Mess or Masterpiece?

My Painting- Wysterious Forest

Not long ago it was New Year’s Eve. It was the last night of 2013 with only a few hours before 2013 was going to become another memory. However, I was excited that a new year was being ushered in. 

For me, 2014 was a totally clean canvas upon which I was already planning with the guidance of my Lord, to create the masterpiece of my life. I have come to see in my own life that every thought I have & action I take are the brush strokes that define and blend every line, and every choice I make becomes the color that breathes life into the canvas of my life. I am the painter and it is up to me to decide whether I will create a mess or breathtaking masterpiece. 

It is amazing to me how they are both created out of the very same materials. What is even more amazing is how the mess can be transformed into a masterpiece. What is the difference? I'm going to go with perspective on this one. The whole beauty is in the eye of the beholder rings true to me when I think about it.

I am working on sharing the story of my life and as I travel through my life from the position and perspective of wellness I find myself going across the spectrum from inspiration and chronic paralyzation and back again. So much of my life is spent in reflection now. I am both mortified at the life I once lived and amazed that I after all that I have chosen and been through that I really have changed in every way. This is why my first blog post was dedicated to sharing how I had a memorial celebration to bury the “old” me. Because who I have become is so far removed from any of who I used to be, and I couldn't think of a greater gift than to give the old me rest for all it took for me to get here.

I am not afraid to share all of the amazing and horrific things and challenges that I have experienced. I have been over taken in some places and in others I have overcome everything against all odds. To be totally honest with you, I am in awe that I am even here to write about my story. I am a miracle and I am only here because of love!

There is so much that has happened in my life coupled with such epic and unimaginable twists, turns and being flipped inside out that it has been difficult for me to figure out where to begin and what to include. I am finally willing to just begin. I can’t say that I have any idea or clue how this is going to go, but I do know that the season of what “once was” has already come to a close just like New Year’s Eve did when I said goodbye to 2013.

This is the end of the “me” that I spent my entire life being, and as I close the book on the last 40 years of my life, I have been given the greatest gift I have ever known. I am beginning a brand new chapter in a totally new book of my life!

I finally see that the end and the beginning are the same. They both give way to new life, and one must pass for the other to begin. This is more than just closure. This is the evolution of me, myself and I. My life has come full circle and in this circle is the story of us.

I remember when I was growing up that I always wanted to be an amazing artist. I used to love to color with my mommy. Her pictures were incredible because she would outline the picture before she would color it in. By tracing over the outlines it made the pictures look so beautiful because it framed everything in. My life has become like the color books that I used to color in. My life has been framed in, and colored by my choices, emotions, attitudes and actions.

Before I discovered that I could paint on canvas paper was my canvas., and writing was the paint that colored the pictures I was hoping to create. There is something amazing that happens when you read. Your imagination begins to paint the scenes and colors the pictures. Seeing the vivid colors within your mind is magical and to be able to experience the journey as it unfolds just as if you were there at the very moment it was actually happening is a gift.

I invite you to take a walk with me upon the pages of my heart. My heart holds the pictures, the memories, and the keys of my life. My heart has been the prison where I spent the majority of my life. Even now there are things are happening in my life that try to pull me down into the shameful reminders of the past because the pictures I spent my life painting upon the canvas of my heart though no longer on display are still stored in the deep recesses of my mind. My journey is one of seeing, clearing, healing, restoration, light, love and repeating the process as I descend and climb to each and every new level of my life both inside and out.

My heart is a collection of my life’s experiences and it is here that I have come to let the light into the darkest of places. It is this light of love that gives me the strength to travel through this museum within. This is where all of the created works of my past have been stored, displayed and are being restored.

We all have a past. We all have gone through things that have rocked our worlds, threatened our lives and relentlessly pushed us to the end of our sanity. Or maybe I’m the only one, but I don’t think so. My life has been filled with unfathomable twists and turns and I am amazed that I have been given the words to express how these inexpressible nightmares and life shattering devastation have brought me here.

This is more than just a journey for me. It is the love story about how my despair and brokenness met hope, healing and infinite possibility!

I know that there are many books that will tell you how “their” way is the best method to get better, to heal, and how to rise above the hopelessness in life when you have traveled the road to hell and are trying to make it back. I am here simply to share my life with you and to let you know that no matter what you are going through or have experienced in your life that you are not alone. More than anything I am sharing that it is possible to survive yourself.

