My scars are showing

I woke up this morning feeling like the evil inside of me was up to my eyeballs and soon my husband and everyone would see it...how long can I keep hiding what I am?  I don't know where this is coming from!  It might be the stress of having a visitor or it could be the 2:30 am wake up call from Maddie!  I get this way when I am tired.  All the surface things can't seem to hold up and I feel stripped down without a defense or a support.

I once again find myself in a battle with the in-laws.  Diane can't understand why I don't trust everyone that she trusts.  I am not sure what in our relationship ever pointed to my being able to trust in abundance!  In her eyes this is wrong.  I am wrong!  I can forgive the past and I am closer than ever...but why would I ever forget it?  For one thing it helps other people for me to remember what it feels like to feel pain so deep you feel like it has become you.  Our pasts create a commodore and a bond...a very special bond.  As we move beyond the past we carry each other along over the good days and the bad.  No, I will never forget...I will never be normal and I like that.  I trust the woman who read these posts.  There is no doubt about that.  I just get so so so so tired of being wrong.  I get so exhausted from trying to live up to standards that are unattainable.  I am never going to be sweet, quiet, or sensitive like my sisters-in-law.  It would be so refreshing to be told things that are good about me...things I am doing right.  There has to be something...right?!

Having my sister here, although exhausting, is quite validating.  I don't think I have ever cooked so many meals back to back in my life!  But I watch her go about her day.  I see that she doesn't offer to do dishes or help me in the kitchen...now that doesn't bother me or shock me at all.  I was and still am the same way.  To us, those things were punishments.  In our house chores were...like breathing.  They were 24/7 and very tedious and stressful.  Often times me were made to repeat them for whatever reason she could pull out of her manipulative mind.  Chores caused fear and anxiety.  They were solid proof we were worthless..."I can't even clean the floor right!"  Because chores like these were and are still saturated in anxiety...we avoid them if there is a chance for failure.  I have been accused more than once in the Warden family of avoiding "work".  Try explaining to someone why washing dishes makes you feel like you are going to have a panic attack!!  They will never understand that.  So, yes, watching my sister is validating.  She also just doesn't think that way.  We were never given a chance to offer to help.  It just never came up...we were violently told to clean this and clean that.  We were told we were disgusting and made to clean up after ourselves...thus the feeling of being a greasy, smelly, bloated bum was attached to household chores...um, again, try to relay that feeling to a "normal" person!  I can recall that most Saturdays we were woken very early by my mother screaming at us to get downstairs and clean up the house or to clean our rooms...vacuum, scrub the floor, do the dishes...(is anyone else flashing back to Cinderella?).  Talk about anxiety and fear from sun up to sun down.  The weekends were the worst because our days didn't have the interruption of school.  This is where I come from...and now I try to live in a world with expectations weighing heavy.  I often feel like I am running a race with only one leg...but no one can see I am missing a leg or they just don't care.  "She's had all this time to recover lets start living life like the rest of us!"  I can't live like the author of the Tutu blog in the real world or the world of the Warden's.  I had found a balance though.  I can pretend or just keep my feelings out of my interactions with them.  Since I don't really want to share that part of my heart with them...it was working and it felt good.  I pretended to be normal and I even felt normal.  I came here when things hurt me or bothered me...worked through it...and kept moving on.  Am I wrong here?  It kept the peace!  We even spent a night at Joel and Angie's house and there was NO PROBLEMS!!!  Can you believe it???  I separated the "tutu" in me from the "Warden" in me...and it was peaceful.  I know this isn't trusting the Warden's...but I say again, it was peaceful!  I don't know that I want to move away from this system!  I fill myself up with these posts and your responses.  I am just filled up in every corner.  It feels so unsafe to let the Warden's back in...because I will mess up again and I will feel wrong again.  Ugh, I don't want to go back there.  What would you do?

