This is part of the series in which I am writing relating back to prompts and questions based on the Story 101 ecourse I am taking through September.  This is in relation to writing my h.a.r.d. thing. 

The silence feels really hard today.

LOUD

Deafening thunders, painful echoing of loss and grief. Remembering shattered relationships and broken dreams.

I do not want to sit in it. Settle into the quiet and sit alone. I want some peace but I don’t want to be by myself. I am always by myself.

This burden is so huge I am flooded with pain and my real self, my Jesus self is gasping for air underneath it, trying to find some space.

The loneliness feels so palpable that again running crosses my mind.

Yesterday the emptiness was like a cavern in my body. A physical depth I could feel. I wanted to go somewhere, anywhere to escape that haunting feeling.

I dreamt of a change of scenery, different sounds, a place where there were people I could actually talk to.

I was hoping that a different bathroom, without a litter box would help. A different bedroom, with different walls to stare at, different pillows and a big fluffy comforter I could burrow myself in would make the difference.

Everything just felt wrong. My apartment, my dish filled sink and poo filled litter box that I did NOT want to clean.

My pain (physical) level, which is tied into my emotions sometimes, just would not ease up. My skin didn’t feel right.

My daughter, the sweet girl with her own pain was struggling yesterday along side me. We feed off of each other and she was so needy yesterday. Her hair pin trigger ended with me in the bathroom, with the door locked just wanting it to stop.

Every single bit of yesterday.

I wanted to know why she was hurting and needing control, so then I could calm my own need to control. It’s this dance. This round and round way of healing and I was just DONE last night.

She settled, I settled, we talked. She opened up about what she had heard me say on the phone to a friend earlier in the day.

There was a lot of reassurance, which in our house in common. The need for me to remind her that my love for her is unconditional, not dependent on who she is or what she does is a need she sometimes needs to have filled hourly. It’s where we are and that’s ok. Her needing to hear me say “I AM NOT going anywhere” is something that is said often.

It’s not only me who says those words in this house.

It’s Him.

“Bethany, I AM NOT going anywhere. “

“I LOVE YOU”

“I am with you in the depths of this and you ARE NOT alone. When you cannot breathe I am your breath”

It’s then, now as I type those words out that the silence doesn’t feel so bad.

As I look at these walls that I see every day the need to run doesn’t feel so pressing.

I am reminded that He, God, the one whom I am learning to call Father. That He breathed life into dry bones.

My dry bones have life too. I don’t have to depend on the weariness; I can depend on the breath. Gasping in, drinking in the freshness of who He is and has always promised to be.

Things have happened this week that have caused a torrent of healing to come down. On the other side of that healing is the grieving. That is the part I don’t like. The letting go, the realization of what was but isn’t anymore.  Of what never was, or what couldn’t be because of who they were or weren’t.

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I started writing this on Sunday, when it seemed as though things had lifted.

They hadn’t.

Yesterday in therapy I faced the realization that I am angry with God.  For a lot of reasons.  I suppose we have all been here.  We have all been told this is wrong (I’m just guessing, I know I have)

I am going to stand up and say that “NO, it’s not wrong.  He gets it because He knew I’d be here.  That this was another step in my coming to the end of myself.

When my therapist just out of the blue threw that out there (the anger at God) yesterday, words, thoughts and feelings started flying out of my mouth and body that counsciously I didn’t know I had.  I looked at her and and said “fuck you” but then let it all resonate.

And it did.

Some more.

More tears fell on her office floor as I realized that I was indeed coming to the end of me.  That place where there are no right answers, or “what now.”  I can’t fix this or stop it or make the hurt less.

It just has to BE.

It was there I realized I was naked.  Not in the literal but in the spiritual.  Before the throne.  Naked before my King, so vulnerable it feels like my guts are wide open and spilling out on the floor before Him.  It’s an ugly, painful thing to look and and feel.  Guts are ugly.  Guts are what hurt, but aren’t guts what also heal?

It’s there I realized the thought of sitting at His annointed, dirty, beautiful feet seem like a really good idea. 

This is it.  My hard thing.  In the midst of everyday life.

I thought it was something else, but it took being rocked to realize it’s more than just the simplistic idea of thinking that my story ended when I met Jesus.

As Always,

Bethany

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