I was thinking the other day about how much has
actually taken place in my life from the inside out over the past 6
months...and even more epic over these past 64 months since my children were taken away from me and went to live with their dad's. I was trying to remember
if there was a single event that marked the pivotal beginning of the changes
that have led me through this metamorphosis. I mean, I know there are seasons
and many events that have been instrumental in making all of this possible, but
I was looking to see what exactly set all of this in motion.
As I thought back over these past 5 years, I found
myself reflecting about what life was like through the days after my children
were taken away from me. I'm pretty sure that I spent the first 3 months
fighting against accepting that the reason my children were not with me was not
anyone else's fault but my own. I was determined that I was going to prove that
my children were taken away from me illegally. I was doing everything to make
sure that I didn't leave any stone unturned because I wanted the court to see
just how much I was doing. So I made sure that I had a long paper trail of all
of the “proactive” appointments and classes that I was willing to take and
diligently attend.
I wanted my children back and was willing to do
anything it would take for the court to be able to see that I not only complied
with the courts laundry list of demands, but I proactively enrolled in
parenting classes and many other therapeutic activities that I was sure would
show how intent I was on being healthy and equipped to help my children once
the court let them come home. Looking back, I see now that what I was doing was
nothing more than my “I'll show them” reactionary “choosing.” I was on a
mission to convince the court that my children would be safe when they came
back home.
I was dying without them and not having any control
over anything was a moment by moment death unlike I ever imagined would be
possible to endure. The bottom line is that everything I was facing at 36 years
old was something that could have been healed and avoided if I had only cared
enough about myself to make the time to get the help I desperately needed
before I ever began having children.
I spent my entire life being careless, terrified of
being alone, and desperate to be anything other than what I was. I made the
“fake it til you make it” concept my entire life. The only thing is that I
spent my life faking it and never really making it. Well, I made “it” and a lot
of “it” but to be honest, “it” never turned out to be anything but chaos,
dysfunction, misery drowned in the darkness of addiction and co-dependency.
I never planned to live my adult life as I have, and
yet I see now that I never planned not to. I really believed that if I could just
meet the “right” person who had a heart filled with love for me, somehow that
would heal me, make me better, take away all of the endless pain and trauma and
give me all of the things that nobody else was ever willing to give me. I never
understood that remaining in the condition I was in mentally and emotionally
would only bring others into my life who would be the fuel to the flames of
dysfunction in an already unquenchable inferno raging within me.
By the time I was 18 I had spent the greater part of
my life and nearly all of my adolescence in and out of therapists offices, and
nothing ever reached my pain or helped me move beyond all of the tormenting
memories. After the countless hours and visits week after week and year after
year, there was not a single therapist who did anything to impact my life or
show me the way to get beyond myself. I was talked out.
I was sick and tired of
rehashing my past and every single moment of inescapable memories that owned
me. I was sick and tired of having to deal with the nightmare that I was
living. I wanted to move on and live my life. I was certain that I knew what
would be good for me. I knew what I was never going to do because of how it
wrecked my life when other people who were supposed to love me and take care of
me abused me, abandoned me, and left me as a little girl to fend for myself
while they went on about their business as if I never even existed.
I was determined to not only become the greatest
mother I could when I had children, but I knew that I was going to do
everything different for my children than what people who were supposed to love
and protect me did in my life. I never wanted my children to ever know the kind
of pain and horror that I have, and I was willing to do whatever it took to make
sure that I could give them all of the things I never had. I was going to be
the mommy whose life revolved around her children and I knew that I was never
going to shelter my children or keep them from experiencing life to the
fullest. All of my life growing up my mom worked and I spent my life missing
her. I was going to do whatever it took for me to be able to spend as much time
with my children as possible because I never wanted them to miss me or hurt
because I was always working like my mom did in order to support the both of
us.
I can see now that my hopes and intentions were not
enough. Regardless of how much I wanted to create that kind of life for my
children, I had no idea how to make that a reality. I thought that it was
enough to know what you don't want and then do the things that are opposite of
that and everything would just fall into place. I was wrong.
My entire life of pain, trauma, loss, and fear was
housed within me within every thought, every choice, every response, and every
plan. I was a terrified control freak who didn't trust anyone because everyone
I had ever put my trust in not only hurt me, but always left my life no matter
how much they promised they would never hurt me like they knew I had already
been hurt throughout my life.
