A story of being in the midst, of small steps, and hope.

I have said it often and I will probably say it again in the future, healing is HARD.  If anyone tries to sell you on a quick fix, one size fits all way to get it done, don't be quick to believe it.  Can it be that for some people? Anything is possible and it has been known to happen, but for the majority of people, *clears throat* for me, it is a slow slow slow slow slow slow slooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwww process.

I have talked of steps, of the moving from there to here.  Sometimes I notice the steps as I am taking them and sometimes it is only in looking back that I see the footprints of where I have been, leading to where I am now.

I mentioned how I was going to a church retreat a few weeks back and how I was scared to go;  that even the deciding to go had been a battle from the time I heard about it.  I knew I should go, but I didn't want to go.  I didn't plan to go.  But then one Sunday as I sat in church God told me I was going.  I pulled out my checkbook and I wrote out the down payment right then.  I felt very brave.

And then I went and I felt betrayed, because it was everything I feared happening.  I was torn wide open and I wasn't able to close the wounds.  My pastor likened it to being on the operating table and then getting up before the operation was over.  Sure, sort of like that, but this operation needed more than a weekend and a lot less witnesses, and a whole lot of more places for hiding and cowering.  So I went in for the right operation, but to the wrong hospital (at least that is how I feel about it.)

To tell this story better I have to take you back to October.  October is where I can pinpoint when my internal and external world shifted.  I was in church with Steve on a Wednesday night and we were joking and laughing about something the pastor had said when the pastor said these words in the middle of our laughter, "Sometimes, God has to get something out of you before you can move forward."  That was the moment.  It was instantaneous.  No time for a single thought to penetrate, I went from laughing to forcibly having to swallow down deep choking sobs of intense sadness. Sadness that I had no idea where it was coming from other than it felt like it was coming from the depth of my toes and trying to roll out of me right then.  I went from feeling I was in a holding pattern with God to having to separate my internal world of emotional chaos from my external world of responsibilities just so I could function.  DEEP anger and sadness intertwined themselves together from that point on and were trying to claw their way out.


As I was unable to process it I did what I always do and I separated.  That horribly difficult weekend of the church retreat momentarily joined my internal and my external worlds and left me feeling war torn.  It also cracked a door that I have long kept closed. A door that I am terrified to open.  A door that contains the answers to the sadness and the anger clawing their way out.  Answers that I don't care to know. And honestly if I cared to open it I have never known how to.

Since that weekend I have been telling God more so than asking that if I am to know what is behind that door then He would need to show me in dreams, because knowing with my eyes wide open would be too much for me to handle.

And so far, he mostly has been using dreams to let the nightmares behind the door seep through bit by bit. The problem with the dream world is that it left me wondering if I was making it up, making more out of it than what was really even there.

The things that have slipped through in my waking world have left me wondering the same thing.  Am I truly remembering or am I constructing?

Last night I had a dream much like many of the other dreams have come, I was online in my dream looking at something and next to my name was a verse.  One I don't know,  have never heard preached on and isn't a commonly shared verse.  I woke up after seeing the verse.  I was going to look it up right then, but Steve rolled over and wrapped me in his arms.  So I said the verse to myself over and over so I wouldn't forget by morning.  I put my mind on repeat.  Psalms 6:2-3.  Over and over again until I drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up two hours later I looked it up.  And I read it again.  And then again.  And then the surrounding verses.  There is NO way that I would have chosen this verse out of my subconscious. I am not even sure that I have ever even read it before.

At first, I was like, hmmm okay that is interesting God.  I was expecting something more beauty for ashes like, but the more I read it and thought about it, this verse sums up where my soul is at this moment.  I feel that it is God's way of telling me that He knows where I am.  How I feel.  And it is His way of declaring that He is the one directing my dreams, not me.  If I was directing them the verse would have been different, most likely one I actually knew.

Have compassion on me, Lord, for I am weak.
    Heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony.
 I am sick at heart.
    How long, O Lord, until you restore me?

Psalm 6:2-3

New Living Translation