Tag Archive: faith


Wild Goodness

Filed under: Healing — Leave a comment
August 9, 2011

My husband has coined the phrase wild goodness to describe things that are good in a major way… sometimes even in a dangerous way… like a walk in a storm, sex on the beach in the middle of the day, a large sum of unexpected money… something that touches you on a primal level and speaks to the goodness and wildness that is God’s love for us.   We try so hard to fit God into a box, to make him fit within parameters that are comfortable to us and when He doesn’t fit we get discouraged, frustrated and afraid.   I know I do.  I want God to be predictable and stable and quiet and unobtrusive; but I am glad He is not those things.  Deep down, I am glad He is wild and dangerous and good in ways that are beyond my comprehension.  I am glad He is a God of Passion, a God of fierceness, a God of untold beauty and strength… a God of storms and sex and roller-coasters… a God of music and art… of lovers and warriors and dancers… a God of grace and peace…  I want to live a life of wild goodness… of abandon.  God help me to see You as You are.

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Strange…

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July 6, 2011

Strange how when you hold me tight it doesn’t feel invasive and confining anymore.

Strange how quiet and peaceful I feel with you here with me.

Strange how I look toward the future with hope and not doubt or fear.

Strange how your love has changed me.

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Adrift

Filed under: Poetry — Leave a comment
March 20, 2011

In a torrrid sea of faces

and voices

I cling to you.

Fighting violently

I resist the pull

of my old life…

of lies and pretending

of repression and unspoken violence.

I don’t want this anymore.

I crave peace,

unending.

So today I figtht

so that tomorrow

I may heal.

3-20-11

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Family

Filed under: Memories — 2 Comments
March 12, 2011

     Talking to my mom today sent me into a tail-spin. I hate that I am so afraid of being “found out” like I am doing something wrong and have something to hide…  I hate that just speaking to my family on the phone has the power to make me doubt my past and begin to see it through their eyes.  I came from a family of “brush it under the rug”.  They are great at pretending that everything is ok and we’re not really broken in the extreme.  Most of my life my dad yelled and screamed and belittled all of us and my mom just took it and let us take it. 

      I remember one night when I was a little girl, my parents had put me to bed.  I got up to get a teddy bear off my shelf to sleep with and had curled up in bed and was just drifting off to sleep when my dad burst into my room, angry.  He asked me if I had gotten out of bed and I told him I had gotten up to get a bear to sleep with.  He asked me if I had left the room and I hadn’t.  He then accused me of sneaking out of my room to watch through the cracked door as my brother changed clothes.  He was crazy angry and accused me of lieing when I denied this.  He beat me with a belt so badly I had whelps from the backs of my knees to the small of my back.  He was in a blind rage.  My mother came in afterword to ask me if I had done this and I told her the same thing I told my father.  She told me it would make things better if I apologized to my father and just said that I had done this thing he accused me of.  So I did and my dad pulled me into his lap and hugged me and told me he loved me.  I don’t even know why, to this day, he would think I would be watching my brother dress or undress or why it would have been a big deal as we were both very young… I was about 6  and my brother was about 9-10.

    When I was a teenager I confronted my parents about this and they both denied the whole thing and told me I must have imagined it.  My whole life they have managed to make me feel crazy…  Now I just want to live in truth and not brush anything else under the rug.   I am through pretending.   I long to walk in the sunshine and feel the warmth on my skin.  I long to live in truth.  I may not be perky and happy all the time, but I am real and alive, and that is so much better to me.

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One Single Tear (part one)

Filed under: Poetry — 2 Comments
March 8, 2011

   I will spare only one tear for you.  I dare not open the floodgates of my emotion lest the onslaught destroy me in a vortex of fear and self-loathing.  You are naught but a ghost.  I killed you that day.  I watched you die.  In desperation, I drove the knife home and I watched you writhe in agony with a bitter smile on my face.  I strove to destroy you, dear child…but not without reason.  I destroyed you to save you, that perhaps some small remnant of the girl you were could survive, pristine.

    I was a fool to attempt this.  I will never escape you.  You are soiled and ugly.  You are a protector of wrong, defender of evil.  You cause hurt to come upon others.  You have no pity. Stupid child. Pitiful creature.  To know you is to loathe you.  To despise your very existence.  Whore that you are, finding joy in your torture, enlisting the pity of others to aid in your healing.  You will never be free.  You live only to suffer, die only to rot.

    I did not bury you that day.  I torment myself with the knowledge of my deed.  My failure to eradicate you will haunt me forever.  You are the ghost that haunts my dreams.  You are the demon who terrorizes my waking hours.  You are my hell, my prison I have created and I cannot break free.  I hate you, unclean thing that you are.  I am locked in here with you-my tormentor. 

    I shed only one tear for you.  You will spend my whole life dyeing.  I spare only one tear for you because you will rape my soul forever.  You will rape my soul forever.

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Gaping Hole

Filed under: Healing — 2 Comments
March 6, 2011

I was taking a shower today and staring at the shower head thinking about the time we had to change it. Then I suddenly remembered that there was a huge gaping hole on the other side of the wall.  Changing this shower head was supposed to be simple… just unscrew the old one then screw the new one in place.  Like most things in life it got complicated quickly.  After trial and error we had to cut a large access hole into wall in the adjoining room to repair the problem.   These repairs were taking place at about 9pm on a Sunday which meant we didn’t have much time to get the job properly done before we had to give up on it for the night and just rig it up and go to bed.  Well now a month has passed and I had managed to completely forget that this huge hole existed.  As long as the shower functioned properly and I didn’t have to look at the hole it was not a part of my reality.  This became a metaphor for my life…  I find that as long as I am functioning on a day to day level –  as long as I can go to work, pay my bills, put dinner on the table, clean my kitchen, spend time with my husband – as long as I can do these things I fool myself into thinking that the gaping hole in my chest doesn’t exist.  Then something horrible happens… something wonderful… my husband looks at me and says, “You don’t have to pretend here.”  And I am suddenly aware of this wound.  I feel it and allow myself to be broken for a moment.  Just that small reminder that I am seen, that I don’t have to hide… It’s painful and wonderful at the same time.  I usually don’t allow myself to feel this pain.  I just gloss over it and pretend to be ok, to be happy.  Something amazing happens in the middle of it all, though… Through the safe release of this pain… I find that under it I really am happy… that I really do believe everything will be ok eventually and I don’t have to rush through this healing process… I can give myself permission to be.  There is so much grace in that realization.