A restoration unforseen

Most of you know that my sister Rebecca is in Toccoa for a few weeks.  I am sitting in my living room right now.  Everyone is asleep.  My son is curled up on one couch...and my sister is stretched out on the other couch.  I stared at them for a long while.  It doesn't seem...probable.  All that has been suffered over her life and mine...compared, we should not be so calm.  We should no be so easy going.  The weight we have each carried would bring the strongest man to his knees...but yet here we are, together, sharing a roof...sharing meals...sharing my children.  Restoration, unexpected and unforseen.  Last night, after a long but fun day, we all struggled to keep our eyes open.  She laid her head on my shoulder.  I had forgotten how touchy she was.  I am not someone who likes to be touched..at all!!  Anyway, she laid her head on my shoulder and I thought, "This has been too easy!".  We picked up where we left off.  It seems as if the last 5 years has not separated us at all.  Oddly, it prevokes a small unnerving feeling in me.  I am not the sister she saw 5 years ago.  Does she notice that?  Should that bother me?  It won't ruin this time...but I wonder if all I have been through in the last 5 years makes the difference to the ones who matter most. 

She arrived Wednesday morning early.  She had never met my kids so when I had to go in and take Eli to the potty she walked into the kids room.  Eli saw her and did a total (and totally obvious) double take.  We just laughed together.  I don't know that my kids have seen many black people...and I can assure you no black people in their room at night.  She enjoys them so much.  They are still warming up to having to share their house and their mom.  Maddie will snuggle with Aunt Becca a few times a day!  That makes Becca's day...of course<3

Say it isn't so!

On Sunday our small group at church got to talking about what we thought Hell really was or what it would be like.  It was such an interesting topic...it inevitably lead to what Heaven would be like.  Since no one knows the exact details of these places it leaves so much to the imagination.  I wonder if that is what God intended so that each place ends up being beyond our imaginations. 

Our group leader asked us to describe what we thought hell would be like in one word.  I felt like I had a lot to say...as if my life in abuse and even before recovery was a small taste of hell.  How could I sum up all of that in one word?  There was pain, anger, confusion...but what would it be like to live in that "state" for all eternity?  What would it be like to have no more hope...not even a small spec...not even the hope that tomorrow wouldn't be as bad?  Sorrow....complete sorrow.  That is my one word to describe what Hell would be for me...sorrow.  A sorrow that was all within me...a sorrow I could feel in my bones.  I don't have to worry about sorrow like that!  People I know though may have nothing but eternal sorrow!

Someone mentioned the phrase in the Bible, "There will be a new Heaven and a new Earth".  It was suggested that we may very well be living in a place similar to where we are now...and all that that entails but with new bodies (PRAISE GOD!!!).  As this person went on a scary thought hit me.  Where would God be?  I knew the facts but I had to ask.  Wouldn't God be where we (the saved) were?  I was reassured but what a scary thought.  Isn't that what this life is for?  I struggle and I fight in this life knowing that I will rest in heaven.  I don't fight to earn a spot in heaven.  It doesn't work that way.  I fight to "convince" my children that God is worth the fight.  I fight to show my sister what love looks like.  I fight to light the path for the rest in pain looking at a future of sorrow.  After I enter heaven I can do no more...but I wait there for my children and there children...and there children...  I have this one life to convince others that the sorrows of this life are only temporary.  We feel pain and dark days always come.  Take joy in what you'll learn, eventually, from those trials and look forward to your time to rest and wait for the rewards...the lives you've touched.

Today was a good start to my Easter weekend! I was getting the kids dressed after their baths this morning. Eli picked out his shirt and started putting it on by himself. I turned to finish Maddie's hair and all the sudden I hear my son say, "I di yit!"...translation, "I did it!". Clear as day to me my son said a full sentence!! I pour the praise on heavily. I asked him to put his pants on. I handed him the right ones and turned again to put Maddie's shoes on (multitasking queen!!!!). All the sudden I heard the same, "I di yit!". He ran up to me with his pants on backwards...I just laughed and praised him again! He probably had no clue I was more excited for his words than him dressing himself. He has been dressing himself for a while but today it just seemed...better! He could be proud of himself and communicate his accomplishment!