I can't believe sometimes how simple little things trigger memories and emotions that you think were long gone and forgotten. I used to pride myself on the fact that for years nothing ever really made me cry, except the odd sappy movie. Not sure why that was. I think I was a pretty emotional kid and then I realized that it got me nowhere to put my heart on the line, feel, be vulnerable etc. because I learnt that you were just going to get badly hurt again and again and again. It was far better to be strong and not let anything touch you. But somewhere along the way, and in people that I loved that lived in denial, I saw that having concrete walls all around you is not all that it is cracked up to be. It's very tough and painful to do sometimes, but it's far healthier to face your fears and take a chance with the possibility of being hurt, then to live in a supposed safe and closed off comfort zone, never knowing what could be.
Emotions. I think with my heart. Sometimes I wish I was not an emotional person, but I have had to face the fact that it is part of who I am. Yes, sappy movies make me cry. Yes, I want the prince charming on the white horse to come and take me away to his castle. Yes, I love happy endings, even if they are boring and predictable. Yes, to cute puppies and babies and hearts and roses. Sometimes I hate it because it takes a lot out of me. On the flip side, I also consider myself somewhat of a strong person that thinks alot (way too much) with their head. I am always analyzing things and trying to figure out why things are the way they are and why people are they way they are a little too much I think? Sometimes I just need to just DO more instead of second-guessing myself and not being confident of my actions. I guess I do enjoy that I am both the feeling and the thinking mixed together. Feelings enrich my world and grow my heart, but thinking helps me make good decisions and keep me anchored through it all and helps me realize how far I have come from my past.
Even something as simple as an email from someone that used to be a huge part of my life and seeing how they signed it with my nickname (which is used only by my family really) brought a whole flood of emotions to the surface. Or seeing old photos or emails or letters from someone that was everything to me, but slowly fading away into the past that was the old me. Sometimes it is something you think is very small. A visit from someone that you were so close to for so many years and then not can even make you realize how your past is a part of who you are and why you deal with things a certain way. Broken relationships for any reason (be it death or breakups) have such a profound effect on how you see your own worth and that is hard. Even hearing the family fighting across the alley tonight for some reason made me think of certain things from my childhood. You cannot run from your past anymore than you can run from the rain in Vancouver. It is impossible.
So don't run. Leave the past in the past where it belongs. Think and move ahead to hope and a future and make a step in the right direction; forwards. I think the best thing is to realize how far along you have come and how you have made progress when something triggers a memory or feeling from you and you realize it doesn't bother you like it used to. God is an expert at healing us like that. He takes the broken pieces of our shattered hearts and he pieces them back together and then gives us a new heart back. Eventually. When I think about the past 4 years in my own life, I have no idea why I am still sane and why I have adjusted as well as I have to things that have happened. These things are a part of who you are, but they don't have to rule your entire life and cripple you from living the life you were meant to be blessed with here on earth. There is no possible reason or any explanation that I can come up with except God. I didn't adopt any positive thinking and it was nothing that I did on my own whatsoever. How can you fix yourself?
I am around very highly intelligent and educated people every day, which is part of my job. There are times where I feel pretty inadequate and just downright dumb compared to them. But, they are just flesh and blood regular people that were created out of nothing like I was and they had to start from somewhere. They would be the first to admit that they are just regular people as well (although some may not want to admit it). They have a soul and a spirit and a heart and a mind just as human as mine is. I have learnt so much from being around them and getting to know them as people, as well as seasoned professionals. There is a lot of talk and writing and debates in general in the world about proving the existence of God through many different ways, such as science. But ultimately you have to have your own personal story or experience that makes its way into your heart from the beginning of the journey where it starts in your head.
The only thing I can say about that is some of the best proofs in my life came from real experiences and not anything tangible. God does work in a billion different ways to reveal himself to our world in the most amazing way through people, nature, science and discoveries, church, media, music, etc. The list goes on and on. And all those things most definitely did help my faith, my hope, my insight, and my knowledge. (And I believe in as much education as you can get, which I hope to do one day.) But the best way that God chooses to work in my own life is LIFE. The school of life. You want proof that God exists? I would love more than anything to tell the whole world that he does, just from things I have gone through, now sitting here in BC typing away and wondering how I even got this far. I still have no idea. That's God to me. I never want to take for granted any blessings that God sees fit to bring my way, even though I am tempted to think about all the things I do not have. I am only human after all.
Again, it was nothing special that I did or think or say to get through it all, except to go through my pain and face it head on in my own way, instead of living in the world of denial and concrete walls. To be in the dark and hopeless valleys of rejection, fear, death, loss, sickness, hate, loneliness WITH God. Knowing he was never going to leave me like so many people that I had loved. Knowing that he was with me in my brokenness and with me in the times that my heart ached so much that I could not even cry. And the times when all I could do is cry and never want to stop. The times when I wondered if I would ever see happiness again and what I had ever done to deserve the misery. The times when I hated myself and others and thought that I was not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, or just enough for anyone.
God was there through it all, like the footprints poem. He was carrying me all along to the other side of it all. Hebrews 4:15-16: "For we have not a high priest who cannot have compassion on our infirmities, but one tried as we are in all things except sin. Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need" and 11:1-3: "Now faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that are not seen; for by it the men of old had testimony borne to them. By faith we understand that the world was fashioned by the word of God; and thus things visible were made out of things visible."
They say that people write best about what they know about. It does get better. I can attest to that. That's all the proof I need.
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