Seventy times seven. That is how many times we are to forgive someone. I have always thought that meant 490 different offenses of different kinds or even 490 incidences of the same offense, but today I see it very differently.
He wasn't commanding us to keep a tally. This wasn't for the sake of myriad different things or innumerable occurrences of it. It was for one offense. Forgive them for that one incident of the one offense 490+ times? Why would there ever be a necessity for something like that? But the longer I spend on this big green ball (the part where I stand is green - I don't live in the blue), the more I learn that forgiving isn't an event.
It is a practice. It is a process. That is why a person would need to offer forgiveness almost 500 times for one thing happening once.
But rarely, when people are close, does there ever only be one offense one time. And we know with you and I that there was so much more than that. There was so much more.
Really, it's pretty true that no one will really know what it was like when it was just me and you together. No amount of effort in description will ever be the same as actually having been there. That's just something that me and you and God know, but we do know. We know so well, and I don't think we will ever forget it.
There are some things I can know because I have lived it. No ones interpretation or evaluation or opinion can ever change what I know I lived with me and you - the relationship that was just us. There is nothing that can change it from being true forever, and there is nothing that can change that it happened. Because that is just how truth goes.
I have grappled with the things I know - the things I lived that I know are true and real. I need you to know that God has healed me so much. God has helped me sort out so much of it, and He doesn't look like He has any interest in cutting that healing short any time soon.
God and I have walked back down almost every single step of the road of the journey that you and I shared during the time we told everyone we were friends. We have walked through the valley of the shadow of death. He has held my hand as I choked on my own tears remembering how bad I hurt down to the depths of every part of who I am.
He is still helping me figure out just where to put each little moment, and I need you to know that He is making it into something beautiful. I need you to know that you didn't ruin anything. There were moments that sure looked like ruining me was something you wanted very much. You made every exhibition that would lead anyone to believe that that is what you wanted. I need you to know that God kept that from happening, and He is slowly but surely taking every moment of hurt that you intentionally caused, and He is making it into something so wonderful that now, I just keep pinching myself that this is the life I get to have.
There are some things I don't know, and honestly, that has always been the hardest part. Why? Why did you do all these things to me? What did I ever do to make you want to hurt me so deeply and to make an effort to make the mark as permanently as you could? Why did you choose to do all of this when we told everyone that we were the kind of friends that were best. You were my favorite friend in the whole world, and you told everyone I was yours. Why would you want to hurt me and to do it continually?
It has been very confusing to live this. It has been very confusing and very painful to live this and to have these questions, but I need you to know that today, God gave me my answer to all of them - the question impregnating every moment of these hurts.
The answer is this: it doesn't matter. Will you read that again? It doesn't matter to me anymore. Today, I fully forgive you. And this has been a process because this is most assuredly not the first time that my heart took the broken pieces of you and me to God and asked Him to sort it all out and to just hand all of this to Him. I need you to know that too, okay? I need you to know that I have already forgiven you 490 times for each singular incident. My heart has already offered this to you, and God has just done miraculous things in my heart to help me go deeper and deeper into my soul to some of those moments that hurt the most or the ones that are the freshest.
I need you to know that you have been having forgiveness for a long time, and my prayer is that this fact offers you some kind of relief. I don't know all the why's, but I know that people don't do those things unless they're hurting really badly. We do things when we're hurting, and God told me that I am to forgive you. And I have.
But today it goes a little deeper and will last a little longer. Today, this forgiveness is more permanent that all the others before today.
This one sets us free. This is the one where I totally stop trying to find answers to questions I can't ask you. This is the one where I lay all that pain to final rest and I go to the God of heaven and again ask that He bless your life and show you Himself in a way that will heal you too. Because I want that for you. I have always wanted that for you. So many tears and so many nights of remembering what it was like to be close just wishing you could get a glimpse of what the world looks like outside of all the hurt. I want that for you.