I have discovered the hard way that there is nobody who can ever take me down like I can. Nobody knows me like I do, and nobody has spent more time in my life with me than me. Deep within I know all of my own triggers even if I don’t know I know, and it’s way too easy to look out and see what is wrong, and then believe that everything happening is because of everyone else. It’s much more intense to see that everything happening all around is simply reflecting back to me what I can’t or refuse to see is happening inside of me. Everything outside of me is simply the mirror of me. We can only reflect what we are.

My journey continues to lead me to places that I never imagined were possible but always hoped that they were. I have gone through my life navigating everything in fight or flight mode. Everything I thought I saw was distorted and every clue that I thought I was supposed to “get” was nothing more than a desperate attempt to figure out how to get anyone else to tell me how to choose because I was so scared.

Here I am 40 years old and suddenly I have found myself once again swept away by a wave of what seems to be unending remnants of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

I have found myself struggling with feeling embarrassed because I felt like by now I should have been able to “overcome” and “conquer” what I'm feeling and everything I feel is happening all around me. Yet I am certain that once again I am fighting within myself against myself. Call it ego, call it fear, trauma or any other label, but what it is has brought me here. At this moment this is what I am. Though I am convinced that what my life looks and feels like in this moment won’t always be this way, I am giving all I’ve got to simply stop resisting the truth of what it is right now, and make friends with the biology within. 

After all, there is something powerful about understanding that my body's interpretations and responses (my biology) has been responsible for protecting me throughout my tumultuous life and keeping me alive. I am who I am. Embarrassing or not, it is what it is

The truth is that with everything I have experienced in my life from the time I was a little girl, I had to push everything down or block the hellish traumatic moments just to keep getting back up and not die. Nearly everything I have done in my life has been chosen in some kind of a survival mode and I never even realized that.

My life was spent believing that nobody else was going to make sure I was ok or safe because everyone who ever said or promised that it was ok to just be me always changed, left or decided that I was just too much to handle. That's when everything I thought I could finally trust and count on was shattered all over again.

Being out for the count wasn’t an option for me. There was too much I wanted to do and so many things that I wanted to do for others. I wanted to help families and women and children so that they never had to suffer just because they didn’t have money. This is still my heart, and even when things look so huge and impossible, I know that all it takes is one to believe that with God everything that looks impossible becomes more than possible. It becomes reality!

I spent most of my adult years rebelling against deeply ingrained coping mechanisms and triggers. They constantly sent me spiraling into the emotional pain I was never able to find a way to shut down or get rid of. I never knew how to care about my own life. That is why I always looked to everyone else to “love me” and care. I can say with all of my heart that I didn’t just wake up one day and decide to be a needy, high maintenance, miserably angry fanatical control freak. There were so many circumstances that happened far before I even turned 2 years old that had already shaped my life and how I would grow up experiencing life.

It wasn’t really until I turned 39 that I finally got to the place where I realized that if I didn’t throw myself into my own healing and wellness then that the chances of me ever really doing it “for real” were probably slim. For the first time ever I had been given the ability to regroup and just focus on healing&rebuilding my life from the inside out. I felt like I would never have the chance to do things like that again and so I dedicated myself to my own wellness & healing for the very first time in all of my life. 

I was willing to put absolutely everything else on hold that could be a distraction or cause me to lose focus. I was determined to finally get something right in my life and I was willing to be the one to do for myself, my children and our family what nobody in my life had ever been willing to do for me.

I am the very first person in my family who has been willing to lay “everything on the line” to finally face myself. I am facing all of my demons that have haunted me and lingered around in ever morphing hiding places inside of my mind since as far back as I can remember.

What I am learning and doing may be starting with me but I am creating a legacy and designing the blueprint of my life that will remain for all generations to come. No matter what I go on to accomplish, there is nothing greater that I could do than to love myself and my family enough to live this love.

Love is teaching me how to be courageous and do whatever it takes to let the light shine into the places I have never even been inside because they were always so dark and scary. And it is this same light of love that has warmed the frozen coldness within my heart and brought me to life for the very first time! I've discovered that the light lives within and when it's so dark that I can't see, I remember that it's in living love that the light shines from the inside out and onto the path so that we can walk together.

Sometimes its hard to see and feelings color what we see making us think that we’re all alone in this big world of uncertainty called life. No matter how it feels, I want you to know that you are never alone and more than that, you are loved unconditionally!