Eventually, my life became about doing everything to keep
people from leaving my life. In that process when I couldn't make people stop
hurting me and leaving my life, I became the one who did the leaving before
someone else had a chance to leave me. As a result, I have spent my life
playing games and sabotaging my own life which has caused only God knows how
much damage in my life, the lives of my children and anyone else who happened
to find themselves caught in the web of my existence.
I am not proud of any of this, and even writing about
it dangles the baiting reminders of guilt, shame, and the embarrassment that
has always been the glue that holds and weaves them all together. However, I
also know the truth which continues to set me free. The truth is that my life
has been the furthest extreme of an inconceivable nightmare and there is nobody
who is worse than what I was. I am certain that nothing was ever going to reach
me and be able to break me without breaking my spirit. I was a broken mess with
an ego and a chip on both shoulders which made me a force to be reckoned with.
I never wanted to be like that, but I didn't know how to stop. Nor was I
willing to listen to anyone try to tell me how to live my life or what I had to
or couldn't do.
Somehow through every hopeless circumstance that has
happened in my life, hope has always burned within me. Not because I am so
hopeful or have the strength to keep my head up, be positive, or believe that
things can change to become everything and more than I have spent my life
dreaming about. When I had no idea what love was, hope still found a way to
rise up within me and pull me from underneath the wreckage and smoldering
rubble each and every time my life has come crashing down. I wish that I could
say it is because I am so strong and resilient, but that wouldn't be true.
True strength I have learned has very little to do
with getting back up again. Ego is very good at pushing you to get up and do it
again. Ego propels response and action when there is fear of how you will look
if you don't get up again. Ego even has a way of convincing you of just how
strong you are... how taking the bull by the horns will only make you stronger
and cheers you on to use every ounce of strength to show just what you can do
so that you never have to go through whatever it is again. True strength most
oftentimes looks more like weakness than being strong. I continue to discover
that strength is found within the heart we have been given because this is
where I've learned love lives and calls home. However, I have discovered that
love has many companions and where love is, hope is always close by.
It has been my many rendezvous with hope that actually
prepared me for love, and it is only because of Love that I am here today. Love
shows me how to pour out everything I am without holding back or trying to
sugar coat things to minimize the things that I have done. A moment with Love
changed my entire world and everything in it. Love has always been right here,
waiting for me, waiting for you. I was never willing to follow Love because it
was all about me and I didn't know how to trust people I could see, much-less
someone and something that I couldn't see.
So I sat on the sidelines of my life waiting for love
to find me, and when it didn't, I took my ideas of what I wanted love to be and
set out to find it and make it happen for myself. This was the story of
my life. Compromise, deceit, settling, impulsiveness, and everything to try to
make everything happen “right now.” I refused to understand that without the
process and the order that creates a solid foundation to build upon, it is only
a matter of time before whatever goes up will come crashing down. 3 marriages,
divorces and 23 years later, here I am. I finally see that “quick fixes” are
nothing more than band-aids. They cover things for a bit, but never stick for
too long. I spent my life doing everything possible to band-aid everything and
instead of getting better or being able to heal, the years of band-aids that
covered me had turned me into a mummy.
Every part of my life was not just broken, it was
shattered! Sometimes when a broken bone doesn't heal properly the only way to
fix it is to re-break it. It's going to be painful and there is no guarantee
that everything will be as good as new, but you will never know unless you
trust that the doctor is able and knows what to do. I have had to be
deconstructed to remove all of the pieces and shards of the toxic me,
reconstructed and put back together again piece by piece. This has taken so
much longer than I ever would have imagined, and I know that this is something
that never would have been able to happen in this way if my children would have
still been living with me. And though I have died everyday that they have not
physically been with me, I know that the mommy they have now and who I am for the
rest of forever is someone who is well equipped to handle anything that comes
with skill, heart, love, fortitude, courage, surrender, wisdom and
understanding from navigating the uncharted waters and unmapped terrain of
life!
Who I am today is who I was always created to be, and
for the very first time in all of my life I love the person I am and am in awe
at all that I continue emerging at the hands and heart of the Master Creator,
the Lord Almighty! The road has been long, but He has walked every step of the
way and carried me when I was too weak or terrified to take another step. Every
tear I have cried he has wiped away, and He has cried with me because He has
shown me that what hurts me makes Him sad too.
He is faithfully working all of this out as He
continues taking what was meant to destroy me and using the intense fire to
transform the carbon like darkness of who I was into a diamond vessel that His
love and light brilliantly shines through...not because I am great for I am
nothing without all that He is within me. It is only because He is most awesome
and as long as I am willing, He is faithful and will complete this work in me
that He started when He thought me into being.
