An Onion in My Soup…

 It has been almost a year now since I last wrote about my efforts to heal. You might have been thinking that my silence about this subject is an indication that I am now all better, fine, healed and living a perfect life.

Really? Come on now.

In my family SILENCE is LOUD and almost ALWAYS means something is NOT quite right.

You know that feeling a mother gets when she realizes the kids are being way too quiet in the back of the house and she better check on them pronto?

Yep, that’s it. Exactly!

So don’t look surprised when I tell you that I’m still in the process of healing.  

And yes -- I am breaking the silence today and admitting that this is taking much, much longer than I first anticipated.

In fact, today I’m very angry about it!!

I am coming to understand that emotional healing is a journey and not a place of final destination.

Really if this didn’t feel so pitiful it would be laughable. While snuggled-up in my warm and safe bed…pillows piled high behind me, once again I find myself too overwhelmed, exhausted, tired, hurt, frustrated and unmotivated to venture out on a Sunday morning. Life on any kind of social scale today sounds exhausting to me.

Here I am, after a year of processing/therapy, studying, praying and learning, still asking myself, “what the hell is wrong with you and why can’t you get a grip on your STUFF?” “Why is this so damn hard?????”

Nothing should be as complicated as THIS has come to be.

Shouldn’t life be easy-breezy-lemon-squeezie?

Ever find yourself wanting to scream to the top of your lungs. Hey!!!! Hey!!!! I did NOT sign up for this damn it!!!@%$^&*%

If so then I am right here with you today, screaming in side.

You may want to stop reading at this point though, because I plan to be brutally blunt about myself, life, love and fear.

A lot of doors for healing emotionally have been opened before my eyes ever since I arrived at “desperate”.

I know I would have never even searched for a healing modality, had I not became aware that I am broken.

Learning I am broken emotionally left me praying desperately for God to heal me.

I had no idea there was any such thing out in the world called “emotional healing therapy”.

Although I was praying for immediate relief, God saw my desperation as an opportunity for growth.

The kind of growth that comes from pushing through the pain instead of having it removed immediately.

The kind of healing/growth that I would never have asked for on purpose.

Why, because I didn’t see it as growing pains, it hurt like nothing I had ever experienced and I just wanted it gone.  

And now a year later, for the sake of madness, writing seems to be the only thing I can think to do at this point.

So please indulge me and forgive my weak writing skills. Writing, like some magical potion, seems to help lessen the pain of my extreme emotional make over.

Getting it out of my head and onto the paper as fast as possible seems like it would be such a relief.

So at the risk of regretting it later… here goes.

I have found my “healing process” to be kind of like pealing and chopping an onion. I wouldn’t want to just drop a huge onion in a pot of soup un-pealed, un-cleaned, and un-chopped.

So no, if you are like me, then you need to prepare it or deal with it before it can enhance the soup.

In fact some people won’t even taste the soup if they can see an onion of any size floating anywhere in it. For them, as for me, the chopping will be a finite task.

It’s too hard to digest it whole…the taste is way too harsh and over-whelming.

There are lots of layers to deal with when pealing and preparing an onion and there is likely to be many tears shed before the chopping process is finished.

So as much as I hate dealing with it, there it is…an onion in my soup.­­­­­­

And even though the process is happening slower than I would like…it is happening as fast as God feels I am able to deal with it, one bite at a time.

Same with this writing…you won’t get the whole story today…that would be too hard to swallow too. You’ll get it in installments. Chopping it up for you and me will make it easier on both of us

“Every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind it if you want to see it.”

― Mark Twain

“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”

― Mark Twain

 

Not sure which of these two quotes is the correct version penned by Mark Twain…maybe both?

Twain is comparing us to the moon, saying we all have two sides. One that is light that we try to present to the world, and the other one, the dark one, the one we try to hide, ignore and just plain do not understand.

I will admit that I have always known there was a part of me that was capable of darkness. But I would have never called it darkness. I was ashamed of it and would have never admitted it to you.

Why are we so reluctant to really look at it or even admit that we are all capable of it? Darkness…

When I thought about what I should be brutally honest about today…darkness held up his hand. He has been showing his face to me for the last two years begging me to walk closer; begging me to understand him; begging me to try to appreciate what he has to teach me about the light.

For some of you this will be a hard installment to read without judging me. Its ok if you do…it’s hard for me to share it in light of knowing that you might judge me…but I am ready to face that fear.

Believe me I am as stunned to be writing about it as you may be to be reading it here. If you had asked me a year ago to write what I thought about darkness this post would be reading very differently… To me darkness has always been bad.

