Anniversaries built upon the foundation of trauma

My Painting- Alpine Chateau

Throughout my life I have lived remembering dates, phone numbers and addresses, almost like I was a walking calendar and phone directory. It wasn't until maybe a year or 2 ago that I discovered the reason why my memory was so razor "sharp" when it came to recalling things that it seems nobody should be able to remember. I found that since I was a little girl I have always been able to do that and even recall the most insignificant details like being able to envision what I was wearing or being able to smell the scent that someone else was wearing so many years ago. 

As trauma in my life happened even during my infancy, my memory began developing "markers" that allowed me to remember and recall details as vividly as if they had just happened. I discovered that this was because it was actually a protective mechanism that continued making the equivalent of date/time/ message stamps in my brains memory and storage central processing storage database. Though growing up my ability to recall and remember served me very well especially when it came to things like school and memorizing lengthy scripture passages, it has also been very difficult through my life to "let go" of the invading reminders and triggers responsible for replaying all of the trauma drama as if it were happening again...and again and again.

 So it was really quite amazing to me that when I woke up and went about my day yesterday it was just an ordinary, normal day, void of any triggers, reminders, or traumatic "anniversary" dates! Especially since yesterday marked the 3 year "anniversary" of one of the most terrifying and unexpected experiences of my entire life. It wasn't until I was looking at a calender to make sure of the date that it hit me that it wasn't just the 24th of February. It was a reminder of the most pain filled & insane 3 years of my entire journey. 

Even when I realized that it had been 3 whole years since I was locked out of my house illegally  on February 24th 2011 by a woman I once worked for, I paused for a minute and it wasn't the pain or the trauma that I felt, it was the awe at just how far this past 3 years has brought me and all that has transformed as a result of that day! To me this is the most monumental of all of my experiences because in that moment I realized that for the very first time I am no longer bound by the nightmare that held its grip so tightly around my heart and soul for nearly every day since it happened! 

There is nothing worse than having something happen to you that takes every ounce of your control away and leaves you totally helpless, stranded and alone...literally alone. In a single moment on February 24th in 2011 I was rendered homeless, had not a dime to my name, every single belonging, memento and piece of clothing was stripped from my life. I was left not just out in the cold, but locked out in 8 below zero weather with only the clothes I had on my back, and I didn't have a cell phone, no change to call anyone even if I could have found a payphone which are all virtually obsolete. 

I had no idea how I was even going to make it through the night because I had very little gas and no possible way to get more to keep myself warm in my van once it ran out. Which meant I was going to have to run the heater as long as I could to stay warm enough and then shut the car off until the cold got too unbearable and then do it again. The police couldn't do anything because they couldn't get the woman to open the door and my only recourse was to go downtown to the court and file for an emergency hearing. But "tomorrow" seemed like an eternity away and I still had over 12 hours of 8 below zero and falling to make it through. And I did only by the grace of God and being able to remain in the moment, sing, listen to the radio, and just hang out with the Lord right there in the middle of a different kind of nightmare!

Days later I was able to get to a place where I could charge my laptop and I set up a google voice number so that I could use a phone through my computer. I found an amazing McDonald's that had wifi and I was finally able to reach out to a very dear friend of mine about what happened. He and his wife didn't live in their house in Big Lake and it was empty because they had been separated. I asked him if there was any way he would let me stay there until the emergency hearing which was still days away and he agreed!  I felt like I had been saved and I was! However, I never in a million milennia would ever have imagined just how everything would unfold and the injustices that would follow. For so long I felt bitter and totally resentful of just how everything I did right was met by a vicious attack that the law was letting the people who did these things to me get away with it! 

It was many weeks that I had to wear the same outfit that I was wearing when I was locked out on that February day. At least in Big Lake there was a washer and dryer! And I didn't have to find a gas station to wash myself in, because the house my friend let me stay in had not just one bathroom but two! It was the beginning of the whirlwind that has carried me here to this moment, and it was there that for the first time in my life I began to see that it is not about what I have, how much I can get, what I want to do or any of the things that I had grown so accustomed to having and believing I would die without if I didn't have them. This was the most excruciating experience to that point and I never would have believed that could be possible! 

It was also the beginning of my true surrender to what I have learned is called "Radical Acceptance." I was consumed with revenge and getting these people at any cost for what they did to me. Yet, in that I came face to face with myself. No matter what these people were doing, I loved them. This is where I really began to see that love is not love unless you choose to love no matter what someone else does to you or doesn't do for you! Everything within me wanted them to suffer the way that they had made me suffer. I knew that I was the only one dying inside and that everything I was thinking and planning to do was not love. No matter how badly I wanted to be vindicated, I knew that it was not my place to avenge myself even if it was justified.

