Broken Places

When you throw your back out it is often because the muscles around your spine have moved out of place. Sort of.
Your spine has been tweaked out of place but you don't know it immediately because the muscles will move and compensate for the pain by moving to a place where the pain is tolerable.

Eventually, no amount of movement, no amount of compensation, will make the pain tolerable. Usually this is when my back officially goes out and I can't walk upright anymore. This is when I'm forced to go to the chiropractor and get my back adjusted into the correct places...again.

This morning, standing in the dark shower I said to God...sometimes it is easier to stay broken.

I don't know the moments when my back goes out. I only know the moments when the muscles around my spine give up the fight and say enough is enough this has to be fixed and we can't do that anymore.

Even then, bent over and hobbling around I think...this will get better soon. I just have to push through. My back will take care of it, it will be fine. I will be fine.

Fine is my F word.

I just want everything to be fine. If I don't look directly at being broken it's fine. It's ok. It's no big deal. I can manage. I'll just move some muscle around and compensate for the pain.

Don't look at how you spend money and why you place value on bank account balances. It's fine. Just leave it alone.
Don't look at what you eat, Jesus loves you anyway even if no one else does. It's fine. Just let it be.
Don't look at friendships. If you do you might be clingy and scare people away from being your friend. Just be cool. No one loves a needy girl.
Don't look at relationships. Don't ask why, the answer is probably something that requires change from you and that's not what we're going to do.
Don't look at touch. It has no easy answers and complicated is just too messy.

So I compensate. I mold myself around the pain instead of trying to clear it up. Because sometimes it's just easier to stay broken.

But now I can't walk. I'm hobbled over and unable to push through.
God is whispering that it's time to get adjusted. It's time to stop compensating and avoiding and look directly at some things.
I tell Him I hate it.
I tell Him I don't want to.
I tell Him that HE made me this way. (The blaming always seems to help)

Again he has to tell me, again he has to take my heart into his hands and remind me that he did make me. But not for this. Not for a sort of half life hiding and fearful of looking directly at the broken places.
He reminds me that he is already in those broken places waiting to meet me there. I just have to look directly at them and I'll see him there.

I don't know the moments these places were broken. I only know that in one of the places specifically, I'm giving up the fight. I still tell him I hate it. I still tell him I don't want to.

But now it's by looking over at him, beside me in the broken place.

Spilled Milk

I don't remember how it started
But I was there
Sitting on the floor

A ring
Two glasses of milk
(no I don't know why either)

I called you
I asked you to come
I told you I couldn't move forward unless you came

So you came
Reluctantly
With a chip on your shoulder
You came

I told you calmly while drinking milk (still don't know)
I couldn't do this
You were ambivalent to me
Ambivalence is my death
I deserve your passion

I handed the ring back
I told you to fight for me
I asked you to fight for me
I required you to fight for me

Because I deserved to be fought for
I deserved to be cherished
I deserved to be considered

The room was empty
But for you, me, a ring
Two glasses of milk, one full, one empty

You stood
Nudged the still full glass of milk with your shoe
Pushed it over
Walked away

I sat there, still
No ring
Crying over milk, spilled

Poisoned Fruit

I've been watching a lot of Law & Order lately. When they get to the courtroom scenes there is often a battle over what evidence should be admitted in the trial. If one big piece is omitted then it can have a domino effect on a lot of other smaller pieces of evidence.

Fruit of the poisonous tree is what they call that evidence.

That's how life feels lately.

Every broken relationship
Every cutting comment
Every knock down drag out fight
Every shaming scoff

Fruit of the poisonous tree.

The generational sin and brokenness that feels like poison seething through my veins so I want to rip the roots out of my familiy tree and plant it in less fallow ground.

I feel panicked wondering how I can change my own behaviors and attitudes to help change the tide of bitterness, anger and snark that rears its hideous head.