I want you to know, up front, that I do not believe in or practice any of the things that the world normally associates with “darkness”.

I am just beginning to look a little closer at the darkness in my life in order to better see the light. To even begin to just consider that darkness may be important to me in some greater way than I have ever considered.

God created the universe but did not destroy darkness.

He kept it…he even divided it from the light, making it even more easily notable to us.

It is easy for me to accept that He gave me light as a blessing in my life. It’s easy because I have been taught that light is good.

But because the trials and hard things of life present themselves in darkness, it is not so easy to accept or understand that darkness could possibly be okay.

In order to do so, I would first have to consider that every dark thing in my life might be a blessing of light in some way. 

It’s hard to appreciate that enveloped in the darkness there may very well be the best light, even a key to greater light.

It might help to understand that in some very important ways darkness helps me see physical light that I would never see in the brightness of the sun’s reflection.

For example, the brightest spots on earth are the ones where the most prosperous people live, marshaling money and power to eradicate the dark. Due to light pollution, the Milky Way is now invisible to two-thirds of those living in the United States.

Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor

 

In much the same way that the darkness of the night sky reveals the starry lights of the Milky Way, looking into my darkness may reveal things about my-self that I would never see any other way.

 The following quote says that we are taught to distrust the dark in our youth…and I agree…but I think some of us just naturally distrust what we don’t understand. I know I do.

Distrust of the dark often begins in childhood, with kids called indoors at dusk to keep them safe, and is reinforced as we grow older….with darkness equated to spiritual warfare, depression, nightmares and other adverse notions.

Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor

 

Darkness is Bad?

Before I actually knew who God was I decided that darkness was bad and that I should avoid it at all cost. The following experience determined how greatly I would fear the darkness for the rest of my life.

I don’t think I was much more than four years old when this happened.

Mom and Dad had company past my bed time. I remember being put to bed, light turned off and door closed.

The room was totally dark.

All alone I began to cry, but don’t remember why. Maybe I wanted to stay up and visit?

Shortly after the tears began the feeling in my bedroom changed.

The only way to describe it as a four year old would be that it got darker.  

The darkness was thick and intense.

 And then it happened, I suddenly realized…I wasn’t alone anymore.

All around me were voices of men and women, I say all around me, because it felt like they were swirling in the air just above me. (Although at no time did I see them, I could only hear them). 

They whispered my name repeatedly, over and over, laughing as if to taunt me. This continued for what seemed to be several minutes.

I did not recognize their voices but could tell they knew who I was. 

The louder I cried the more intense the experience became.

I was a pretty terrified little girl at this point and felt I might not survive.

I had never experienced anything like it before. I remember being confused and feeling overwhelmed.  

I know who they were now, as an adult, but that little four year old had no idea who they were or what was happening.

All she knew was that they were real and scary and dark!

Just when I felt doomed - my Mom suddenly opened the door.

As the light from the living room opened up the darkness of the bedroom the voices stopped and I could see that there was no one there. Again I was confused. Where had they gone?

The good news was they were gone.

To me it appeared that the light had been what scared them away. Light had been my savior.

Mother asked me if I wanted the door left open.

All I could do was curl up under my covers and shake my head yes.

I never told her about the voices. I didn’t know how.

I remember the light felt safe and warm. Shortly I fell asleep. 

It was right then and there that I decided that dark was bad.

But just as important as this experience with the dark… was the experience with the light that saved me.

God is so amazing. He always uses every opportunity to turn life’s painful trials around for our benefit and good.

I have to share with you that just now…as I was writing this…I suddenly came to understand that God had used this experience with darkness to teach me about the blessings of His light.

He knew that having this experience would leave a bad feeling in my heart for the rest of my life. He knew it would color and change every other experience I would then have with darkness.  And so as Mom opened the door and light broke the darkness….God blessed that light that flooded my room that night. He blessed it to envelope me in warmth. It was as if I were being cradled in his mighty arms.

I have no doubt now as I am writing this that He sent His angels to bless and comfort a very frightened little four year old girl.  

As the light flooded into my room it surrounded me like a warm fuzzy blanket.

For it seemed that as intense as my fear had been… to that extent was the feeling of protection that the light brought.  And so that night I decided that light was peace, warmth and protection. Light was Good. Light was love.

This experience was not one that as even an adult I would have wanted to revisit. In my healing I have been very cautious not to go there and look at it at all.

It took several therapy sessions for me to trust that I would survive the memory.

Had I continued to choose not to look at this dark experience in my life, sadly I would have never understood the beautiful way that God used it to teach me about light.

