Morning always brings a new perspective. The shift from darkness to light is significant every single time I watch it happen. Whether it is because I don’t like mornings and so there is always a reason I’m up to see it or whether it is because sunrise is a time when God is able to speak to me more clearly, I don’t know. But sitting up and seeing the dark, night sky change colors and then be bright has tremendous impact on my spirit.
So that’s what I did today. I watched the sun come up on a new life. I chose to get up and see the first morning of this new story that God is writing in me and around me and through me. And, just as he has many times since I’ve been here in Scottsdale, he came and sat with me.
This week has actually been the hardest one I have ever experienced. My life has not been an easy one, most who know me are aware of some pieces of that. But this week I stopped, stepped out of life, and looked at the impact that all the losses have had. I detailed and documented the traumas. I gave a voice to the deepest wounds of my soul. I sat in the pain, allowing the child, the adolescent, and the adult who experienced those things to really acknowledge how much they hurt and how they affected me. As painful as living through those experiences the first time was, doing it again all at once was much harder.
I literally did not think I would survive when it was dark outside. I ranted and raved as I worked on homework, railing against the process and refusing to believe that this much pain could ever be beneficial. These things that happened to me were mostly not anything I could have chosen not to experience. But this week I had the choice to do the work or not. I had to choose to live them again. I had to decide if the pain would cripple me or make me stronger. I had to figure out if my faith that God is working in my present was bigger than the fear that he had abandoned me in my past.
And this week, faith won. God showed up. Sometimes in the presence of people I didn’t know who responded to his thumb in their back to reach out and be his arms around me. Sometimes in the willingness of the only person I did know to listen to my anger without judgement. Sometimes God showed up in a way that I can’t describe that actually allowed me to feel as if he were sitting right beside me, really listening and hearing the anger of the little girl whose understanding of a father who would be able to do that and still love her was lost a long time ago. Instead of just being somewhere beyond the sky, God sat beside me and accepted the shouting and the crying and the darkness and bit by bit the light of Christ engulfed it all.
Today, I am me again. Or maybe I am finally me. And I don’t know exactly who that is, which is its own kind of terrifying. But, I’m also less alone than I have ever been... In many ways, 2020 feels like the start of life. And just as it probably was when my life was actually new, it’s scary but so exciting.
So that’s what I did today. I watched the sun come up on a new life. I chose to get up and see the first morning of this new story that God is writing in me and around me and through me. And, just as he has many times since I’ve been here in Scottsdale, he came and sat with me.
This week has actually been the hardest one I have ever experienced. My life has not been an easy one, most who know me are aware of some pieces of that. But this week I stopped, stepped out of life, and looked at the impact that all the losses have had. I detailed and documented the traumas. I gave a voice to the deepest wounds of my soul. I sat in the pain, allowing the child, the adolescent, and the adult who experienced those things to really acknowledge how much they hurt and how they affected me. As painful as living through those experiences the first time was, doing it again all at once was much harder.
I literally did not think I would survive when it was dark outside. I ranted and raved as I worked on homework, railing against the process and refusing to believe that this much pain could ever be beneficial. These things that happened to me were mostly not anything I could have chosen not to experience. But this week I had the choice to do the work or not. I had to choose to live them again. I had to decide if the pain would cripple me or make me stronger. I had to figure out if my faith that God is working in my present was bigger than the fear that he had abandoned me in my past.
And this week, faith won. God showed up. Sometimes in the presence of people I didn’t know who responded to his thumb in their back to reach out and be his arms around me. Sometimes in the willingness of the only person I did know to listen to my anger without judgement. Sometimes God showed up in a way that I can’t describe that actually allowed me to feel as if he were sitting right beside me, really listening and hearing the anger of the little girl whose understanding of a father who would be able to do that and still love her was lost a long time ago. Instead of just being somewhere beyond the sky, God sat beside me and accepted the shouting and the crying and the darkness and bit by bit the light of Christ engulfed it all.
Today, I am me again. Or maybe I am finally me. And I don’t know exactly who that is, which is its own kind of terrifying. But, I’m also less alone than I have ever been... In many ways, 2020 feels like the start of life. And just as it probably was when my life was actually new, it’s scary but so exciting.
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