The clearing in my life has been unfathomable and for
many seasons over these past 5 years it looked like nothing good would ever be
able to emerge because everything was continuously being ripped out of my life.
I would just barely get beyond one loss and another came in like a flood with
even greater force than the one before! I didn't know why He wasn't rescuing me
from the insanity that took everything except my physical life and left me
totally and completely destitute.
Everything that I had attachment to in material form,
everything that held my identity was stripped away. It was like the band-aids I
had spent my life covering every owie became a part of me and as it was peeled
away, it felt like pieces of me were being torn apart. They had been on me for
so long that to me it looked and felt like me. I resisted and sobbed, I prayed
and cried, I begged and pleaded for God to make it stop and to take away the
pain and make the people responsible for all I was going through, to stop
destroying my life.
Then just as I felt myself able to breathe for a
moment and the rays of hope just began to peek through and shine into the dust
and debris of the most recent whirlwind, I was nailed with something more
devastating than the last. I didn’t realize it then, but I was praying for God
to save me from the very process that He was using to shape me, cleanse me and
save me from all of the idols and gods that I was certain I could never live
without!
If He would have rescued me as I begged Him to do,
none of what has happened and who I am today would be possible! I would still
be totally consumed by my past, all of the guilt and shame that comes with
being abused and being an abuser. I would never know what it is to be free from
all that was impossible to overcome and I would never have reached for Him as I
did, do, and learned that no matter what I am going through I really am never
alone for He is always right here with me. He knows the best way because He
created the way. Together the things that we are doing are monumental in my
life, family and our legacy is eternally reaching. This is forever!
Today I am thankful for every second of pain both
physical and emotional. I am thankful for every abrupt loss and unanswered
question because it is that pain that keeps my heart connected to thankfulness.
I am thankful for all of the moments that I have
witnessed miracles of epic proportion even when I am the only one who sees
things the way I do. As insane as the pain and loss have been, the
inexhaustible joy on the other side of it has shown me how to see. I have learned
to gauge that as deep as the darkness swallows me, I know that if I hold on and
not try to avert the pain but instead let myself move through it, the heights
that I am being prepared to soar into are equally as high as the depths were
deep!
I've learned about something called radical acceptance
which is fully accepting any given situation. Knowing that “it is what it is”
doesn't mean that I have to like whatever it is I am going through or in the
middle of. It just frees me to be able to adjust myself and gain the power over
how I choose to respond in the midst of an undesirable or “unfair” situation. I
have learned that no matter how awful something is, that it won't always be
that way. The unimaginable event becomes
an opportunity for me to remember all that I have learned along the way, and to
use those skills to help me as I face myself and the circumstance.
I think that I was so focused on getting to a certain
place in life or beyond that I never bothered to stop and see that all I have
is right now. In this moment of now, I can either cultivate something within
myself, reach to see what else is buried like treasure within me, push the
envelope and experience life in the magical moment by moment unfolding. Or I
can be so consumed with “getting somewhere” that I end up missing the only moment
I have (now) and never uncover anything more than I already have.
It has taken me my entire lifetime to really begin to
believe that what I do and choose and think in this moment is the energy
creating the next moment and all that follows. I am still learning just how
powerful we have been created to be, but the truth is that we are powerful
beyond measure because we are created in the image and likeness of God Almighty,
creator of all! How can we say we love Him and are waiting on Him to fill our
lives with everything we hope for, pray for and dream of, and then sit back
doing the same things we have always done and wonder why nothing is turning out
quite the way we hoped it would?
Something happened to me a few years ago and it ended
up being instrumental in changing my life. I was kind of addicted to playing
Farmville on Face Book. I had spent my time creating an amazing farm and
designing it just the way I would if it were a real farm. I even went through
the different crops you could plant and harvest to find what would cost me the
least amount of money to plant the most of and also would grow at the fastest
rate and yield the highest return. I found that grapes grew the quickest, cost
me the least amount of money and yielded the highest profit.
So I spent oodles of Farmville money buying more land,
planting more grapes, and expanding like crazy. It was kind of ridiculous
because I actually scheduled my life around the time I knew that my grapes were
going to be ready to harvest. I bought bigger equipment to ensure it took me
less time to collect all of the grapes and I had an amazing time because it
felt like I was really farming and making a lot of money even though it was
just play money.