Some day, you will cross my mind, and I will realize you haven't come and gone in a very long time. That day looks like its soon, honestly. The space between when we were friends and the page of this calendar is a pretty wide expanse, and, like I said, God has helped me do all this healing and has given me a life without you in it.
That's why I'm writing you this letter. I don't know where in the world you are exactly at this moment. I don't know that you will ever even see this, but in the off chance you do, this is just something that I wanted you to know and this was the only way I could offer it to you.
Thank you. Thank you for all the happy moments we shared during our friendship. Thank you for all the good things. I WILL always hold those in my arms really tight. But I need you to know - about all the bad...I forgive you, okay?
I do.
May this letter find you well. May you be living prosperity and abundance and a happiness that is the envy of all who know you. May you see God in a way that makes heaven feel closer than earth could ever feel, and may you live long days surrounded by the ones you love.
And may you always know this:
I forgive you...seventy times seven
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Sunday, June 16, 2019
On being fatherless
He kissed my hand a million times and called me princess just as many. He celebrated even the most minor accomplishments of mine. He loved me with an abandon that his father had never shown him.
And he's gone.
It has been 12 years and some months since the horrific day of finding out that my dad had dropped dead of a massive heart attack on the same day when were going to have my birthday dinner at his house with all of us kids and our babies.
For 12 years, on Father's Day, my heart has ached, and it has been so confusing for me. I haven't known how to even sort it out - until today.
My dad was a really great dad. He was human, and he and I have parented differently, but he was an amazing dad. I have felt so conflicted about expressing sadness on Father's Day because I had a good dad. There are many that feel sadness on Father's Day because their dad was never there or because he is still alive but is too toxic to have a relationship with. Then there are those that I know have terrible fathers that, most perplexing to me, find the need to heap accolades upon their dad's name that i know is not the actual identity of the man whose blood runs through their veins.
I didn't have that, so I haven't known or felt comfortable with how to talk about why Father's Day is so hard beyond just saying that I miss him. It's always been more than that, but I haven't been able to let myself dare say publicly what my dad did to me. He did something that I haven't spoken about negatively because I didn't want to stain his name or all the ways that he was amazing, but it's time. I'm ready.
He died. And he left us. He left us all so permanently that there is no finding him again as long as we breath air from this world. There is no tracking him down and seeing if things can be mended or if there is hope that we could once again hear his voice and booming laugh or feel his huge hug.
He left, and he's gone, and as soon as most of the cars had pulled away from the graveside to put him in the hole on the hill where I collapsed in tears, my world broke in a way that there has never been a way to put it back together.
Not so far anyway. Because I tried to hide how bad it hurt that he left. And what exactly about it has hurt so bad? What were the things that actually broke?
This morning, I felt it flood every nook and cranny of my consciousness, and it happened when our pastor was talking about father's praying blessings over their children. It just hit me - I will never have that. Because my dad is dead. All those things that a dad is supposed to do, my dad is not going to do. He will never be there for anything, and he stopped being here for anything 12 years and some months ago and it has left a big, wide, gaping hole that, though my step dad is so loving, no human can fill
The hole is there, and my dad put it there because he left. Did he choose it? No. That doesn't matter. What matters is that the hole is there and he is not and that's not natural and it isn't right, and there's no going back on it. Ever again.
So what is my hole, exactly?
Well,
My dad could fix anything, and he did. He was a mechanic, so he fixed all of our cars. He worked on plumbing in our houses sometimes. He worked to built or repair small projects. If it was in the confines of anything technology based, there was nothing you could break that he couldn't fix. He spent many, many hours helping people over the phone to recover lost data or salvage a machine they couldn't afford to replace. He went over to people's houses and never grumbled, that I could hear, about how many times they needed his help. He fixed relationships. He found a way to have a relationship with and show love to his dad who had beaten him so savagely on so many occasions. About a week before my grandfather died, my dad knew his time was getting close so he called his dad. He wanted to speak words of comfort and love, and when his dad just became nasty with him, my dad returned it with love and kindness. He preached his own dad's funeral, and there were no words of malice. There also weren't words of praise - that would have been disingenuous. Instead, he just preached a message of the gospel of the God who had gladly stepped in to be the Daddy my dad so desperately needed. On the day my grandfather died, my dad cried like a little boy, and I just couldn't understand it. Now I do. Now I understand what had happened to my dad.
