My heart doesn't operate in the scientific

This is the first post of a four post series. Please read the rest of the story by clicking on the "cont." at the bottom of the page.

*Warning: This could be a trigger for those who have been abused.*

I wrote back in early February how Jesus whispered  words to my heart after a particularly difficult weekend.  Here are just a few of those words.

 I know you are frustrated and scared.

 I know this weekend brought up hurts you thought had finished hurting.

 I also know it brought up much fear, because it loosed up hazy 

realizations of memories you don't want to remember, 

things you don't want to know. 

You are so afraid of finding out what has been hiding behind that door 

with all its scratching noises, but I am bigger than that door, baby,

 and anything that lies behind it.

That door had been jarred open that weekend and scared is where I was.  I went on later to write how God was revealing more of what lay behind that door to me in dreams.  That door and all that lay behind it left me in a state of emotional turmoil.  I never knew when I would slip from present day into the emotions of the girl who was trapped in time behind that door with the memories.  I could be washing dishes as an adult in the now and turn and be child sobbing, scared, and hurting.  

It was during this time that I discovered I had thyroid cancer. 

I was never scared of the physical cancer. ( I have always been scared of the emotional "cancer" that lurks behind that damned door.)

The testing for the cancer, surprisingly to me, brought out more of what hid behind that door and that completely terrified me.

As I laid on the exam table during a biopsy of lymph nodes in my central neck my throat was being pressed on and suddenly I was in two places at once.  My body was surrounded by doctors but my mind was in a dark room, a man's hands around my throat, I could feel myself starting to lose consciousness in the world my mind inhabited.  I was panicking.  All I could do was desperately pray for Jesus to save me from my mind and the memory that had slipped out from behind that door.  

I wanted to sob, ask the doctor to stop and curl myself into a huddled ball, but I knew that I couldn't do that. I held myself together as my breath quickened and my lip quivered.  After enduring an hour of being both here and there it was over.  

I spent the weeks between that procedure and my surgery praying that God would use my time in surgery to minister to me.  I would be a captive audience with no distractions.  I prayed over and over that He would walk me through the memories during that time.  Scientifically, I am sure that sounds implausible, but

my heart doesn't operate in the scientific it operates in the supernatural.  

When people would ask me how I felt about the surgery and the cancer I would answer them honestly and say I was just ready to get on with it.  The cancer was no big deal compared to what lay behind that door and I was very worried about surgery opening that door even further.  I didn't tell them that part though.

I just prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed.  "God, please, just show me what I need to know while I am under.  I know I will be unconscious, but please just tell me what I need to know. Walk me through it, I don't care if it sounds dumb, just do it. Please!"  

Surgery day came.  I went into the operating room and thought, "Okay God, you're up." as they moved me from one bed to the other and I slipped into the anesthesia, or rather it slipped into me.  

(to be cont.)

Bone weary: slipping through that crack between forgotten and remembered

**A Warning that this could be a trigger for those who suffered from abuse**

I am tired.  All the time.  It is the kind of tired that makes my bones want to dissolve into the bed when I lay down.  It is more than just a physical tired, it is an emotional tired.  This subconscious leaking into conscious is exhausting.  It is like living in an internal fog where you walk and you walk and you never know what you are walking into until you run smack dab into it.  

It is loading the dishwasher and having a half formed memory slip through that crack between forgotten and remembered, causing you to lean heavy into the sink sobbing.  It is the kind of tired that comes from being 38 in body, but 4 or 5 emotionally and all you know is sadness and fear and you don't have a clear understanding of why or what or who.  You know enough to know that it is something, but not enough to work through the story.  You can feel the weight of it like chains that bind you; but you can't see them or touch them - feel them under your fingertips.

It is waking up from a sound sleep with hands clawed and battle ready, your legs kicking hard.  It is knowing that it wasn't a dream that brought out this fight, but a memory that still hides in shadow.  It is telling yourself where you are, reminding yourself of the present so you can drift back to sleep only to wake up fighting off the memory that is as dark as the night you are thrashing in.

It is lying on an exam table having your throat pressed on and in your mind you are child being choked, feeling as though you are going to pass out, breath quickening, lip quivering, praying for Jesus to come and rescue you from your mind, because He didn't come rescue your body when the choking was real.  

It is riding down the road wondering if you are losing your mind and a memory comes that isn't new, but this time it brings with it the taste of soap and cologne so strong in the back of your throat and on your lips every time you take a breath that you ask out loud what that smell is, but the other in the car can't smell it.  It is not wanting to acknowledge where that tasted smellmory is coming from and having to turn your head over and over again to make it finally go away. It is the nauseous clawing in your chest that is fear, sadness, and anger intermingled.

It is wondering if your mind is writing its own story, but it isn't one you want to read, so you tell it to stop, but it won't.

It is wanting to run away from everything that is internal and leave it behind, but you can't.  Running away from the depths of you is like trying to run from the color of your eyes -f impossible. You can avoid your reflection for a time, but eventually it is going to be there looking back at you.  You can try and hide it, mask it, but masks are only temporary, the reality never changes.  

It is being tired, so tired of the fight.  The fight to forget alternating with the fight to remember.  It is knowing that you need something, but never being able to figure out exactly what that something is.  

It is hearing that all you need to do is X,Y, or Z to be better, but you have no idea how to do X, Y, and Z and no one can give you the instructions they just expect you to do it.  

It is straining your ears hard to hear hope singing, because sometimes he is hidden deep in the fog.

It is the constant grinding friction of what you know to be truth in all those parts of you that are rational versus what you feel, see, and hear in all the other parts of you that are not so rational.  

All of this is what makes me bone weary and I just want some rest.

My Heart Breaks for Her

 My heart breaks for her.

(It is hard for me to say "me" that my heart breaks for "me". I can say "her". My heart breaks for this little girl in the picture, but there is a dis-connect between her and me. I am not sure why that is. I am trying to connect with her, to allow myself to feel broken-hearted for myself instead of just feeling "broken".)


I run my fingertips over the picture. I touch her soft blond hair, look into those blue eyes that are so big, her chubby little legs poking out of her short, white, little girl dress and she is the picture of innocence and beauty.


I look at her and I want to snatch her up out of the picture and hold her, protect her from the shadow that I know is lurking, and the tears spill over the damn that has been holding them back.


She is just a picture. Flat. I can't protect her. The shadow will get to her. Her little white dress of innocence will become stained and dirty. She will become nothing more than a dishrag used to mop up the shadow's desires. She will become broken and scared; looking for home. Words will elude her, she won't have them to say. No one will come to rescue her. No one will come to rescue her and she will cry. She will cry and the memories will hide in the recesses of her mind just as I imagine that she tried to hide. My heart breaks for her, because I can't take that away. I can't take it away, because her broken-ness is my own.


I am broken and all I can do is look at her and let the tears spill down, because I couldn't save her. Now I am left here looking at a picture of a person that I couldn't protect and all I can do is try to un-loose the memories that she burried deep. I need to find her crouched small in the darkened corner of my mind and bring words to her wordlessness, take her by the hand and lead her to the home that she so desperately sought all those years ago.


I need to look at her and see that she is me and I need to find that same broken-hearted compassion that I feel for her and give it to myself. I need to let the tears spill down for me as well as for her, because it is time for both of us to stop hiding.  I need to find the right someone to help me do this. To show me how to find her, to find the words, and the memories, and then how to get back home.