Then my life took a turn in a direction that I wasn't
planning to go. I decided that I was going to go back to school. I was accepted
to a design school and since they didn't have a campus here my only option was
to take my classes online. I decided to get my Bachelor's degree in Video Game
Production and Design and I had absolutely no idea just how intensive the
courses were going to be. It felt like right out of the gate from the moment I
started school all I had time for was school, sleep and homework. I suppose I
never factored my Farmville addiction into the equation when I went back to
school. Sadly, back then, I may never have started school at all if I would
have thought it could interfere in harvesting my virtual crops!
Needless to say, the first few days of class I totally
forgot to check my crops and harvest time came and went, my crops were totally
dead. I was actually pretty upset because not only was I going to have to pay
to harvest dead crops and making zero profit, but I was going to have to plant
new crops with my Farmville reserves! I did that for a short while until I lost
track of everything on Farmville and finally just stopped visiting Face book
altogether. I knew that I had a choice to make and I was paying real money to
go to college and that trumped Farmville, and that was that.
Until...
I began to notice things about the way I was living
and the way I went about making choices in my life. It was interesting for me
because it’s like when I stopped playing Farmville, the principles I learned
and was using to strategically design and manage as well as prepare to make my
farm a success, seamlessly became a part of my everyday life. I joked with my
mom and told her that I was going to write a book called, “How playing
Farmville changed my life” and she thought that was hilarious. I was totally
serious. I thought it was amazing how something so simple could have such a
profound impact in my life and not even realize it.
That's when I discovered that life is more like
farming than we probably ever bother to think about. I mean, unless you're a
farmer, why would you ever compare or connect the two? Since then, life has
become like farming for me. I see things so much differently now and somehow,
because I learned the virtual process through Farmville in my own life I can
see things through the eyes of faith and hope because I have the mental
connection to the cause and effect of when I used to play Farmville.
In the
most horrific time in my life, Farmville became the platform that helped me to
distract from the agony of not being able to be with my children. For a moment
I was able to get lost in the moment where for a little bit I didn't feel like
I was going to die. As I found my niche in the game and found the best way to
make the most money in the least amount of time, I found myself looking forward
to the process as my crops sprouted and ripened to harvest. I was developing
hope and I didn't even know it.
It seems silly to think of my faith somehow becoming
rooted because of a silly game on Face Book. I would rather give all that
credit to God...and I do! But I believe that He is willing to use whatever is
going to reach us individually. I had never been consistent with anything in my
life and so I suppose it makes sense why many processes were never able to take
hold within me.
I played the game pretty much every day and in my real
life because of what I was doing every day, day after day my brain was changing
in ways I never had before. This is how our brains thrive…through consistency
and repetition. I was creating new neural pathways and processes and didn't
even know it. So naturally, it didn’t matter if I didn’t play the game anymore
because the processes were established and the neural pathways in my brain
became well worn and smooth. That carried over into my “real” life with the
same thinking and the same method of choosing that taught me cause and effect
in Farmville.
I learned how costly it is to miss your window of
harvest opportunity and even learned how to adjust my crops and choose to plant
a crop that would grow a little bit slower and maybe not pay out as much, but
would allow me the time I needed to do my school work and still be able to play
the game and at least not lose any more money.
Beyond Farm-ville, my life became my farm. I was able
to see just how much work needed to be done in the game to get to a place where
I had the ability to plant a crop. I had to buy the land, till up the land,
cultivate the soil and then water it and make sure I had what I needed for my
crops to grow. Once I'd plant my seeds it seemed like forever before they
finally began to pop up through the ground so I could see the “fruit” of my
labor. So it is with life. Most of the time I never even gave any thought to cultivate
the soil of my life. I'd get an idea, run with it, and if it took too long, I'd
get distracted and then fade out and onto something else. This was the dominant
process that ruled my life for most of it.
I can't even imagine just how many crops I have
planted in the soil of my life that I walked away from just before the shoots
were about to pop up out of the ground and begin to sprout. What I do know is
that all of the choices and mistakes I have spent my life making were all part
of the intensive preparation for me to get here! And what I know for sure is
that every ounce of drama, pain, loss, catastrophe and wrong is not in vain
because I am living proof that with all I have done wrong and all of the messes
I have made that are far beyond anything I know how to fix, everything has been
useful in shaping me, remaking me, and reminding me of all that I am and all I
have been shown how to overcome! More than anything, I know with all I am that
the best is yet to come and we are the miracles of the Master’s Plan! I love you
and God Bless you in everything!