My dad was also my protector. He wanted me to be treated with respect and love, and he would not tolerate anyone attacking any of the 5 of us. After his own childhood, he took our advocacy very seriously. He marched his way in front of plenty of people who thought they'd flex and abuse a muscle of power at us and put them in their place. He did this for me numerous times. I now can piece together that my dad heavily suspected that I had been raped by a summer romance turned nightmare. He knew he had to wait for me to tell him, but that didn't stop from calling my attacker - a pathetic, puny, gangly punk, into his office and saying, "The state of Tennessee isn't big enough for the both of us, and I'm not leaving. I better not ever see your face on this earth ever again, and if you ever see me, I'm gonna need for you to walk across to the other side of the road so I dont have to look at you. Do you understand me? Now get out of here." All still sitting in the chair behind his giant desk covered in projects and paperwork for the business he had worked so tirelessly to build. There were other threats that I had unknowingly walked into. My dad made a concerted effort to maintain a presence where he felt there was a threat to me. Always offering help and love to one who was going for my throat but also letting that person know that, if they wanted to try to come for me, they were going to have to go through him first. That's just not something people did. My dad was a lover who everyone knew for being loving and a funny jokester, but there was a line, and if you were close, he wouldnt let there be any mistake about where the line was. When my dad died, my throat was the first place this person went. They knew I had no one to protect me and that I really didn't know how to protect myself at all. They knew I was an easy target, and they capitalized on that. Their viciousness almost did me in, but they had forgotten one thing: in all of the being protected, I also learned how to protect. It took a while, but I took what I learned and have built a shield that cannot be penetrated. It has all hurt so badly, though.
Why?
My dad was also my best friend. I was born when he was 23, and we were both cut from the same cloth down to the nose on our faces. As I got older, my dad began to treat me like a peer in the business we shared. Sometimes he would call me to ask me what my thoughts were on a matter, and I knew it was because he actually respected my opinion. We just understood each other. It felt so amazing to have someone in my life who just always seemed to understand me without me always needing to explain.
The thing that has left the biggest hole is that I miss so much mattering to him as much as I did. I know I matter like that to my mom, and I still have her. It's not that he was the only one - it's that I had that from him and it was so significant and then there was just this abrupt ripping away of a love I knew was so deep that it's almost all he thought about. We have unearthed some scribbled down thoughts of my dad's from when my older brother and I were still small and my younger brother and sister weren't yet born, and being a good dad and making us feel love was something he pursued obsessively. Being a good husband and dad was all that mattered to him. Us. Me. All that mattered, and now it is gone for the rest of the days I walk this big green ball.
And you know, it doesn't matter that I was a grown up when my dad died and that I'm now 37 years old. Because, just like my dad was a 39 year old little boy sobbing at being made orphaned of a father, I am too. I have been orphaned of a father - my father. And I haven't wanted to admit that because I felt like it implied abandonment, and I knew that wasn't the pain I had to tell. Mine was different, but it's time that I stop pretending that it isn't there.
It's time.
I don't have a biological dad here anymore, and I won't. And it hurts today, but here is the beauty I was reminded of this morning from caring words spoken over us. I couldn't be adopted until I admitted that I was orphaned of a father. Whilst I am eternally God's kid, He has been waiting to fill that gaping hole that was left by my dad dying and leaving me. I have held that part in closed fists thinking that my childish wisdom of gripping it tight was going to make it different than what it was. Now, I can finally see that I have failed, but I never needed to have succeeded, because my Abba has been waiting for me to give Him this part. So I do that today.