I feel afraid, wounded and damaged. Wishing I could strike back like a snake. Teaching lessons and hurting those that hurt me, shame me and others. Putting a stop to those who belittle and dimiss others. I wish I could shout loud enough to make their eyes open to the damage their indifference and cruelty is causing.

But I can't. I don't have a pretty bow to wrap this all up. All I know is that I am called to be gracious and loving to everyone; even when I feel like they don't deserve it anymore.

The tension for me is in setting boudaries and keeping them while at the same time being gracious and kind.
Loving the best I can the people in our family even when they behave so unloveable.

Heart Burn

A vice gripped my heart
During quiet murmurings and plans for the next few days I cleared my throat
I could hardly force the words out
But I did
I asked

It is probably my fault
I didn't make it clear how important it was to me that you both came

I'm fighting the urge to not even bother asking because I'm sure I'll be disappointed
So I twist myself into feeling detached and unaffected as if your answer doesn't matter
I tell you it was just a thought I had

But it was important
I wanted to be picked
I wanted to be chosen
I wanted them to want to choose me

I didn't want to have to manipulate and plan the choice. I wanted them to choose me because they wanted to choose me, because I was chosen.

I don't want to be so upset about this
I want to be detached and indifferent
But I also want to make sure that I'm allowing myself to feel these things, regardless of if they matter to anyone else
I want to get to the point that my emotions are not dependent on others validations of them

But can I tell you I still want that validation
I don't understand why it's wrong to want it
I just do, and I don't know what to do about it

A good friend said there's nothing to do about it.
She said that's my specialty, doing
When that's stripped away from me I am afraid I am stripped of everything. All my value.

Which is a lie
One that I'm struggling to stop believing

I'm holding on to hope that one day this could be made right
Cause I've been ship wrecked and left for dead and I've seen the darkest sights
Everyone I've loved seems like a stranger in the night
But oh my heart still burns
Tells me to return
Search the fading light
- Ulysses, Josh Garrels

This Costly Faith

This.

(via:)

“Save me, O God,

for the waters have come up to my neck.

I sink in the miry depths,

where there is no foothold.

I have come into the deep waters;

the floods engulf me.

I am worn out calling for help;

my throat is parched.

My eyes fail,

looking for my God.”

Psalm 69 is a lament, one that puts into words the agony of my own heart right now. I am weary. Night after night I can’t sleep. My body is weakened by stress and I’m physically ill. I feel like a worn out old shoe that has to keep running.

Can you relate?

It doesn’t seem so long ago when the Psalms of Lament hardly made sense to me. I was happy, carefree, full of faith and hope. My life philosophy—”it’ll all work out”—was based on the unwavering belief in the goodness and sovereignty of God. It’s not that I was unfamiliar with suffering. I had faced the worst kinds of hardship that you can imagine—and yet my joy couldn’t be snuffed out.

But now the waters have come up to my neck and I am gasping for air. I still believe in the goodness and sovereignty of God, which is why I cry out to him for help, but he feels far away. His back is turned to me.

And so now, finally, I am learning the cost of faith.

The Psalmist, apparently while still barely treading the deep waters, says,

“I will praise God’s name in song

and glorify him with thanksgiving…

The LORD hears the needy.”

Praising God in advance for rescuing me, though he seems already too late, requires faith so deep I have to suck it out of the marrow of my bones—digging and scraping for it when it refuses to come—rather than depending on my optimistic nature to help it bubble to the surface.

This kind of faith hurts. A lot.

I sing, “Let the waters rise if you want them to. I will follow you,” but the tears stream down my face as I do. It’s like reaching the 25 mile marker in a marathon: you go on even though each step hurts.

And that’s when I remember that Jesus himself did this same thing.

“Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!” (Hebrews 12:2-3, The Message)

I’m going to press on, no matter what the cost. I’m going to focus on the prize to strengthen my feeble arms and weak knees. And I’ll trust God even if the water pulls me under.

How about you? Will you fix your eyes on Jesus too?

by Heather Gemmen Wilson

Paying

It never casually passes my lips. Even if it appears that way, it's never casual to me.
Each time feels like a small death in my heart.

