My secret place

I don't remember having a secret place as a child.  I had an active imagination.  I could create stories in my mind for hours.  Sometimes they would get written out, but mostly they stayed in my head.

I would often retreat into my head and my stories throughout my life.  Most of the time the stories would revolve around a hero of some type.

When I went through my emotional hell in 2010 the only place I wanted to be was in white nothingness.

I would close my eyes and imagine a world of white light.  There would be nothing there, just me lying on a floor of white surrounded by white, maybe covered by a blanket of white and I could disappear into the whiteness.  The silent white nothingness would swallow me up in it and I was safe.  It was quiet, gloriously quiet, and empty.

This last weekend opened up the wounds deep, digging into long covered infections unknown.

Once again I find myself wanting the white, the nothingness, the escape where I can fade into it. The white light where nothing can hide, but I can no longer be seen.  A place where silence reigns and my mind quiets.

My secret place, my escape is nothingness.  I wonder what that means.  A girl who wants to find home so badly, but the go to place she has created in her mind is invisibility, a non-existence.

Linking up with Faith Jam today.

They are small, but they are mighty.

Sometimes the steps we take are so small that we don’t even realize we have taken them.

I wrote last about how I was still just standing still, but what I didn’t realize when I wrote that is that although I was indeed standing still at that moment, I was standing in a different place.  I had been moving all along and hadn’t even realized it.  When I wrote of the thorns I was thick inside of them.  I am no longer there.  Was I standing still in that sanctuary?  Yes, I was; but here is the thing I missed, are you ready for it?  I was out of the thorns….I was out of them and IN A SANCTUARY.  I was so focused on the standing that I forgot to look at my surroundings. 

When I was in the thorns I was so stuck because I felt so empty.  I felt like nothing .  I felt like I knew better and I did what was wrong anyways.  I knew God was waiting for me and loving me, but I was too ashamed to accept it.  For a long time, really until just this week, I felt as though my actions made everything that I had said about God and His love hollow and less believable to others.  This week I have been re-reading back through all of those early blogs.  What I am finding is that those early words have not been negated by my actions, but that God is using them, using my own words to remind me of the deep truths of His love.  And here is the really wooooo-eee-oooooohhhhh realization: the whole time I was struggling, the whole time I was writing down those words God knew what was coming.  He already knew the choices I was going to make. He already knew the words I would need to hear again and again to get me out of those thorns and He had me write them.  There is a kind of awe-inspiring peace that comes when you can see His hand throughout it all. 

I wrote very early on in this blog about a Healing Road .  In that particular blog I wrote how some roads are lined with brambles.  At that point in my life I was still on the road and the brambles I got tangled in weren’t even in my line of sight.  When I saw those words as I reread this week it just struck me.  It struck me hard that God knew what was coming even if I didn’t. 

So much is going on in my heart and my mind here.  Everywhere I turn now I see little steps; little heart steps, and life steps, and healing steps.  They are small, but they are mighty. 

If you are struggling to see past your hurts, your choices, your circumstances and you feel like you are stuck standing still let me tell you that I understand.  I see you.  I hear you.  But more importantly God sees you, hears you, understands you and even if they are small, and even if there is months between the stepping trust me when I say that one day you will look around and you too will find that your surroundings have changed.  Just keep breathing my friends and seeking God.  And it is okay if sometimes seeking Him comes in pain soaked sobs.  And it is okay if it comes in the broken sighs where all you can do is just keep taking one breath after another.  The one thing I can tell you, the one thing that I KNOW is that God loves you, friend, and He will stand on that road with you no matter how small the steps you take and no matter how long it takes you to start moving.  Just keep checking your surroundings.

linking up with Five minute Friday for "small" although this took me longer than five minutes to write.
and also linking up with Emily and her imperfect prose community.

 

and also with