 

 

There is a lot of goodness in the dark. I also discovered how inaccurate it is to say, "Its dark outside." If you go outside and check, it's rarely as dark as you think. A single star sheds exquisite light. That was my biggest surprise. But the most significant surprise was finding out that the darkest places in my life--emotional and spiritual, as well as physical--were the places I most needed to go, since that's where all the hidden treasure was. Barbara Brown Taylor

“Often what we most don’t want to look at... is what we most need to see.”

And there you go…the opportunity to understand, appreciate and love the light came from an experience with darkness.

You might say I was enlightened by the intensity of the darkness. Wow!

 

THE DARKNESS WITHIN…

As a young mother with three little girls still not in school, I felt overwhelmed, frustrated and exhausted at times. In fact this was my state of mothering most of the time.

These feelings left me with very little patience.  The impatience left me with guilt. The guilt brought shame that told me I was not a good mother. The worse I felt about myself the worse things became.

Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.

Mahatma Gandhi

 At this same time my middle daughter, Cheryl – a cute little three-year old, had developed a serious problem. Her knees knocked together and it was interfering with her walking.

Of course we made an appointment with the doctor right away and the problem was quickly addressed. The doctor prescribed some very expensive and corrective little shoes. We could afford one pair.

The importance of the shoes will reveal itself shortly….but for now…

The problem with my impatience had become a trigger for warfare within me.

There was a battle going on in my mind and my heart and it wasn’t long before my impatience was manifested with me losing my temper almost every day.

My hot tempered part was becoming a constant member of my family and my better self really did not like having her there. This conflict just bred more and more warfare within.

Soon my temper displays seemed to be growing into tantrums. This not only worried me but was scaring my children.

One afternoon a temper tantrum rose to a volcanic proportion and boiled over in a most disturbing way.

I had been working on getting myself and my three little girls out the door to a weekly meeting for women…at church (ironically).

Finally everyone was washed, brushed, dressed and fed.
And all that was left to do was to get Cheryl’s special little shoes on her feet.

I felt a great sense of pride that I was able to get myself and my children ready and out the door to a church meeting.

Well it didn’t take long for that feeling to change when I could not find the little shoes.

I looked everywhere I could think of.

The shoes were nowhere to be found.

After about ten minutes of looking, my temper began to boil as I realized we were going to be late to the meeting.

If this had been a cartoon for your viewing pleasure I am sure you would have be able to see the red begin in my feet and rise all the way to the top of my head and then pop the top off.

On a scale of 1 to 10 it was a 32…

All this work getting ready for nothing?

We can’t go now!!!

Why do I even try to do anything right?

You can just imagine where I am going with this dialogue.

It became pretty negative as self-beat-up does…and it was pretty obvious to me that I did not measure up.

I was a bad mother, just plain old bad, bad, bad.

And believe me at this point I WAS!

Because next came…THE ERUPTION!!!

Before I could come to my senses, I had totally demolished the girls little bedroom.

Pulling out all the drawers in the dressers, I proceeded to throw all their little clothes on the floor.

I pulled every last piece of clothing out of the closet.

Emptied all the toy boxes and…disassembled two beds single handedly.

Then I ripped the curtains down out of the windows and threw them on the floor.

The room looked like a war zone when I was finished.

Sorry…this is X rated, but I warned you I was going to be honest.

When I stopped…I was shocked at what I had just done. I stood there for just a moment surveying my battle ground…then…I started to cry.

I turned to leave the crime scene, (with steam from the eruption still rising off my body)…

And there they were ---My three little girls…standing there in the door-way watching me.  

They couldn’t have looked more terrified had they just watched a scene from the movie “The Exorcist”.

They were frozen with fear.

I am not over stating when I say their eyes were so wide they looked like they were going to pop out of their sockets.

There are no words to describe how seeing them look at me with fear made me feel.

They had seen what no child should ever have to see…their mother’s darkness.

I tried to change my expression, wishing I could take what I had just done all back.

But I couldn’t take it back…and for a few moments, we just stood there looking at each other.

I didn’t know how to explain to them what had just happened.

I think I said something like, “Well…I guess we will change the room around a little bit. Mommy will clean this up”, I smiled…  “Don’t worry.”

I walked passed them and went to my bedroom, shut the door, and sat down on the bed.

For the next half hour I thought about what I had just done.

Then I had a conversation with myself…while God listened.