I didn't know it would be our last conversation.
I didn't know it would be the last time I heard your voice.
Because I never imagined it could change. I never imagined it would end like it did in a dull pop and a ceasing of everything.

But it did.


Now I pay. When I say your name, when something happens that reminds me of you and a story we lived through side by side. When something funny happens and my heart leaps to tell you but I remember that you are gone.
Just gone.
Just like that.
Just as low key as you entered, you left.

Things change, I know this. But I didn't think that we would. Without my noticing, without realizing what was happening it was changed.
Part me, part you, part all the things unspoken and misunderstood.

Now I'm changed. Both less than and more without you. Finding my way one small death at a time to the other side, wondering what I could have changed had I known it would be our last conversation.

Some Days

Some days it's heavier.
Heavier to hold this wondering if I'll ever even out.
If I'll ever stop wondering when the other shoe will drop, when you will leave, when your lies (because I believe they exist) will come to light.

Some days it's harder to believe that it will all be ok and it will all work out in the end.

Some days I have to cling to hope and His promises so tightly I can't feel my heart anymore.

Because I believe this will all be redeemed. I believe that this will all be used for my good and His glory.
Some days I just need to remind myself a little more so I can swing my feet out of bed and face the day knowing my doubts will scream at me from the minute my eyes open until they finally shut again.

The Loudest

I don't know if the silence is a direct result of mine, it could be.
I don't know if the withdrawal is a direct result of mine, it could be.

But I don't think it is.

I think it's been this way for a long time and this is the first time I'm hearing it, seeing it.

I'm torn between becoming hardened and bitter and continuing to hope to be chosen. It's a choice I have to make every day.

So I don't talk about it, because what else is there to say?
I don't cry and scream and throw things, because what is the point.
I wonder what the point is in continuing to hope to be chosen in the face of all evidence to the contrary. But still I wait.

My phone doesn't leave my side because I'm sure you won't let the day pass AGAIN without at least a text. I'm sure you won't forget again this year. I'm confident in the midst of your day full of oh so urgent and important things that you will find me important enough for notice and consideration.

But at the end of the day I walk to my room, I turn down the bed, I crawl under the covers, I lay my head on the pillow and find myself once again seemingly forgotten.

I am so thankful for the rest of it. The rest of the wishes and hoopla. I feel warm and fuzzy and loved. But there is still a massive hole where you used to live and the grief washes over me anew.
I can't help that your silence screams the loudest.
I can only miss you and try to do the best that I can and hope you're doing the same.

Goes Away

We've been working on safety issues in therapy lately. Which of course means that my nightmares have escalated and I've started to have trouble sleeping again.
It always seems to get worse before it gets better.

But I was doing this homework assignment where I'm supposed to identify a belief (about the world not like religious beliefs or something) and as I was working through a belief about how safe I feel with other people and in relationships when the belief that my love makes people go away flowed out of my pen without prompt.
As I read it aloud to my therapist she made me stop and we talked about it.

We talked about how I don't trust that people will stay. That one day I'll be too much for them, either too clingy or too distant, too loud or too soft, too available or too overbooked and they'll grow tired of trying to be my friend or love me and they'll just disappear.
Or they'll die.
Which logically I know doesn't mean they leave me but we weren't really worried about logical at that point.

Because I've been behaving and acting in relationships based out of this belief.

One of the questions I had to ask about the belief is if the source of the belief is reliable.
I had to pause because I thought the source of this belief were the list of people that had left, who had dropped out of relationships with me (through death or by choice of walking away and no longer returning calls) and I felt caved in on when it happened. Some of them I thought were really reliable sources. Because they had been, up until the time they weren't.
But really the biggest source of that belief is me and when it came to how I viewed relationships and my safety in them I had to realize that I was unreliable.
Because I didn't trust that feeling you get when you meet someone knew. I didn't listen to myself when I heard that whisper of  "tread carefully with this one" and I willingly and recklessly gave all of my heart and all of my secrets to them from the word hello.
I allowed them all full access to my heart without allowing the relationship to develop because I was so desperate for someone to care. Someone to see me as I truly was.