This is where I stood at an even bigger fork in the road of my life than ever before.  That blew my mind because after everything I have been through has been so enormous and I never imagined anything could ever come close again. I was wrong. This was the greatest opportunity for me to yield to the Lord I claim to love with every fiber of my being and trust that even though I had no idea how to "let it go" that I would reach for Him and let Him show me His way...not just the way I had been taught about in the Bible, because this one was way to big and no matter how much I tried and strained and pleaded the blood of Jesus over the situation there was no release. In fact, the ruminating and obsessing got stronger. Until...

I was standing in the kitchen cleaning and ranting and raving to God about how everything was gone. I was furious! I had no idea why in the world He knew exactly what they were doing and how the courts were refusing my evidence and even overlooking the way the woman had perjured herself over and over in her testimony and I had the proof in my hand and the judge refused to accept it or even acknowledge it! When I finally exhausted myself and I was probably dehydrated from how many floods of tears that poured out, something occurred to me in such a profound way that it stopped me in my tracks!

In that moment, it was like all of the suffering and agony was gripping me the way it was because I was again trying to control a circumstance that I had absolutely no control or influence in. It felt like the more I was doing everything "right" the more they got away with all of the wrong that was making my life nothing short of a living hell. In that moment I realized that none of what was happening would ever have taken place if I wouldn't have gone there in the first place. Even more, I saw the truth about myself and how that sneaky spirit of entitlement had set up office from the inside of my heart and I never even knew it. Once I went to work there and was so close to the woman, I was looking for ways to do a hostile takeover because of things that I learned that were being done, that were illegal and would cause her to get shut down if anyone discovered what was really going on behind the scenes.

In that process, I began undermining her authority and I felt justified because I basically lived at the restaurant that she hired me to manage. Plus I lived in the 3rd floor apartment of her enormous home and so I never imagined that she would ever lock me out. But she did. For the first time right in the midst of my emotional tantrum to God I saw the truth which was undeniable. It didn't matter what she did or what anyone else had done, it only mattered what I was doing. For the first time I saw the cause and effect in my life and how no amount of whining, crying and emotional suffering was going to change anything. The moment I saw that none of what was happening could have ever taken place without my participation, it felt like I had been shot through my heart and I felt all of the emotion and feeling die. I was broken, I was ashamed, and I realized for the first time that I had gone through my life doing things on a smaller scale to others along the way that she was doing to me. That was one of the most humbling moments of my life. 

The moment I felt myself accept responsibility for my part, like a flood, thankfulness washed through my heart and body because I saw just how incredible it was that even though I was left totally destitute and everything I owned had been stolen from me, I saw that I had been given a wonderful home to live in and I had food and everything I needed. People were helping me with gas for my van and I wanted for nothing.

It was like someone flipped a switch and my suffering and anguish drained out and dissolved. I wasn't numb or empty. I wasn't angry or bitter.  It was like I died and the next thing I knew was that I was filled and overflowing with awe that the inescapable suffering that was just there the second before was totally gone. In the place where I felt vengeful and malicious, now was a love unlike I have ever known for the people who had hurt me. I realized in that moment that they may have gotten all of my belongings and paintings and everything that was special to me, but since I created the paintings I could do them again. I understood right there that just like my Heavenly Father, I too am a creator, and that was a beginning in my life unlike ever before!

I decided that I could choose to hold on to what had been done to me and even if I would have gotten justice and the court made it possible for me to get everything back, in the end that would be all I would have. But instead, I saw the greatest opportunity of my life. I chose to see my life from the perspective of farming. Through the changes in my life I had learned that I am really a farmer in my life. I have been cultivating the soil of my life, and planting seeds all along the way that I believe will come up in the perfect time...when it is harvest time. 

I have also been learning how to differentiate between pulling the weeds in my life's garden and the seedlings that will grow to become my harvest. All too often I have pulled out the harvest seed thinking it was a weed, because  in the beginning its hard to tell one from the other. Then I spent my life frustrated because I never knew that all of the weeds in my life were there because I had been pulling my harvest seed and never even knew it!

So I chose to see the magnitude of the disaster that I was going through and living as one of the greatest seeds I could sow into the garden of my heart because I knew that doing that produces the harvest again and again, season after season and more than that, it is eternally reaching. Right there it was like I was resurrected inside and I felt the flame of hope and promise ignite in the deepest places of my heart, my mind, and my feelings and emotions! From that moment to now I have never been the same! That experience and my understanding and acceptance has become the blueprint that continues to pave the way throughout my heart when I come face to face with disappointment, delay, and all that has blindsided me because I never saw whatever it was coming! 

