Rainy Day Perspective

Rainy Day Perspective

2/22/13
9:00 am

Today is a rain day.  I totally needed a rain day today.  I have written before about how much the rain cleanses me.  I tried to take a picture of the rain from my view in the living room this morning.  My plans were to write about how these kinds of days make me want to write and how I wished I had a bay window to sit in, with comfy, colorful pillows all around.  But instead something else happened when I took that picture.

It has been a long time since I have felt that God has spoken to me.  Mostly because to be completely honest I have been angry and didn't try listening for Him much.  I was both afraid to hear what He might want to tell me about my attitude and actions and I was annoyed with Him.  I know the Bible says that all things work together for good for those who love Him, but I could see nothing good coming from me.  It can get pretty dark in this here brain of mine sometimes and well I was tired of it, because O M G when will it just end!?.  I am kinda ready to be "normal" now God, okay? 

So, back to the rain, and the picture.  Like I said, I took a picture of the rain as it was coming down really hard, but in the picture you can't see it.  You can see the effects of it: the wet ground, the puddles it created, the watery distorted reflections of the world around it.   In that moment when I looked at that photo God spoke to me, subtly without words.  It was just a flash of understanding. 

You see I realized that in so many of us, maybe even all of us, is that we are so much like that picture.  Others and sometimes even ourselves see us through the smeared glass filter.  It is easy to see the effects of the rain in our life: the mud, the puddles, the distorted water views; but the rain itself is hidden.  It just looks messy.  Instead of focussing on the cause of the mud in our lives, we just focus on the mud itself.  And we begin to see those distorted reflections as reality. 

My challenge and part of my healing is learning how to see the rain in myself and in others and not just focus on what it leaves behind. I need to stop looking at the watery distorted reflections, and look at what is really there, because the reality has so much more depth than the reflection.

*the smeary  child-sized fingerprints on the window, well I could say that it portrays how the fingerprints of others can affect our perspective or something equally deep, but the reality is that I just need to wash my windows.  Or maybe needing to wash the fingerprints of others of my windows is really the deeper analogy. You can be the judge.  ;)

On Healing

On Healing

  It is S.L.O.W.   It is painful.   It is lifting and heavy.          It is like trying to breathe after running a fast mile, or in my case around the block, okay I’ll be honest, more like just DOWN the block, not even around it. I am gasping for the life giving oxygen that my body needs but the breathing burns my lungs. Yes, healing is like that. Good for you but it burns at the same time. At least that is my experience so far.

       I never knew how long it would take, this healing thing. It has been over two years since I started counseling and two years this month with my current counselor. I have only 11 weeks left with her before we move. Only 11. Not nearly enough to do what needs to be done, but it is all I’ve got. I have been asked by family members if I still even need it and what do we have to talk about after all this time. I would have liked to think when I started that I would have been done by now, but the truth is that there is a lot in my insides that need to be undone and relearned and retrained and released and all of that takes time. Especially for a girl like me, a girl who chokes on her words and they get stuck in the back of my throat. A girl who takes a long time to trust that I can say things out loud in front of eyes and it will all be okay. A girl whose words flee from her mind when someone is there to hear them. All of that takes time to work through and time is running out. And to be perfectly honest, even with two years in I am feeling like it just hasn’t been enough. I am tellin’ ya peoples I am a messy, messy thing. I am not sure how things are gonna look or work when we move, but I am going to keep on trying.