I know it will be a process, and I don't even know how it will go, but how is it that a Daddy loves? He spends time. He protects. He defends. He is a constant best friend. He loves obsessively. Those are the things that made Danny Baker great, right? Those are the things that made him my hero, and the opportunity was afforded to him by my being nearby.
So I don't really know what this is going to look like, but I'm willing now to really give God the chance I'd been refusing Him. In the past year or two, He has really taught me about how to be nearby to Him. He knew this day was going to come and that it wouldn't all register until I had spent the time learning to be nearby. Now will come the next part of being nearby and actually opening my heart to be loved. Oh, it's really going to hurt. Opening your heart hurts, but I know that He will have a way to make me into someone far beyond anyone I ever imagined that I could be and to show the magnitude of who He is beyond what I have ever known.
Now I will let Him show me. Now I will not refuse to say that I'm half orphaned. Now I get it. Now I will let Him show me the great and wondrous things that He has planned.
Happy Father's Day, Dad. I love you forever.
Love,
Sasha
And he's gone.
It has been 12 years and some months since the horrific day of finding out that my dad had dropped dead of a massive heart attack on the same day when were going to have my birthday dinner at his house with all of us kids and our babies.
For 12 years, on Father's Day, my heart has ached, and it has been so confusing for me. I haven't known how to even sort it out - until today.
My dad was a really great dad. He was human, and he and I have parented differently, but he was an amazing dad. I have felt so conflicted about expressing sadness on Father's Day because I had a good dad. There are many that feel sadness on Father's Day because their dad was never there or because he is still alive but is too toxic to have a relationship with. Then there are those that I know have terrible fathers that, most perplexing to me, find the need to heap accolades upon their dad's name that i know is not the actual identity of the man whose blood runs through their veins.
I didn't have that, so I haven't known or felt comfortable with how to talk about why Father's Day is so hard beyond just saying that I miss him. It's always been more than that, but I haven't been able to let myself dare say publicly what my dad did to me. He did something that I haven't spoken about negatively because I didn't want to stain his name or all the ways that he was amazing, but it's time. I'm ready.
He died. And he left us. He left us all so permanently that there is no finding him again as long as we breath air from this world. There is no tracking him down and seeing if things can be mended or if there is hope that we could once again hear his voice and booming laugh or feel his huge hug.
He left, and he's gone, and as soon as most of the cars had pulled away from the graveside to put him in the hole on the hill where I collapsed in tears, my world broke in a way that there has never been a way to put it back together.
Not so far anyway. Because I tried to hide how bad it hurt that he left. And what exactly about it has hurt so bad? What were the things that actually broke?
This morning, I felt it flood every nook and cranny of my consciousness, and it happened when our pastor was talking about father's praying blessings over their children. It just hit me - I will never have that. Because my dad is dead. All those things that a dad is supposed to do, my dad is not going to do. He will never be there for anything, and he stopped being here for anything 12 years and some months ago and it has left a big, wide, gaping hole that, though my step dad is so loving, no human can fill
The hole is there, and my dad put it there because he left. Did he choose it? No. That doesn't matter. What matters is that the hole is there and he is not and that's not natural and it isn't right, and there's no going back on it. Ever again.
So what is my hole, exactly?
Well,
My dad could fix anything, and he did. He was a mechanic, so he fixed all of our cars. He worked on plumbing in our houses sometimes. He worked to built or repair small projects. If it was in the confines of anything technology based, there was nothing you could break that he couldn't fix. He spent many, many hours helping people over the phone to recover lost data or salvage a machine they couldn't afford to replace. He went over to people's houses and never grumbled, that I could hear, about how many times they needed his help. He fixed relationships. He found a way to have a relationship with and show love to his dad who had beaten him so savagely on so many occasions. About a week before my grandfather died, my dad knew his time was getting close so he called his dad. He wanted to speak words of comfort and love, and when his dad just became nasty with him, my dad returned it with love and kindness. He preached his own dad's funeral, and there were no words of malice. There also weren't words of praise - that would have been disingenuous. Instead, he just preached a message of the gospel of the God who had gladly stepped in to be the Daddy my dad so desperately needed. On the day my grandfather died, my dad cried like a little boy, and I just couldn't understand it. Now I do. Now I understand what had happened to my dad.
