Brave Enough To Be Bliss

I also remembered Kylee saying that it really pissed her off when a therapist would ask, how does that make you feel?" I realized for the first time, the reason that seemed so incredibly stupid and angered us was that we didn't want to "feel" anything. Being angry about the "stupid" question was really just deflecting from the point...we did everything we could "not" to feel anything. I now realize that "not" feeling just keeps us trapped in the feeling. Feeling it is the only thing that can begin to release us from it. Of course, you and others have said these things to me previously, but it just all clicked finally. I think I fully was able to forgive myself after I read this quote from Max Lucado, “Our Savior kneels down and gazes upon th e darkest acts of our lives. But rather than recoil in horror, he reaches out in kindness and says, "I can clean that if you want." And from the basin of his grace, he scoops a palm full of mercy and washes away our sin.” I thought that was the most beautiful description of forgiveness I have ever read.

I had also been thinking about John and wanting to get to peace by letting him go but couldn't. I felt stuck...and was frustrated.

Bad thoughts about myself were harder to push from my mind the rest of that night, so I stopped trying to figure it out and just went to sleep.

Day Three (October 12, 2018) As you can probably guess, I woke up not feeling very good. My shins were very sore from running on the pavement and all the steep hills, it was raining until about noon, in general I felt as gray as the morning. I sat with it. I felt the feelings. I was confused by some of them. I didn’t want them to be there, but I didn’t shove them b ack down. I didn’t eat to do that. I just let them sit there with me. I distracted myself with Pinterest for a while trying to see if some answer or inspiration would come to me. I sat on the deck and tried to bring myself to this moment. I looked at the beauty that was surrounding me and was thankful to be there even if I was struggling. I didn’t allow myself to feel bad about myself because I was not as happy or peaceful as the day before. I heard those things start to go through my mind, but I decided they weren’t true, and I went about thinking what I w anted to uncover about myself or my situations, but I didn’t believe all those awful things that tried to creep up on me. When I was searching for answers when I was 18, I would open my Bible and see what passage my eye landed on and then I would see if it spoke to me. Sometimes it really did, sometimes it didn’t. I wrote those verses in a journal my stepmother ha d given me when I left for college. I still have it and have referred back to it at various times through the years. This time around it occurred to me that I have used Pinterest quotes as something that has sometimes inspired me and helped me think of things in a different way. I have seen a few spiritual quotes or Bible verses more recently also that have spoken to me like the one I sent about Day Two. I’m trying to eliminate “should” from my vocabulary and ask myself constantly if something is true or not before I go down th e path of letting it make me feel bad about myself or suffer in any way. These are things I had never thought of before, but I have allowed them to make me miserable for years. I did go to the fitness center that evening and ran on the treadmill and lifted weights which felt good. I listened to the Loving What Is book. The chapter that started when I got on the treadmill amazingly enough was her work with an incest survivor. It seemed so ironic to have been about sexual abuse/assault. She gave a lot of caution to listeners/readers to stop listening if needed, if not ready. It was difficult, but it also was a light bulb, the part about how the abuse or assault happens however many times it does, but we relive it many, many times over and create our own suffering far longer and worse than the actual acts that have been done to us. I don’t feel like it’s a fault or blame issue, it’s an opportunity for freedom actually when a person is ready to hear that message. Someone does something horrible and awful, but knowing we truly have the choice not to make up all the stories about what it means and carry them forward for years and years and all the thousands of messages we tell ourselves through those years that ruin relationships and make us so very miserable. All that suffering is far worse than the acts…at least for me the act wasn’ t nearly as painful as all the suffering that came about after that. He may have started it, but I kept it going and made it even worse than it had to be. Of course, each person has to be in the right frame of mind to be able to hear this, but what a freeing message. That the abuse/assault doesn’t have to be forever. That the act ended, and we don’t have to all ow it to turn us into endless victims of our own ongoing abuse/assault forevermore. It made so much sense to me. At least for me it isn’t the memory that is as painful as all the stories and implications that I made myself believe all those years. All those voices telling me how awful I was even though I didn’t tie it to the assault/abuse since I didn’t even remember it. Enlightening to say the least and perhaps yet another God moment that I heard it when I heard it, when I could truly receive the message. When I was feeling strong physically and emotionally. It all matters I think in how we hear/read something. I went to bed at peace. Day Four (October 13, 2018) As gray as I had awoken the day prior, this morning I felt alive and fully rested for the first time on the trip and perhaps for the first time ever. I woke up at 6 a.m. feeling good inside and out. I pulled the curtains back and while the sun wasn’t shini ng, it was there behind the clouds and it didn’t dampen my mood at all, I still felt sunny inside. I sat on the deck as it got brighter outsid e and just enjoyed the sounds and the cool breeze. I ended up going to the pool that afternoon and just tried to focus on the warmth again and being in the moment.

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