so i'm back from the women's retreat. it is so good to be back in texas, and back in the city. i love nature, don't get me wrong, but i am totally a city girl. i would much rather live in the city than in the country. i learned a lot this weekend, though, and God totatlly has something huge in store for my life. i'm going to share a bit of what he revealed to me, and ask for you all to pray for me as i go on this long, hard road ahead of me.
i've been carrying around a lot of hurt. i haven't necessarily realized i was holding it all in(i knew i was holding some in), but God made that so clear to me saturday afternoon after our third session of the day.
i have been hurting since elementary school. that's when it all started. i was never a popular kid, and, in my mind, i've never been really much to look at. kids picked on me in early elementary school, even kids i was friends with at church. kids on the street picked on me, it just felt like everybody in the world was picking on me. and it wasn't the kind of picking you do with your friends, where everyone laughs about it. no, this was malicious, out to hurt the other person, picking and making fun of.
this continued into middle school, when all the "friends" i'd made in elementary school suddenly wouldn't talk to me anymore. the way i describe it, they all became "too cool" for me. the friends i had at school, i never really felt like i connected with them. now, i know everyone goes through an awkward phase around middle school, but it seemed to hit me really hard. i was skinny, flat as a board, with braces, acne and really big glasses (some may say it was the style, but style or not, even today kids' sized sunglasses can be too big for my face. just imagine how big they were on my face back then). it was also during middle school that my mom got sick. so here i was, an awkward middle-schooler, still hurting from elementary school, who not only has to deal with being hurt by her peers, but also has to deal with a different kind of hurt that comes from having one of your parents battling a fatal illness.
throughout this time, i kept most of the pain bottled up inside. every now and then, at a youth retreat or just hanging out at the youth office(where i basically lived through out middle and high school), that bottle would spill over and out. but i would usually put a cork in that bottle relatively quickly and grab a new one to catch what other hurt was to come.
then came high school. even more awkward. sure, i'd ditched the glasses for contacts and my teeth had shifted to where they should so the metal was removed from my teeth, but kids still remembered me as the girl to pick on and make fun of. let me just say right now that words are so incredibly powerful, both in a positive way and negative. it was also during my freshman year in high school that my mother's health took a nose dive and about a month from the end of the school year she went home to be with the Lord. so here comes more pain. more hurt. a different kind than i'd ever felt before. and more and more bottles to catch and store everything.
i'm realizing now that i haven't truly dealt with my mother's death. i thought i had. but i was 15. i didn't know what i was supposed to do. i didn't know that i should get some kind of counseling. all i knew was that i didn't want to finish out high school being known as the girl whose mother died.
don't get me wrong, i have some really good, genuine friends. and i have such a wonderful and loving husband, who is just so perfect for me that it blows me away to think about it. but most of my friends don't know this about me. my husband didn't even fully know until i called him this weekend and told him about it. and all this hurt is why that even when my friends and family joke with me, where it's meant to make me laugh, it just kills me inside. it absolutely kills me.
God showed me this weekend that i have been hurting for almost my entire life, somewhere around 15 to 20 years of hurt. and it's not just been kids at school. family has hurt me, probably without even realizing it. and that's a very hard thing for me to say because i know some of them will read this, and they might be hurt by this, but that is not my intention at all. God's showing me i need to be honest with myself, and admitting who has hurt me is just one tiny step.
i'm so scared to start this long healing process. i've been living like this for so long that i have no idea what i'm supposed to do. i don't know where to start, who to talk to, what therapy i need. and i'm scared of what my life is going to feel like afterwards, the whole "not living in a state of hurt". i also know the path to healing is not a pleasant one; that healing hurts. i'm so scared right now. but i know this is what God is asking of me. and that's why i'm starting. it's not going to be easy, and it may take years. but i know that His way is the best way, and that His way is the only way.
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