My dad was also my protector. He wanted me to be treated with respect and love, and he would not tolerate anyone attacking any of the 5 of us. After his own childhood, he took our advocacy very seriously. He marched his way in front of plenty of people who thought they'd flex and abuse a muscle of power at us and put them in their place. He did this for me numerous times. I now can piece together that my dad heavily suspected that I had been raped by a summer romance turned nightmare. He knew he had to wait for me to tell him, but that didn't stop from calling my attacker - a pathetic, puny, gangly punk, into his office and saying, "The state of Tennessee isn't big enough for the both of us, and I'm not leaving. I better not ever see your face on this earth ever again, and if you ever see me, I'm gonna need for you to walk across to the other side of the road so I dont have to look at you. Do you understand me? Now get out of here." All still sitting in the chair behind his giant desk covered in projects and paperwork for the business he had worked so tirelessly to build. There were other threats that I had unknowingly walked into. My dad made a concerted effort to maintain a presence where he felt there was a threat to me. Always offering help and love to one who was going for my throat but also letting that person know that, if they wanted to try to come for me, they were going to have to go through him first. That's just not something people did. My dad was a lover who everyone knew for being loving and a funny jokester, but there was a line, and if you were close, he wouldnt let there be any mistake about where the line was. When my dad died, my throat was the first place this person went. They knew I had no one to protect me and that I really didn't know how to protect myself at all. They knew I was an easy target, and they capitalized on that. Their viciousness almost did me in, but they had forgotten one thing: in all of the being protected, I also learned how to protect. It took a while, but I took what I learned and have built a shield that cannot be penetrated. It has all hurt so badly, though.
Why?
My dad was also my best friend. I was born when he was 23, and we were both cut from the same cloth down to the nose on our faces. As I got older, my dad began to treat me like a peer in the business we shared. Sometimes he would call me to ask me what my thoughts were on a matter, and I knew it was because he actually respected my opinion. We just understood each other. It felt so amazing to have someone in my life who just always seemed to understand me without me always needing to explain.
The thing that has left the biggest hole is that I miss so much mattering to him as much as I did. I know I matter like that to my mom, and I still have her. It's not that he was the only one - it's that I had that from him and it was so significant and then there was just this abrupt ripping away of a love I knew was so deep that it's almost all he thought about. We have unearthed some scribbled down thoughts of my dad's from when my older brother and I were still small and my younger brother and sister weren't yet born, and being a good dad and making us feel love was something he pursued obsessively. Being a good husband and dad was all that mattered to him. Us. Me. All that mattered, and now it is gone for the rest of the days I walk this big green ball.
And you know, it doesn't matter that I was a grown up when my dad died and that I'm now 37 years old. Because, just like my dad was a 39 year old little boy sobbing at being made orphaned of a father, I am too. I have been orphaned of a father - my father. And I haven't wanted to admit that because I felt like it implied abandonment, and I knew that wasn't the pain I had to tell. Mine was different, but it's time that I stop pretending that it isn't there.
It's time.
I don't have a biological dad here anymore, and I won't. And it hurts today, but here is the beauty I was reminded of this morning from caring words spoken over us. I couldn't be adopted until I admitted that I was orphaned of a father. Whilst I am eternally God's kid, He has been waiting to fill that gaping hole that was left by my dad dying and leaving me. I have held that part in closed fists thinking that my childish wisdom of gripping it tight was going to make it different than what it was. Now, I can finally see that I have failed, but I never needed to have succeeded, because my Abba has been waiting for me to give Him this part. So I do that today.