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Thoughts on Honesty

Filed under: Healing — 1 Comment
March 3, 2011

  

    There’s so much I don’t understand.   I long to life a life of transparent honesty, but that’s just not practical in our superficial polite society.  It’s all about what’s easy and politically correct instead of what’s real.  When someone ask, “How are you doing?” they expect a positive answer.  If you tell them the truth they are uncomfortable and don’t know what to say.  No one knows what to do with the pain.   As a culture we are not given any tools with which to deal with pain – there’s no etiquette for this.  There’s no precedence for this transparency.  This seems universally true – in work, play, school, church… there’s no room for pain.  No one really wants to know about your pain and no one wants to honestly share their pain.  Everyone wants to pretend to be ok – well-adjusted – happy – but most of us are dealing with some kind of brokenness, some kind of pain, even if we don’t quite have a name for it. 

   How do we break this habit?  Is that even possible?  Will we always be a society of isolation?  We have more methods of connecting now more than ever before – yet we have never been more alone.  All communication have become trivial and the art of sharing reality has been lost.  Gone are the days of love letters… we are in an era of romance via hallmark.  We depend on someone else to communicate our affections or not at all.  If a card or e-mail forward does not contain the feeling we wish to convey we founder – having no words of our own.  Why?  Because we are a society of observers… always watching, reading, listening – not thinking, feeling, sharing.  We surround ourselves with media in lieu of nature, we seek triviality rather than solitude – we spend our energy on status rather than investing it in another.

    Where does this leave us?  It leaves us all lost and lonely.  It leaves us in a home crowded by TV, radio, internet, video games – where two lonely people live who have forgotten how to share what is most important – themselves.

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Trying to move on…

Filed under: Healing — 4 Comments
February 28, 2011

I am so afraid… I am embarking on yet another chapter of my life and I don’t know if I can do this. I am finally coming to terms with how abusive my parents were. Even though they did not molest me, they didn’t protect me and not only did they not protect me they treated me like a freak when they found out. They blamed me, they buried the whole thing under the rug and went on pretending that everything in our family was perfect. I have been surrounded by this attitued of ‘everything is ok’ my whole life. No matter how twisted or painful things were in our home we all pretended to be a happy family. I don’t want to pretend anymore. My life was pain… intense, bitter pain… and I am not ok with that anymore. I will not bow down to this cult of secrets and lies anymore. I will approach my life with honesty, even if that means I cry every day until this mourning period has passed… at least I will be real.

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Anger (free verse)

Filed under: Poetry — 2 Comments
February 27, 2011

 

Long ago, when I lay at your feet and whimpered beneath your touch I dared to dream of freedom. Never then did the thought of vengeance enter my mind. Your breath in my face tasted like death and the touch of your skin was beyond pain. The smell of you engulfed me, sickened, revolted me, and still I lived on. You are the disease that threatened to destroy me, but I am stronger than you … and wiser. I even smiled when you looked at me, showed you my best side. I knew it was pointless to dream, but dream I did. Daily I dreamed of freedom. Now I taste the clean air and feel the sun kiss my skin. The wind caresses my body and plays with my hair. I breathe in the scent of flowers and grass. I pity you now, in your dark cell. Now that I am free, freedom has become your dream. loneliness is your nightmare. The heavens no longer kiss you, the wind no longer loves you. You will never hear the trees whisper your name in adoration and flowers do not wear perfume for you. I am no longer the dog at your feet, but the woman who stands proud. Never again will I cow down beneath your filthy boot. You watch me walk in the sunshine now and remember me as you crouch in your shadowed pit.

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Longing

Filed under: Healing — 1 Comment

There’s so much I don’t understand about the healing process. I feel so lost and confused sometimes. I just want to feel whole again… I just want to be me again, whoever that is… For the first time in a long time I long to be whole, I want it so bad I can taste it. I am tired of lingering in the shadows hoping that everything will be ok. I am tired of settling for being broken. I am tired of being resigned to living this half-life where I never expect my life to be any better than it is. I deserve to be happy. I deserve to be free. I deserve to feel strong and beautiful. I am done apologizing my way through life. I am done keeping my head down and staying out of everyone’s way. I am done being beaten down and just accepting that that is my fate. I want to live. I want to thrive. I want to twirl in the sunshine with my arms flung out and my head tilted back with the wind in my hair and a laugh on my lips. I want to dance in my livingroom unashamed. I want to play and have fun. I want to revel in every day miracles. I want to blow the seeds off dandelions and make wishes. I want to spoil myself and not feel guilty. I want to pursue health and not fear. I want to be embraced and enjoyed. I want to be safe again. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I want to allow my husband to love me. I want to give myself permission to be vulnerable and let down my guard. I want to be vibrant and passionate and ALIVE. I want freedom from this pain, this fear that holds me back… I want to more than conquer it I want to stomp it into the ground and take away its power over me. I want to shake off this weight from my shoulders and sing to the sky. I will be happy one day. I will overcome this.

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