I am just going to write.

Write it out.  No editing.  No filtering.  No holding back.

This day is tough.  This time of year is tough.  This weekend is tough.  It’s all tough.  Why lie.  I promised to be real right?  Truthful?  It’s my blog address right, allthingstruthful.  So here I am.  I am going to be bare.

One year ago today I was on a plane headed for West Africa.  Burkina Faso to be exact.  On the drive to the airport I looked at my mission companions and said “pray for me because I do not know if I will have a job when I get back.”

Ha!

Funny how God works right.  One day I’ll write out the whole story here on this blog of what happened when I got back.  Or you can go here and sift through pictures and posts to read the story.  Needless to say it’s been a loooooooooooong year that included no job, moving, totally having to trust God for E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.  having to make to hard decisions about my daughter and her schooling.  Oh yeah and brain surgery.

I forgot where I was going with this.  I guess what I wanted to say is that before I was leaving for Africa is that I thought my life, my job, my faith and my relationship with God A. OK.  But it wasn’t.  It sucked.  I mean all was well on the outside.  I could talk a good talk, make you think that it was good.  I had everything covered.  I managed well.  Put things on their proper shelves in my life, organized my external chaos so that the internal stuff stayed put.  Because the internal shit was deep, and ugly and brutally painful and I did everything I could to keep it down, down, DOWN.

Then my world fell apart and I kept talking the good talk about how God was good and was going to get me through this and never going to leave and was going to be faithful.  I wanted to believe it, I wanted the people around be to believe I believed it.  But I don’t think I did.  Slowly that deep stuff that I had tried to keep buried since I was a baby was coming up and nothing I could do would stop it.  And God, Oh MY GOD (and believe me I am not here to talk theology or doctrine or debate any of that stuff) He let it.  Not to watch me suffer like an idiot but because He knew that the only way for me to heal, to become undone from all the ugly, wounded, scarred, pained trauma that has been bound around my heart since infancy was to allow it to come out.  And it did, and it sucked.  And it still sucks.  It hurts.  I bleed painful memories into my brain that come out at the worst times.  Not only do I have my own pain and trauma that I am working through but I have a daughter, a beautiful, amazing, cherished, almost 7 year daughter that is working through her own trauma that is wound up in mine at the SAME time.

And FUCK.  I say FUCK it’s hard.  And ugly.  And brutal.  And painful.  Emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually.  Therapy for both of us is essential and a God send.  So is prayer from the amazing Twitter friends and people around us.  So is, and at the utmost God.  My God, My Jesus, My Holy Spirit without whom I would have died this year.  Maybe not literally but most certainly spiritually.  I lost relationships that I used to consider vital but realized were toxic.  I made some awesome friends, without whom I would have gone nuts .  Sara, My dear I love you.

So all this to say I guess that I am sad that this last year sucked, that it was hard, that I still have anger that I have to work through and that I am still wrecked.  Yet my heart is in such a different place.  I don’t feel the need to fake about my faith anymore.  The rigid legalism is gone, the uber conservative, right wing “you have to do this to be a Christian” ideal had left and now I see that Jesus was Jesus and Jesus loves.  Yes, Jesus is truth and RIghteous and Holy yet there is so much more.  SO.MUCH.MORE.

And my heart found that more over this last year.

As Always,

Bethany

Advertisement