Did I scare some of them away? Of course. But the others I should have never let in in the first place.
I felt that if someone was kind to me I needed to befriend them and help them in anyway that I could. I needed to pursue them because they of course wanted to be pursued.

I was treating them the way I wanted to be treated and expecting them to reciprocate.

But that's not how relationships work.
I don't really know how to change that belief, that my love is annoying and too much and people eventually grow weary of me and go away.

I take that back. I think I do know how to change it, and I think it's happening already. Through therapy yes, but a lot of the work is through the talking it out. The speaking aloud and writing out of these fears and this paranoia. Of realizing that I can't and don't control others or their actions and motives but that I should be more protective of my heart. I should let people in, but slowly and intentionally instead of quickly and desperately.

I still feel really unsafe relationally, and day by day I'm figuring out what it means to have healthier relationships and healthy boundaries in them.

Chosen

Therapy was really hard last week.
I had been agitated since my previous session because of things being stirred up and talked about that I had learned to not speak about for decades and there were also technical issues that ate up the first 15 minutes of my session (although the therapist did stay 15 minutes over because she said it was the office staff's issue and she wasn't going to take my time away from me because of their communication issues)

I talked a bit about the first few times I allowed myself to share with people things that were said and things that happened around me as a kid. The first time I shared them seriously and not in a joking around sarcastic kind of way.
I talked about how the people were angry that I never told them. How the conversation turned into me reassuring them that it was ok and it was fine and no big deal. How the conversation turned into how we could protect this other person from finding out because they were to fragile to bear the brunt of this information.

As I talked about it I became very upset and essentially whimpered, "I just wish I was chosen"
Because I understand through my adult eyes what these grown ups meant when they got mad that I didn't tell them. I see their baggage and brokenness and can sympathize with their thought process. But even though I was mostly an adult when these conversations happened I was still seeing things through the lens of this abuse and the kid brain I experienced it through, so I just felt....un-chosen.

Back in September when I returned to that town and broke again from the weight of the words layered on my kid heart I also felt un-chosen. I had a handful of interactions in the same period of time where things, events and other people (however appropriate or inappropriate) were ranked higher than I and I wondered if I would ever be the one chosen.

Because I just want to be chosen. I want to feel prioritized and cared for and that I might come in at least 2nd or 3rd for somethings.
I want to not feel like that's a ridiculously petulant thing to want.

Even before I could finish this thought process and even louder as I drove home I heard a whisper that I was chosen.
That I was chosen before I was even born, before my parents, their parents and their parents were born. Before the very sands of time.
I was chosen as the daughter of a King that sent his Son to die on a Cross for me. That even if it was just me He would have Saved He would have done it.

Because I'm a damaged and broken person sometimes that doesn't feel like enough. Sometimes I forget that it's true even if it doesn't feel like enough.

Cries in the desert, my child I hear them
Tears in the valley, my lovely I count them
You're so precious, you were on my mind as I died

Here I am so close to you
Know my voice, I'll never leave you
For I have loved you since before
The sands of time were made

I love you still and always will
You're chosen as mine
-Hillsong "Chosen as Mine"

I Grew

Some junk went down almost 10 years ago. As a result our family went back to the farm house. It was the first time I had been there in probably 5 years.
I was startled at how it felt to be there again.
I thought maybe I'd feel more powerful going back after a "win"
I thought maybe I'd feel sad because of all the death that had happened between growing up there and now as an adult.
I thought maybe I'd be angry because of how people were treated in that house.