To my awe, I found that in trying to "let go" only makes the roots grow deeper because it is in resistance where the strength of the very thing I am desperate to get rid of is actually developed and the greatest growth deeply roots it in place! Instead, I have only found true freedom comes as I am willing to face myself and choose the allowing of myself to die to everything I believed about anyone else except me. Is it easy? Anything becomes easier the more you do it. I probably would have had a much harder time if I had not felt the experience physically, the release, the peace that came as I let myself die to the stories I refused to stop telling myself and others about all that other people have "done to me." 

I can say that once I learned the truth about myself and all of the beliefs that I had and would have gone to the grave for, ultimately did lead me to an emotional grave. But that wasn't the end! That was just the beginning and in each moment there was a gift of opportunity to choose. I was finally discovering that my feelings about something will hold me away from or bring me closer to everything and everyone I desire in my life. My bottom line has become simple. Knowing that we have been given the power to change our feelings and emotions at will through choosing and doing that consciously is a game changer and the gateway into worlds that we have always dreamed of! I used to be addicted to so many things...I was delivered and set free from every kind of addiction in my life, by the only one that I have ever needed. I am addicted to and consumed with the one who made me and continually pours His life into and through me! Nothing else compares and there is nothing worth a single moment of worry or negative emotion now that I know it is possible to live in Heaven smack dab in the middle of hell! It is within.

This 3 year season has brought me through being totally destitute, homeless and living in my vehicle, totally isolated from everyone and every kind of technology, unemployed because of a work injury when I was working for the woman I was speaking about, and in the process I have created and invented and reinvented unlike I ever knew was truly possible. I have learned all of the things that I thought I couldn't live without were just getting in the way of being able to see the real me. For the second time in all of my life, I really like myself and even greater than that, I really love myself and all that I am including every flaw, every scar and imperfection. Because it is this journey that has taught me where my heart is, how to tear the walls down that I had built into an impenetrable fortress, and that as long as I live from within the depths of my heart, there is nowhere else that true freedom, passion, life, and love exists. Life only exists within our hearts, it is not outside of us or in the things that we believe identify who we are and all that we have or have achieved.

In Big Lake in 2011 the miracles that were birthed from the most devastating places, have been the treasures that have saved my life and gave me the strength, the heart and the will to die to everything and anything that I am faced with. During the greatest hell that I have ever known (up to that point), it was realizing the true magnitude and price that Jesus paid when he yielded in obedience to his Father, and took my place upon that cross where he was crucified!

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him, shall not perish but have everlasting life. I look at my life and the monumental things that have rocked me to my core and led me to each crossroad that it is my choices because of Love that have changed my life each and every time I have found myself there.

With every opportunity found within the point of crisis and the unimaginable horror of pain or fear so great that it feels like I am going to die, there comes a moment where I must choose. Choose to live or choose to die. And until I finally came to the place where I was finally willing to choose, I knew I would find myself always back at the very crossroad I did everything to avoid.

So many times, I was certain that a particular road I was going to choose was the right one…only to find myself soon after choosing the direction I would travel to be too difficult and I would quickly turn around and go back to the path that I had just come from.

I can kind of understand how the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years going around in a circle and going back and forth between the road I just left for the “right” road that is uncharted territory and has no distinct marking of where it will take you, or how you will know when you get there. So all of my life I so desperately wanted to “Become” brave and willing to not turn back, only to find myself more comfortable to turn around and go back to what was all too familiar.

All of my life I have journeyed the “hard way.” I wanted to do it all on my own. I wanted to be able to rise above the ashes and fly. Yet I was never willing to reach out or trust, or obey because I was terrified to trust.

Lately I have been reflecting on my life and how I have made a lifetime worth of self destructive choices that have impacted so many people along the way.

I have been married 3 times and within each marriage, it wasn’t until I saw myself as the common denominator that I began to truly see. See me. It is impossible to take 3 totally different individuals and turn them into the near identical person I was with in the marriage before! I was a power hungry egomaniac and with each relationship I stepped into came my long laundry list of baggage. I knew how to exit when things got difficult, but I had no idea how to take responsibility for anything that I had done, let alone fix it.

It wasn’t until I was well into and at the end of my 3^rd marriage before my entire life would manifest the long time coming events that I was powerless to control before I finally made a real “Decision” to begin. I never imagined that everything I had ever done, said, believed, forgotten, and avoided, lied about, and chased was so interwoven throughout every failure. For the first time in my life I had gotten myself into such a mess that I knew if I didn’t do something real that I would never be able to live with the consequences.

It wasn’t until the state came and removed my children from me that I knew this was it. I either loved them and was willing to do anything necessary so that I could finally heal and become healthy, and they could heal or I would choose to be a victim and end up emotionally losing them from my life forever.

What started out as me being the victim when I transferred custody to their fathers would ultimately be the road that would teach me what love really is, and how to live it…no matter what!