I thought a little more on my post the other day. Once I release the words onto this blog screen I am filled with peace...always! No matter if I write to lament or to question...or to praise. God asked me more than a year ago to just write. I didn't know His voice then or that He moves me in desire that way...but God was the one who named this blog. God was the one who made me look down at my sweet Madeline and just pour out! Some of you have written me or even called me to say thank you or voice the own cry of your hearts...a cry that this blog put into words. Ladies, thank you. I don't always know who is "listening" and when you respond, in agreement or not, I am affirmed...no matter what is said. I have even been blessed enough to have my writing compared to David's...what a treasured blessing. One that allows my ego to float up to heaven and thank God again for the healing in me...the healing I can feel, that I can see, that I can believe.
In response to what I wrote the other day. I am afraid I left some people thinking I didn't believe in God's power. I thank those who let me know and allow me to clarify now. I know these blogs are my thoughts and they are not always fact...as in this is one side of "the story". I think of it this way...there are billions of us. I believe God fashioned each millimeter of each of the billions. I believe God is mighty...He is so mighty that my meager words could never contain what God has done, what He is doing, and what He will do. Why would I ever want to or try to contain God. I believe in miracles. Two of them have come from my own body. With their first kicks inside of me and their first cries of life I have been in awe of the treasures we receive in this life. I just cannot imagine the life I will live in Eternity if my life on earth can be this...FULL. I believe God can move mountains. I believe that if God felt Mount Kilimanjaro belonged in my backyard He could pick it up and place it here...I believe. God obviously feels otherwise. I believe God can sew up the gaping wounds of every woman I see in pain. He'd thread the needle of ultimate healing and He would tenderly sew up those wounds and they would hurt no more. I believe He does that for some people...He does. Praise the Sewers Hand! I believe He leads others on a different path. Make no mistake, I have BEGGED, PLEADED, and BARGAINED with God to sew up my wounds so that I would bleed no more. I wanted healing and I wanted to see HIS face. I wanted to see God when I begged Him to show me Himself. God did not sew up my wounds at once. I bleed still. Why? Why would God not answer me when I was so so so ready to receive? He tells me now, "Ashley, my sweet, you did not know me." I didn't know Him. I had been saved, no doubt about that, but I still had lies in my head. My mother had to stop beating my body when people started to notice. It was at that time she would beat my soul. She told me God would "get me". She told me God hated me...she told me God thought I was lazy. She told me that if she found something I had done wrong it was because God had told her...I would then be slapped, kicked, spit on, ridiculed, etc...because God had told on me. Is that God? Is that the kind of Father I am meant to worship...to serve? NO, ladies, that was not God. God never laid a wrathful hand on me. God never beat me. That was my mother...my clinically insane mother. Her hand broke my skin and made me bleed. Her words cut my soul. She blamed God so she could sleep at night. All I had ever been told of God was lies. Lies I had no other choice but to believe. Why would I WANT to believe my mother could hate me so much...it was easier to believe someone I could not see was the one destroying me. I thought there might be hope...that my mother might love me. She did not! God was crucified so that I might live. God took the blame because He knew that if I knew the truth, that my mother hated me, that I might be lost. Isn't that love? God takes on all the burden knowing in the end He wins the prize...and to think the prize was me. I have wrestled with God...I have screamed at Him...I have turned away...I have questioned...and I have believed the lies. Ladies, God was never fed up. God never let an inch between us. He wants the prize! He prepares my home in Heaven..."this is my Ashley's place". God's love leaps over the stains our earthly lives leave. I think of the strangers I pass at the store...God prepares their homes. He cleans it out and calls it their own. God can do all that but is never distracted from me. We cannot understand why some things happen. We cannot understand why some of us take longer and some of us heal sooner. It is the journey that MAKES GOD REAL TO EACH ONE!!! I don't want your journey...I want God. Tell me it is taking too long and you tell me I am not good enough...you put more truth to the lies my mother told me than to the love of God you preach. "Love me like Jesus"! We all fall short of what God wanted us to always be. We all make mistakes and yet we can all come back. It takes just as much of God's patience to let us keep coming back as it does for me to walk at my pace so that He becomes my TRUTH. I am worth it...you are worth it. Don't steal her value because you cannot contain patience. None of us can ever save an other's soul...we don't have what it takes...and that is okay!
Friday, October 15, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
I fell in love!
I hope that I can wrap my head around all the thoughts swimming in my head.
My sister called me last night in a panic! It seems my mother was sitting outside Rebecca's workplace...just sitting in the car. I asked Becca why she was so afraid. I told her that mom couldn't do anything to her! Rebecca replied, "But she can threaten!". I stopped myself from discounting this as a legitimate fear. To Rebecca, that is total and complete fear. How did my mother control her...well all of us...FEAR! How did she keep us quiet? FEAR! How did she get us to do any ridiculous thing? FEAR!! Fear was my mother's weapon and the last and lasting strong hold! It can seem so silly to someone on the other side of this healing journey and especially to someone never beaten with fear. For those of us who have experienced it (and care to recall), fear is so very real. So real you could almost touch it! It is usually irrational but not to the one who cannot understand and dissect her fear. It is her way of life. Her fear may have kept her safe in her childhood home...fear keeps us on our toes, it makes us ready for the beating, it alerts us to the mood our abuser may be in, it keeps us out of harms way if even once. Fear is a skill any abused child NEEDS to survive. When we leave our childhood home, the fear skill isn't as much of a need but how can we dump something that is indeed a part of our person? You wouldn't ask an adult to forget what 2+2 is, would you? No! We are drilled in math skills until they become second nature...the abused child is drilled in fear and cannot easily lose this skill as it has served her so well.