I know it will be a process, and I don't even know how it will go, but how is it that a Daddy loves? He spends time. He protects. He defends. He is a constant best friend. He loves obsessively. Those are the things that made Danny Baker great, right? Those are the things that made him my hero, and the opportunity was afforded to him by my being nearby.
So I don't really know what this is going to look like, but I'm willing now to really give God the chance I'd been refusing Him. In the past year or two, He has really taught me about how to be nearby to Him. He knew this day was going to come and that it wouldn't all register until I had spent the time learning to be nearby. Now will come the next part of being nearby and actually opening my heart to be loved. Oh, it's really going to hurt. Opening your heart hurts, but I know that He will have a way to make me into someone far beyond anyone I ever imagined that I could be and to show the magnitude of who He is beyond what I have ever known.
Now I will let Him show me. Now I will not refuse to say that I'm half orphaned. Now I get it. Now I will let Him show me the great and wondrous things that He has planned.
Happy Father's Day, Dad. I love you forever.
Love,
Sasha
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
On laying each of them to rest
The human soul is a multiplicitous thing. We are not but one dimension of ourselves but rather, we are a jewel faceted with the sides of all of our life experiences. We live through things that make us grow, and that version of us forges on. It grows. It becomes. It changes.
And then there is the thing of tragedy and injury. It is without fail that tragedy or hurt falls upon every single life - to varying degrees. And by varying degrees, I mean that it could be an extremity of circumstances or the level and depth of pain felt by an individual.
It always happens. To everyone.
I will not pretend that there are not those who have lives that have an enviable amount of predictability that allows them to bounce back a little easier. There are those who manage to almost float through the whole measure of their breaths with a way that seems to be avoidant of anything catastrophic. There are those lives. Mine is not one of them. Yours may not be either. Let's ignite the fragrance that is this path of pain and trial.
Sometimes, just as in the physical realm, there are things that just sliced through a little too deep or that slammed into our spiritual bones a little (or a lot) too hard. When this happens, the version of us that traveled our story up to that point gets stunted. It gets halted right there to a state of terminal. The thing, whatever it was, injured us so severely that theversion of us that lived up to that moment cannot continue any longer.
The curious thing is that the part of us that continues on, does just that. There are cases where the burden is too crushing and the psychological effects completely prevent the soul and the body and the mind from going any further. Let us elaborate on those who are, by God's grace, able to continue.
The injured version of us - it is unwell to the point of a spiritual vegetative state. No brain function. The heart is broken. We have to lay it to rest. We have to actually, consciously allow it to breathe its last and collapse into the arms of everything that is to come and rest in ever peace.
If we do not, we, effectively, bend down and raise this sickly version and carry it across our backs. We take it with us. We call it baggage. We call it scars. We call it "old ghosts". And we lumber on encumbered with the dead weight of a story that isn't well. If we accumulate a number of these and do this thing of the throwing over the shoulder, the weight just gets heavier - the life more burdened.
Sometimes these old ghosts of us are smaller - sneaky almost. They hide in the crevices of things we didn't realize were important to our hearts, and then they jump out with vicious surprise. Sometimes these can be sort of superficial, so the laying them to rest is not hard - even if you have to do it a number of times.
Sometimes they are those jagged, vibrant threads woven straight through the center. They are who we are. We are the sum...of them. They run deep and all the way across. These are the ones that are the hardest. These are the ones that hurt. These are the ones that deserve our homage and then our memorial of them - for they are the heaviest. So so heavy.
It is no secret that I have these old versions of me that draped across my shoulders for a long, long time. It is no secret that I have held service for a few. They have been laid to rest. I do not forget about them. I remember - always. But they do not burden me anymore. I have stood toe to toe with the enemy himself and exiled from my spirit the servant of his that caused me pain.
There are just so many.
A lot of work to do.
Tonight I visited the memory of two different times that my spirit was made to be damaged. I chose to take the me of now and tell her - the me of then, that I am bigger and stronger now and I will not let that person hurt her any more - that I am now there to stand in the way and that the me of now is strong enough to send the attacker away knowing that I am impenetrable. To try to attack is futility at its finest. The she of then will never have to be afraid again. I will protect her now - forever.