But I just felt....empty.
I wandered around looking at walls that held the words callously flung from bitter lips. I sat at the top of the stairs where secrets floated up to my too small to understand ears. I touched the door handles worn smooth by hands that pushed the elderly into walls and I was empty.
The house held a body memory for me. Because the body remembers even when the mind slips into blissful oblivion.
I remember moments in spotlights of sun playing and coloring and digging holes to China in the yard. I remember jumping in piles of leaves and pretending I was lost so Ellen would come pee-pying for me.
I remember playing with my GI Joe tanks and Barbie Doll convertible car and I remember 100 brushes before bedtime. I remember ice cream sandwiches under weeping willow trees and imagination among rhubarb plants.

But I also remember the dirty nasty girl. The stupid silly girl. The you don't deserve this and you are a spoiled rotten girl. I remember the rhubarb plants and willow switches hiding me from the words of angry enraged women. I remember the mustache cup being chipped and her back, curved from years of work, slamming into the wall by the hutch. I remember the stories of how she didn't really love me she was just pretending to until she had a chance to kill me "on accident". I remember the side of the barn with the balls flying at my head while I tried to duck them. I remember thinking, at least I'm being included. I remember the totem pole and the jam-packed full out buildings and the way the lily pads hid things dangerous and unseen.

For the longest time I would only remember the first set of memories. I pretended the others didn't exist at all. Then he was revealed as a liar and I couldn't forget anymore, so I forgot the good and only remembered the bad.
Now, I'm beginning the process of combining the two. I'm working on grieving the bad and the abusive and still holding onto the good and loving. It's really difficult for this black and white seeing girl, much more difficult then I ever thought it would be.
But I feel the old farm house cracking open after what feels like years of being locked inside. I'm working to remember that it wasn't my whole world then and it shouldn't be my whole world now.

it took me by surprise
this old house and these old feelings
walked round and looked inside
familiar walls and halls and ceilings

where I'd dream and plan
every moment of sunshine
this was my whole world
it was all I knew
like the hull of a seed
this old house cracked wide open
as I grew
Sara Groves - This House

Focus

I can easily get stuck in a rut of focusing on that which I have lost. That which I do not have. It seems that once it starts it eats through my focus and creates a mindset where I just can't see anything else.
But then I wonder, if shutting down the way I have time and time again to numb myself to these losses is any healthier.
I'm working on a balance between the two and also figuring out what healthy grief and emotions even look like.

Losses do that. One life-loss can infect the whole of life. Like a rash that wears through our days, our sight becomes peppered with black voids. Now everywhere we look, we only see all that isn't: holes, lack, deficiency.

- Ann Voskamp "One Thousand Gifts"

Guilty

There's been a pretty huge news story in Cincinnati for the last several years. This guy has been on trial 3 times for the death of his wife. I don't know much about the trials. I think the first two juries were hung and the third jury found him guilty of murder yesterday.
I cried.
Not because I knew anything about the trial. Not because I have a strong opinion about the case or the justice system in general. But because I just felt how broken the world is right now at this very moment.

Because this woman is still dead. The families are torn apart and devastated and that my friends is a fact that won't ever change. Does it bring solace to the family that what they perceive (and may actually be...I don't know) to be justice has been served? Do they miss her less?
I would say no.

I was wound up tight about my first appointment with the therapist and I was wound up tighter about other scary things happening but I still was just so devastated at how broken and imperfect this world is; how I longed for Heaven.

I don't have any answers. But I know that I am guilty too. Not of murder. But of causing devastation and of breaking relationships apart; I'm guilty of jealousy and anger and all sorts of other things and I long for Heaven.

Faithless Kiss

There was this moment. During a story you told, another story that was not true (and I knew because it involved me and it did not happen)
I realized you were a liar.

It was not new information, it wasn't anything I hadn't thought before in the moments right before I fell asleep at night.

But this was the first time I realized it was absolutely true and there was going to be nothing I could do about it. Nothing I could do to change it.

It made me really sad.
Because I can't imagine that you don't know what you're doing, since you never look me in the eye when you're doing it.