I find myself wishing Rebecca would just LISTEN TO ME!!! I feel this in frustration over having to have patience with her. I know many people in my life have felt this over me. My in-laws come screaming to mind. Our relationship just is what it is. They don't live in my body and in my past and I don't live in theirs. Expecting them to "get it" is unreal and just evokes pain on both sides. The same goes for them. There is peace in a long journey. You wouldn't expect an 8 year old to have the knowledge and skills of a 12 year old...that is absurd! It takes time to mature, it takes time to learn, it takes time to grow. God gives us childhood as a sort of shelter...a shelter to mature, learn, and grow and fail and succeed in these things along the way. He expects children to be loved and protected...hugged and kissed by two loving parents. Well, for a large number of people that never happens. In childhood we are broken...raped...beaten...violated...hated! In our small bodies we lack the capacity to contain these things and we react in many ways...all those reactions steal us away from peace...even if we comply to keep the "peace" we still never get to be a CHILD! I believe that some people CAN just get over it...although these people puzzle me, who am I to say their recovery isn't genuine? I don't know how God works in you. Then there are those of us that need time. Just like the child needs years an years to be labeled "mature" and "of age", I need time to tear apart my past and fill the holes with GOD! I believe my personality (my tendencies to be analytical, obsessive, and thorough) plays a part in the length of this journey. God did indeed create me this way and therefore, He is prepared to be patient with me. God makes me fall in love with Him on this long path. When I relive being molested, for example, each time it loses more and more fear...God finds me there. GOD FINDS ME...who are you to think or say I should have arrived sooner? I could certainly skip over all the ugly and painful parts...but they would find me again. God finds me where I am which means I am exactly where I am supposed to be and when! Who could ever convince me otherwise? As with Rebecca...when has she ever had someone to call when she is afraid? How thrilled do you think God was when she reached out instead of hiding in her fear. A VICTORY!!! God knows one day she will reach for Him...she will fall in love with Him along this path. God never crams love into us so that we are forced to worship in "love". That isn't real and God has no use for robots. God wants us to make a choice to love Him. Some can make a choice to "get over it" and that is a love response to God. I chose to process and that is my love response to God. He doesn't hold another's love any higher than mine...God IS NOT abusive. God's patience makes me love Him in a most peaceful way!
My sister called me last night in a panic! It seems my mother was sitting outside Rebecca's workplace...just sitting in the car. I asked Becca why she was so afraid. I told her that mom couldn't do anything to her! Rebecca replied, "But she can threaten!". I stopped myself from discounting this as a legitimate fear. To Rebecca, that is total and complete fear. How did my mother control her...well all of us...FEAR! How did she keep us quiet? FEAR! How did she get us to do any ridiculous thing? FEAR!! Fear was my mother's weapon and the last and lasting strong hold! It can seem so silly to someone on the other side of this healing journey and especially to someone never beaten with fear. For those of us who have experienced it (and care to recall), fear is so very real. So real you could almost touch it! It is usually irrational but not to the one who cannot understand and dissect her fear. It is her way of life. Her fear may have kept her safe in her childhood home...fear keeps us on our toes, it makes us ready for the beating, it alerts us to the mood our abuser may be in, it keeps us out of harms way if even once. Fear is a skill any abused child NEEDS to survive. When we leave our childhood home, the fear skill isn't as much of a need but how can we dump something that is indeed a part of our person? You wouldn't ask an adult to forget what 2+2 is, would you? No! We are drilled in math skills until they become second nature...the abused child is drilled in fear and cannot easily lose this skill as it has served her so well.
I find myself wishing Rebecca would just LISTEN TO ME!!! I feel this in frustration over having to have patience with her. I know many people in my life have felt this over me. My in-laws come screaming to mind. Our relationship just is what it is. They don't live in my body and in my past and I don't live in theirs. Expecting them to "get it" is unreal and just evokes pain on both sides. The same goes for them. There is peace in a long journey. You wouldn't expect an 8 year old to have the knowledge and skills of a 12 year old...that is absurd! It takes time to mature, it takes time to learn, it takes time to grow. God gives us childhood as a sort of shelter...a shelter to mature, learn, and grow and fail and succeed in these things along the way. He expects children to be loved and protected...hugged and kissed by two loving parents. Well, for a large number of people that never happens. In childhood we are broken...raped...beaten...violated...hated! In our small bodies we lack the capacity to contain these things and we react in many ways...all those reactions steal us away from peace...even if we comply to keep the "peace" we still never get to be a CHILD! I believe that some people CAN just get over it...although these people puzzle me, who am I to say their recovery isn't genuine? I don't know how God works in you. Then there are those of us that need time. Just like the child needs years an years to be labeled "mature" and "of age", I need time to tear apart my past and fill the holes with GOD! I believe my personality (my tendencies to be analytical, obsessive, and thorough) plays a part in the length of this journey. God did indeed create me this way and therefore, He is prepared to be patient with me. God makes me fall in love with Him on this long path. When I relive being molested, for example, each time it loses more and more fear...God finds me there. GOD FINDS ME...who are you to think or say I should have arrived sooner? I could certainly skip over all the ugly and painful parts...but they would find me again. God finds me where I am which means I am exactly where I am supposed to be and when! Who could ever convince me otherwise? As with Rebecca...when has she ever had someone to call when she is afraid? How thrilled do you think God was when she reached out instead of hiding in her fear. A VICTORY!!! God knows one day she will reach for Him...she will fall in love with Him along this path. God never crams love into us so that we are forced to worship in "love". That isn't real and God has no use for robots. God wants us to make a choice to love Him. Some can make a choice to "get over it" and that is a love response to God. I chose to process and that is my love response to God. He doesn't hold another's love any higher than mine...God IS NOT abusive. God's patience makes me love Him in a most peaceful way!
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