So tonight there is a pierce in my chest and tears that burn my eyes as I grieve the me that hurt so bad - that she ever had to hurt like that and be so afraid. But I smile at how proud I am of her that she managed to get us that far. It's just that it's my turn now. It's my turn to travel this life - to finish the story. To find the other versions of me that are crippled at different points in my history.
I'll find them all. With God's help, I'll find them all. With Him, all things are possible. With His shield I am invincible.
And then there is the thing of tragedy and injury. It is without fail that tragedy or hurt falls upon every single life - to varying degrees. And by varying degrees, I mean that it could be an extremity of circumstances or the level and depth of pain felt by an individual.
It always happens. To everyone.
I will not pretend that there are not those who have lives that have an enviable amount of predictability that allows them to bounce back a little easier. There are those who manage to almost float through the whole measure of their breaths with a way that seems to be avoidant of anything catastrophic. There are those lives. Mine is not one of them. Yours may not be either. Let's ignite the fragrance that is this path of pain and trial.
Sometimes, just as in the physical realm, there are things that just sliced through a little too deep or that slammed into our spiritual bones a little (or a lot) too hard. When this happens, the version of us that traveled our story up to that point gets stunted. It gets halted right there to a state of terminal. The thing, whatever it was, injured us so severely that theversion of us that lived up to that moment cannot continue any longer.
The curious thing is that the part of us that continues on, does just that. There are cases where the burden is too crushing and the psychological effects completely prevent the soul and the body and the mind from going any further. Let us elaborate on those who are, by God's grace, able to continue.
The injured version of us - it is unwell to the point of a spiritual vegetative state. No brain function. The heart is broken. We have to lay it to rest. We have to actually, consciously allow it to breathe its last and collapse into the arms of everything that is to come and rest in ever peace.
If we do not, we, effectively, bend down and raise this sickly version and carry it across our backs. We take it with us. We call it baggage. We call it scars. We call it "old ghosts". And we lumber on encumbered with the dead weight of a story that isn't well. If we accumulate a number of these and do this thing of the throwing over the shoulder, the weight just gets heavier - the life more burdened.
Sometimes these old ghosts of us are smaller - sneaky almost. They hide in the crevices of things we didn't realize were important to our hearts, and then they jump out with vicious surprise. Sometimes these can be sort of superficial, so the laying them to rest is not hard - even if you have to do it a number of times.
Sometimes they are those jagged, vibrant threads woven straight through the center. They are who we are. We are the sum...of them. They run deep and all the way across. These are the ones that are the hardest. These are the ones that hurt. These are the ones that deserve our homage and then our memorial of them - for they are the heaviest. So so heavy.
It is no secret that I have these old versions of me that draped across my shoulders for a long, long time. It is no secret that I have held service for a few. They have been laid to rest. I do not forget about them. I remember - always. But they do not burden me anymore. I have stood toe to toe with the enemy himself and exiled from my spirit the servant of his that caused me pain.
There are just so many.
A lot of work to do.
Tonight I visited the memory of two different times that my spirit was made to be damaged. I chose to take the me of now and tell her - the me of then, that I am bigger and stronger now and I will not let that person hurt her any more - that I am now there to stand in the way and that the me of now is strong enough to send the attacker away knowing that I am impenetrable. To try to attack is futility at its finest. The she of then will never have to be afraid again. I will protect her now - forever.
So tonight there is a pierce in my chest and tears that burn my eyes as I grieve the me that hurt so bad - that she ever had to hurt like that and be so afraid. But I smile at how proud I am of her that she managed to get us that far. It's just that it's my turn now. It's my turn to travel this life - to finish the story. To find the other versions of me that are crippled at different points in my history.
I'll find them all. With God's help, I'll find them all. With Him, all things are possible. With His shield I am invincible.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)