Heartbreak and Bones

Some things you carry around inside you as though they were part of your blood and bones, and when that happens, there's nothing you can do to forget. - The Blue Diary

A few years back I heard someone talking about grief. He spoke about how he needed to make sure he was feeling it and working through it the right way. Of course, my immediate reaction as I'm sure yours is was that there isn't really a wrong way to grieve. Which I still believe.
But I am realizing that there are wrong ways for people to grieve for them. It's hard to explain.
I find that I've been grieving the wrong way. The wrong way for me.
It might work for other people, it might be more comfortable for people that I'm in relationships with for me to grieve this way (or at least I might think it's more comfortable for them) but it's doesn't work for me.

I've been subscribing to a don't ask don't tell policy of grieving. If I just don't look at it, if I just don't feel the grief it will stay away. It's just not true.

Some people believe if you don't open your eyes to sorrow and you don't talk about it, you can pretend it never happened. You can go on about your business and not even notice that a year has gone by, time enough for there to be nothing left except heartbreak and bones. - The Blue Diary

I've been reading this fiction book called The Blue Diary which I've not finished yet, I'm not even half finished with. But it's needling my sense of grieving at every turn of the page.
This idea of shoving it down and pushing it aside so I can continue to tell you that I'm ok. Because I think you really just want me to be ok.

I'm just finding more and more lately that taking the short cut to ok has only left me years later nothing but heartbreak and bones. It's left me feeling relationally and emotionally fragile to the point of completely disintegrating at the slightest wind of betrayal.
I'm finding that the advice I have doled out regularly about how grief doesn't just show up when a human dies, it shows up when a life dies, is true. A life in the form of a human, and animal, a dream, a thought of how it should have been, how it should be and how it could be if only...

You could tell she didn't want to [cry], she was trying with all her might to hold it back, but sometimes it's impossible to do that. I know that from personal experience. You have to turn yourself cold as ice in order to stop yourself, and then if anything falls from your eyes it will only be blue ice crystals, hard and unbreakable as stone. - The Blue Diary

I'm finding that the ice cold feelings I've been using to dampen down the hatches and not publicly talk about grief has not protected me, it has not dispersed the grief or the pain that comes with it. It's only delayed it. Sharpened it. Spread it thickly about my heart. Making it almost painful for me to delve into any sort of healthy relationship, romantic or otherwise (mostly otherwise). I've been mistrusting and suspicious, I've been cold and have pulled sharply away because of disappointments that strike fear in the deepest and more fearful parts of me. Because the thought of it hurts more than I can take some days.

She didn't want to be touched and she didn't want anyone to be kind to her. She was filling herself up with ice, and when a person starts doing that any human contact can be dangerous.  - The Blue Diary

I used to joke about no touching days. Way back when before Jesus and I were hanging out, before I let God out of the closet I stuffed him in. There were days that it was physically painful for me to be in proximity to people for fear they would touch me. For fear they would break through this angry barrier I had placed between myself and anything that I imagined could hurt me.
I would lash out, snarling, if I was touched. Because I was afraid to be touched, I was afraid to be loved and I was afraid to love. A lot of days I couldn't imagine that I even deserved it.

So this seemingly benign book about a fugitive on the run has cracked open this feeling of grief in me. This idea of grieving it appropriately for me. This idea of feeling it, then moving on with this new life. It's inspiring me to move closer to the middle of the road, where before I would only either be obsessively in relationships or not in them at all I'm re-learning how it is to live in relationship.

I'm trying not to leave people behind if I can help it, but I'm also learning that some people I've held onto much longer than is healthy and it is imperative that I leave them.
I'm re-learning that leaving them behind and moving forward on my own doesn't mean they weren't important, it doesn't erase the experiences we had and the ways I grew because of them...it just means journeying through the grief and continuing to live.

We couldn't see them anymore. Their door was closed, and it was just as if they'd never even been standing here with us and we'd been alone the whole time. It's like that when people leave you behind. You get to wondering if you ever had them in the first place. -The Blue Diary