Tag Archive: dreams


Birthday Wishes…


Birthday Cake

My husband is amazing… he gives me a fantastic birthday celebration every year and I just love it!  I think I’ve written about it before… we celebrate for the entire week… so every day for the week leading up to my actual birthday I get a gift or favor and it makes me feel so loved.  I do the same for him when his birthday comes around in the summer… it’s a great tradition and I love it!  I am always looking for new family traditions – new ways to celebrate life and new ways to celebrate each other.  Do you have any traditions that you’d like to share?

Part of the Club


Are you part of the club?  No, not a popular and fun club… the club of the Rape Survivors… We’re not an official club…but we often recognize each other by our habits, mannerisms and particular needs.  Does this sound familiar?

  • You don’t close your eyes when you shower – even when you wash your hair.
  • You prefer to sit in a restaurant with your back to a wall or corner from which you can see people enter and exit around you.
  • You check the house when you are alone at night, searching room by room before you can rest.
  • You either leave the shower curtain open or use a clear shower curtain when you shower.
  • You do not like people standing behind you and do not like to be touched by all but a very few people.
  •  You have nightmares about the event – wake up with dried tears on your cheeks, your heart pounding and a pain in your chest that you can scarcely breathe around.
  • You have flash-backs that make the event feel like it is constantly current.

There is so much more… so many every day unconscious decisions.  It feels so unfair that this one event changes your life so drastically.  Some days I feel so angry – I feel cheated.  I wonder what path my life would have taken…but then I just breathe… I try to pray… I find peace whenever I can, wherever I can.  I find peace in worship, long walks in the woods, kayaking on Banks Lake, reading good books…  Where do you find peace?

Creepy-crawly


I hate days like this… I feel twitchy after spending the last 2 days pulling weeds in my gardens and having bugs crawl all over me… I still feel like I’m going to have a panic attack.  I know I should be used to this by now and I know bugs are no big deal, really, but I still cannot help the way I react.  I try so hard to play it cool and to stay calm.  I have these huge spiders in my flower beds and when you startle them they run toward you – not away from you.  It freaks me out.  Not to mention the beetles, ants and roaches that live in the taller weeds and thick grasses that I have to deal with.  I hate this feeling… everything that touches me makes me flinch.  I’m so jumpy.  I think I will just sit calmly the rest of the day and sip tea and watch Netflix.

Taken summer 2013 in my front yard on my Passion Flower Vine

Taken summer 2013 in my front yard on my Passion Flower Vine

Diamond Strands


I’m sure there’s some perfectly scientific, purely logical explanation for why the heat + the humidity makes life in south Georgia nearly unbearable.  It’s so strange…while hiking in Texas last month the temperature was much higher but it felt much better.  Here, 85 degrees feels like an oven, there 110 degrees felt like a breeze.

002 I confess I do not understand the physics of it – but I’m kinda okay with that – it makes it feel like magic to me.


I’m staying up late tonight watching the show Dr. Who… It’s Season 6 Episode 9 ‘Night Terrors‘ and oh how I wish The Doctor was real… I can’t count the number of times I have been terrified and wished with all my heart for someone to come save me…  Some nights I still feel this way.  I wake up with dried tears on my cheeks, my heart racing scarcely able to breathe…  I used to think night terrors were a thing of my past that they were something I’d grow out of but no, I realize they are just a part of my life.

I don’t want to become accustomed to this pain – this hole in my heart, shattered, twisting, angry pain that is as much a part of my as my brown eyes and scarred skin.

Dumb Move….


I feel so dumb today… I got home after work and gathered my things and got everything in the house and realized I could not find my car key…. It was after 11 pm and very dark out, so I grabbed a flashlight and searched all over the yard between the house and the car and could not find the key… I finally found it – I locked it in the car!! UGH!  I don’t have any other key and the clicker is quite old and no longer works at all… We really cannot afford a lock-smith and I don’t know what I’m going to do… I hate it when I do things like this.  I know we all make mistakes and are forgetful from time to time and I know intellectually that I am being hard on myself…but emotionally, I feel like I’ve made some major horrible mistake.  Thank God for grace….now, if I could only apply that same grace to myself.

Another Anxious Day


It is one of those days when my heart twists inside me like warped metal… feeling immovable and beyond repair..  I think about the View from the Pit sometimes and wonder why so few writers embrace and write about the pit… but I think it is because the pain there is so deep and so very personal that writing/speaking honestly about is like giving a piece of your soul away to strangers… it feels foolhardy, dangerous and way beyond vulnerable.  How do I articulate this?…. Hmmmmmm… I have unshakable faith in Christ and I have a  hope for a better life beyond this one… but if I did not have my faith I must say I don’t think I would have survived my life.  I would certainly not be as close to daylight as I am now.   I may sill be in the dark… I may still be in the pit… but I can at least see the blessed sun now and I know that I will one day soon feel the warmth of it on my skin with all of its life giving glory.

Waiting for Answered Prayers


Waiting2 Some days it feels like there are no ears to hear our cries.  I have faith that this is not the case, but some days I wish that I had a definite answer… some definite sign that my prayers were heard and that an answer was on the way…  Some days faith comes so easily to me and other days it feels nearly impossible…

Another Fine Mess


OK – well that’s a rather lighthearted title but this is a heavy post… I have unearthed new memories… very vivid ones and they are terrifying me.  I feel like I am losing my mind and I don’t know what to do with all of these feelings that threaten to drown me.

***Disclaimer:  this may be triggering to some – read with caution***

Here’s what I remember:

I am young (Don’t know what age, exactly) and I am being forced face down onto a soft surface (bed? couch?…) and I am wearing a dress and my panties have been pulled down and I am being raped from behind and I am beyond terror and the weight of the man on top of me pressing me down makes it impossible to breathe…

I feel my heart start to race and my insides twist just remembering this and writing it down feels dangerous… like he’s going to read this and know it’s me and come after me (even though I have protected myself with anonymity in this blog)  I am so afraid sometimes.  I hear a car door outside and jump and my heart will pound and I’ll have to calm myself down and remind myself that he is not coming after me.  Some days I wonder how long will I carry this… and when will the remembering be over finally?  I thought I was done with that part and I have made peace with the gaping holes in my memory… but they are determined to surface.  I pray this is the last of them.  I am ready for this chapter to close and the healing chapter to be in full swing.  I know I have made lots of progress and I am proud of the work I have done to get this far.  I have worked so very hard to be where I am and I do not want to dismiss that with my desire to be all the way better… and I also do not want to be content here… I know there is more out there for me and I desire and deserve all the wonderful things ahead of me.

Flooded foot-path

The View From the Pit


I have a love/hate relationship with self-help/personal-growth books…  On the one hand it is helpful and gratifying to know that it is possible to make it through the darkness and thrive on the other side of it all… on the other none of them really give you the view from the pit.  It’s ugly here and no-one wants to look at it.  Many of them give the briefest of descriptions of the ‘dark days’ and then focus on their steps/ideas/practices that got them out of the mess they were in.  I want to see the pit… did life feel as despairing & hopeless to them as it does to me most days?  Were they breathing in and out through lungs filled with un-heard screams?  Was the pit every bit as deep and dark and ugly as it feels to me today?  I would like to know the view from the pit…  Then I can feel better about my chances of making it out alive.

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