Seed of Hope

When Chad and I returned from our little anniversary getaway I was just starting to come back to life.  Truly when I say that, it honestly felt like a part of me died, but it had to.  For me to really face my pain, heal, and move on, those pieces had to die.  They were cancer in my heart.  For my heart to be full, healthy, and complete, the old had to die so new life could replace it.  When you think about it, it's really quite amazing and beautiful.  That things in us that are so dark, ugly, broken, and so unhealthy, that these things can die and be replaced by hope, beauty, purity, honesty, love, life and wholeness - its almost more than my mind can comprehend.  If are reading this right now and you feel the yuck in your heart, I want to tell you there is life for you too.  You may not believe me yet, and that's OK.  But I have to tell you hang on, you too can find beauty from your ashes.  There is hope for you!  That weekend we had family in town and had planned to head up to the mountains all day Sunday.  We decided to go to a Sat night service at our previous church.  A place that we loved deeply.  It is a big church, so we could hide pretty well there.  I was torn between wanting to see old friends, and not wanting anyone to see me.  That meant more pretending.  Pretending that I was ok.  We got the kids settled, hugged a few friends, smiled and pretended, then walked into the sanctuary and hid in the back.  After service there was just one person I wanted to see.  I found her working in the back.  She is one of those friends where we can go years with out seeing or talking to each other, and the moment we see one another we just pick right back up again.  I love that.  I hadn't planned to tell her everything, but as we started talking something came over me and I began weeping.  I started to tell her, slowly, just a little bit, about what had been going on.  She met me with such compassion, because she knew.  She too had walked through stuff, through yuck.  She knew.  At that point I knew she was safe, so I opened up about everything.  She loved me.  Didn't try to fix me, just loved me, and knew.  She said a few words of encouragement, then stopped.  She hugged me, loved me some more, then told me "If God can restore my life, he can for you too".  I wasn't at a place where I believed that yet, but I remembered those words.  I didn't recognize it at the time, but those words were a seed of hope planted in my heart.  They went deep.  She told me she would pray for me, and I know she did.  The next couple of months were a blur.  The days kind of melt together in my mind.  It was summer break, and my kids were not about to slow down or stop needing me because I was going through something.  So I got out of bed everyday, loved my family, took care of them, and talked to God.  I felt depression knocking on my door a lot.  It felt like I could so easily open that door and sink into it.  But I didn't, I kept talking to God and to my husband.  My days were spent in the car driving to and from swimming lessons and grocery stores, or hanging with our friends.  As I kept talking to God I could feel some changes in me.  I didn't have the words to express what was happening to me, but I could feel the changing.  Now, looking back I can see the more I talked to God, the less pain I felt.  Pain - we all have it.  We've all experienced it and will unfortunately experience it again.  I used to think it was a bad thing, but now I'm not so sure.  I don't think pain was Gods plan for me... I am still figuring this all out, I definitely don't have all the right answers.  I'm thinking it thru as I type....  here's what I've learned from my pain thus far.  First - it is not from God.  Even though He was the 1st one I blamed, I now understand He didn't inflict pain on my life.  That's not who He is.  The more time I spent talking to God, the more I understood this.  All of my pain has come from other people and myself.  The level of pain in our lives can vary of course.  Some things hurt a little, some a lot.  Some can go away, some will be with people for the rest of their lives.  Pain of loosing a child, a spouse, a sibling, a parent....I have not had that loss, so again I'm no expert, but I imagine that kind of pain never really goes away.  You just learn to live with it.  The pain I carried had names; rejection, abandonment, feeling unloved, unworthy, always on the outside, never a part, fear of failure, fear of people rejecting me, feeling used.... That was my pain that I carried for decades.  And instead of facing any of that and allowing myself to heal and forgive, I just let it pile on.  Pain after pain.  I'd open the door to that part of my heart and let it go in, shut the door, and move on.  Strange, isn't it?  Why on earth would I do that?  Somewhere along the way I had decided facing pain was too hard, that it would break me.  I would come completely undone and fall apart if I ever opened up that part of my heart.  But the strangest thing happened.  When I started facing my pain, while yes it was hard, and for a time I felt broken, walking through the process of healing, I found strength.  A strength I never knew was in me.  This is the best way I can describe it.  In those moments where I felt the rejection, or fear, or whatever was hurting me, I made a choice to leave a piece of myself there.  Stuck in that moment of pain.  I gave a piece of myself away to make room for that pain in my heart, thus weakening my heart and myself.  As I went back to face those moments, I was able to make a different choice to allow healing and forgiveness, and in doing so, pick up that piece of myself that I had lost.  So the more I faced, the more I healed and forgave, the stronger I was becoming.  Amazing, isn't it?  My ashes were becoming something beautiful.  So when I say that pain maybe isn't a bad thing, what I guess I mean is pain is inevitable in this life, and in and of itself it is not good, but how we choose to deal with it in the moment can actually strengthen us.  Instead of it being a place where we lay a part of our hearts down to accept the pain in, it can be a place where we can choose, in that moment, to forgive, heal, and strengthen our hearts, and in doing so, increase our ability to love and be loved.  When there is less pain in our hearts, there is more room for love and life.  As my heart was being freed up from pain and baggage, more room was being made available for the most incredible love encounter I have ever experienced.  It started with a purse.  Yes, a purse.  My life was about to be completely turned around with a purse.  It's a crazy story that I will write next ;)