that life isn’t all about me no matter how much I wish it was, also realizing that life is about more than me.

Finding my footing grown up is hard, painful and oh so sad sometimes.

It feels like part of me is just going away, the part that has loved me always.

Childhood vanishing, I suppose, is what I am feeling.

How I wish I had more of it sometimes… more all me attention, more take care of me, more don’t leave me please, kind.

Thing is at the same time I am so excited to be making friends and carving time out for myself.

I like knowing I am doing someone proud and choosing right,

I love feeling grown up and that maybe someday I will be all grown up inside… the kind that is brave and strong.

I don’t feel so brave sometimes these days or strong, rather it feels that I am straddling two worlds.

Teeter totting back and forth

Up with independence, down with loneliness

Up and down, up and down,

Scared to brave, Sure to doubtful,

But it’s ok

This playground sure is a lot safer than the one I used to live in,

Now I can experience all of these childhood passings while safe,

Accept that I feel forgotten but am not,

Know that scared isn’t something I have to be because no cruellness is behind the words and actions

Only love for me,

Rooted in kindness and graciousness, forgiveness

All the important things that ease the passage from childhood to grown up.

I have been childish some these last weeks, so childish

whinny and full of tantrums.

Thing is I can see it so that’s good.

I am at the top of the slide

and oh so ready

to go down.

I shall enjoy every moment of it

and by the grace of God

surrounded of the love of friends and family

I shall land on both my feet

Even if I fall down a bit I shall glory in the ability to get up

Falling down isn’t the end of the world that I thought it was

so…

Goodbye childhood,

I hold you dear now and that in of itself is more than I ever expected to land in my heart.

 

 

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.

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)

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.             

DANCE OF ME

 

I am fascinated of late with the word, “Still,” as it seems at times that I can do anything but be just that.

I feel  like a kaleidoscope

The kind you can spin round and witness tiny flecks of color as they rearrange themselves.

Each piece simply lying there, still to become this amazingly beautiful design when brought together in a reflection.

I think, just now, about how when this child’s toy is set aside, it still holds the magic inside. Simply waiting, still.   

I can feel this very beauty as I sit with Abba and ponder what He is telling me, waking me up to.

I have found myself jittery of late at times, always my silly leg to seem to have a mind of its own when I feel stressed. Next panic comes knocking, and it feels as though I am this toy being shook up.

Thing is, I always have been, just in an unaware way.

Now, I am aware.

No more still in a wrong way, as I am awakening to an awareness of me.

God is showing me this that I understand I have been this kaleidoscope all along. I, left sitting on the shelf, hidden in the dark that each piece was still and colorless. Unable to spin in the glory of the color within. Listless, quiet, still.

 

No more.

I am now, within and without, spinning… color clashing in all its glorious splendor. Reflecting back for all to see who look, including myself. I find I want to at times study the different designs I chance upon. Ponder each color’s placement and purpose in the whole, while at others I simply can’t seem to hold still as I explore all the potential within my grasp.

I am becoming self-aware, is how Papa is explaining this to me. Aware of myself on a physical level that is causing more awareness to my thoughts and reactions.

Judgement is waking up as I respond less to the panic, breathe and grasp the knowledge that I have other choices. I can still run for help, or, I can be the big girl I am as I listen to myself and find the solution.

I can be still for all the right reasons as this happens, while realizing that I needn’t freeze or hide in this stillness, no dying to around me.

 

Rather a stillness that is really a wide awake awareness of not leaving the situation, but embracing it as a challenge.  

As God gives the kaleidoscope of me a twirl…

whispering to me…

 

“Have at it girl, find the beauty of all your created self.”  

 

 

 

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)

STILL

 

 

SILENT THOUGH MY INFANT CRY,                                                                                 STILL YOU HEARD MY WAILING

FEARFUL TODDLER UNMOVING,
STILL YOU WAITED FOR ME

LONELY IN UNWANTEDNESS
STILL YOU SOUGHT ME OUT

CLOTHESLESS AND FILTHY
STILL YOU LOOKED UPON ME

SHIVERING AND SAD,
STILL YOU SMILED AT ME

CONFUSED UNTO LOST,
STILL YOU TOOK MY HAND

DROWNING IN SORROW,
STILL YOU WIPED MY TEARS

 

TERRIFIED, DOUBTING                                                 ,

STILL YOU HELD ME STILL YOU LOVED ME
STILL YOU KEPT ME
STILL YOU DO                                                                                                                                                                                                       FOREVER YOU WILL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CORRIDORS

I have chosen to post this one unedited as given to me of God last night.

 

i find myself walking the halls of my past. i am not alone, my hand is held i feel it even as it seems that i cannot see by whom for when i look up it is as a flickering shadow, one that enlightens my heart to all who have had and are holding me not just of this earth for heavens grasp is here too i ponder this image I slowly smile both within and without as the meaning of this vision from my Abba is understood. some people have their family trees that are rooted here on earth, ties to generations that they claim with pride i don’t i am the tree uprooted, cast aside to wither and die cut up and burned that even the fragrance of my passing is gone upon the wind cut off from this tree. Still i smile still all is as it should be this is what my God is telling me with a whisper so soft it caresses my heart. “come little one, walk with Me.” I have a choice, I feel it, to stand still as i am or to move forward How i trust this awesome God of mine, memories of all the times He kept me in the dark despair of my childhood abuse, always He was there. i hold His hand tight, i whisper, “Yes.”

And… so it begins

Behind us are many doorways, those of past, of little me. They are darkened now, the lights turned off, as each reflects a soft glow of keeping. Within sleeps the many mes of my abuse. Each to have found love on this journey of healing Abba has me on. To look back leaves me contented, for i know that glow. Beside each sits my true Mother, Mary. as before each door stands my mes Angel. Stands tall and ready that no more harm come to this part of me, that the healed wounds stay just that, all attempts to harm this child shall fail.

So it goes door after door.

As I turn forward, nodding to Abba that I am ready, I can feel the safety behind. All is well with little me.

My smile widens, for the shadows are of all those who have been my family tree unto me, brave. strong souls that have done what was needed to enter those rooms, many that had been barred, sealed shut with lock upon lock upon lock set, no key to be found.

These are they who will travel forward with me, those of this earth and heavenly hosts as well. The flickering is not that they are leaving, it is rather. that each beat of my heart shows me another.

I am safe, loved, belong… grafted in of God.

Growing forward. awaiting, many doors still seen, but this time the way is lighted, brilliant with the glory of the Lords army that lines the way. Angels at guard before many of the doors, others within. fighting the battles already in a forward defense.

This time the journey will be different, oh it shall still have its battles, tears will flow and pain will need faced and claimed, but there will be no childish holding on, no clinging to what is old and worn, valueless.

No.

This time I shall go boldly forward, steps taken with purpose, fully planted as I keep my eyes open.

I am climbing the Everest of my God

Going where fear has kept me from going before

Walking the corridors of life

Rather than self

As I was meant to all along

~Tammy Anne of God ❤