Light in the Windows

Sometimes healing isn't logical. Sometimes it doesn't come in the packages we expect, and instead comes to us some roundabout way, from behind, by surprise.

All the years of doing the "steps" so to speak, in the church, the prayer and binding and casting and fasting and workbooks and conferences...none of those things ever brought me peace in my heart, but rather a digging deeper into the magical system that, for whatever reason, I clung to. Say the right prayer, spend enough time in the word, have the right people pray over me; these things only buried me in shame for what they did not do. I would have thought these things to be the answer to my pain; instead they were contributors.

Then, the flip side. The grief of the last year has brought me much good in it's midst, much maturity in it's questions, and much compassion in it's tears. So much grief, and yet, I tried every moment to take something good away, something stretching of myself, reaching beyond the boundaries of the pain. Looking inside myself for the connections, the emotional clues that could enlighten me.

This winter, as I sank into in my saturnine, melancholy season, I have fought to have it work for me rather than struggle against it. I have chosen to look for the ways Papa is bringing light around rather than fearing what lies in the darkness.

Almost nine years ago, I made for myself a nest in the church. I had spent most of my adult life running from myself, looking to roll around in the mud of religion so no one could see that I really was just a pig. I was so fearful of not being good enough for the people around me, and truly believed God would make me good enough if I only did the steps right. Apply more mud, my ass is showing.

As you know, the mud failed me.

I have been so entrenched in the events of the last 5 years that it never occurred to me, until very recently, that my hiding had begun many years earlier than I had ever thought. Things have begun to surface that shock me. To be clear, I haven't turned up any victimization that I wasn't already aware of...I have turned up feelings about it that I had never known, or maybe known but not admitted.

About six weeks ago, when in the throws of some strange new thing being birthed, I realized I needed a midwife. Someone who can draw out the things that want so badly to surface, that I am unable to birth alone for fear of the pain.

So I called Rosalie. Or rather, I messaged her on Facebook. This is the 2000's, you know?

You might remember Rosalie. I interviewed her awhile back. God put her in my path, quite divinely I must say, about two years ago. I knew the moment I met her that she was there for a specific purpose, but it took me this long to be ready.

For almost four years so much of what I have needed to work through has centered on events in my former church that I have already talked about at great length. I have known for those four years that these events were simply a catalyst to bring me into wholeness and authenticity that I couldn't even imagine. However, I had to come to a place where I was no longer blaming these specific events for the pain in my life, but rather realizing how the pain that already existed in my life contributed to these events. Pain that has been there for decades.

So finally, having released the things that took place four years ago as being something unavoidable due to my emotional DNA, rather than something inflicted on me due to other people's spiritual DNA, I am able to look deeper into the past.

I have been meeting with Rosalie regularly, with great anticipation of what having someone to talk to, to really open up to (which is one of my struggles) will bring to my life.

I am hopeful now for a future me who owns her past but is freed from it, who holds the links in her hand but is not chained by them, who looks to her pain to interpret the present, but doesn't live in it nor is governed by it.

The salt and the light, they comfort me. They sting in the wounds but bring clarity to the reasons.

Fallen: Part I
Amateur Therapy Hour
She's Like the Wind
Awakenings
Fallen II: Shit Makes Things Grow
The Saturnine Cycle
Light in the Windows