It went something like…  “This cannot continue. Nothing…no meeting anywhere is worth the fear I just saw in my children’s eyes. This is not who I am going to be ever again! Next time I feel the surge of anger rising within me I will stop immediately and come to my room until I am in control.”

After a while I went back out and found the girls sitting in the middle of their messy room playing with their dolls…I didn’t say a word but began to clean and reorganize their room.

They seemed to be ok. Thank God.

For a couple of weeks things were much better and I did seem to have a better handle on myself. At this point I felt pretty good about the possibility of being able to manage my temper.

“Ok…maybe I will try the church meeting again”, I thought.  “I am much better now and everything should be fine.”

It was going pretty easy-peezie…things were coming together just fine.

Finally we were all ready…except for… Cheryl’s little shoes…and I knew exactly where they were this time.

NOT!!

It took about 30 seconds to realize I did not know where the shoes were.

Ok…this was a game changer for me and my mood went from control to OUT OF CONTROL really quickly…it was as if someone had hit a replay button and the dark quiet volcano was beginning to rumble again.

I could feel the heat from my temper rising and the sting of self-judgments were loud and pointed,

“What a job you are…see, you cannot do anything right.”

I started up the steps from the family room in search of the shoes. As I passed my bedroom door I stopped…

Recalling the commitment I had made a couple of weeks prior, I opened the door and quietly shut it behind me.

I sat down on the bed and recalled the commitment I had made to myself and God.

Big tears were starting to flow from my eyes down my cheeks.

I slid off the bed and knelt down at the foot of it.

My prayer was a pleading really, that God would heal my temper.

That He would forgive me and help me to be the mother that He intended these children to have.

I thanked Him for my children and the blessing of being a mother.

I prayed and cried for quite a while…but at no time during the prayer did I ask Him to help me find the little shoes.

I closed my prayer in the name of Jesus Christ.

Within a twinkling of a second I heard a voice tell me to look under the bed.

At the same time I saw in my mind where the shoes were.

I opened my eyes in shock.

I remember slowly reaching down to the bed skirt, right where I was knelling, and lifting it up.

I remember seeing the shoes perfectly a-lined with my knees.

It looked like they had been placed there on purpose.

They were there right where I had knelt to pray.

And right where I had seen them in my mind.

I lifted the little shoes into my hands and stood up…without saying a word or thinking a thought.

I sat down on the bed…still in a state of shock and marveling at what had just happened.

I replayed the experience over and over again in my mind, looking for a logical explanation.

There was no logic in what I had just experienced.

It was something very different than logic.

This was something too tender and merciful to be explained away by man’s limited understandings and reasoning.

When the light goes out in your life…You learn things in the darkness that you would never have learned in the light…things that have saved my life over and over again.

Barbara Brown Taylor

Forty years and lots of experiences with darkness later…the above story of Cheryl’s little shoes still amazes and excites me. Not only that…but it fills me with gratitude.

I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.  Og Mandino

You may reason this away if you wish…but that won’t change the lesson my heart learned on that day…

One of the darkest and yet one of the most enlightening days of my life as a young mother.

His Darkness and Mine…

I guess I could stop right here in my writings but then you would miss this next story about darkness.

The place, in fact, where this healing journey began…

Because although there is much darkness in the telling of this story…its where the most light lives.

 The place where I first realized I was broken…

The place where my pain was triggered…

The place of confusion and anger…

The place of over-whelment and great sadness…

The place of desperation…

“The only whole heart is a broken one because it lets the light in.”

― David J. Wolpe

 “There is a light that shines in the darkness, which is only visible there.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark

I can still see him in my mind…the hurt in his eyes as he shifted his gaze away from me.

I can still feel the weight of the moment it happened.

I have played it over in my head a thousand times, wishing each and every time that the outcome could have been different, better, resolved…forgiven.

He sat forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees.

His expression went from hurt, to concern and then quickly to anger.

“What brought this on Linda?”

He was asking me what was wrong, but his tone and body posture triggered something in me that made me feel like I was under attack.

“Something has been bothering you since you got here.”

He was right. I couldn’t believe I had not been able to hide it from him.

I knew if he was aware of my pain and fear he would misunderstand it.

Hell…I didn’t even understand it.

And in spite of the recommendation of my counselor not too….I had come to visit him.

“Linda its best you put some space between the two of you. There is a history of quarreling here - give yourself some time to work thought this a little more.”

Her words echoed through my mind…

She was right. What a mess I have made now.

I was hoping against hope that I could find a way to fix what was broken inside me…without having to stay away from him.

 So, here we were again…facing another impasse. 

“Impasse” was the word he used to describe our disagreements.

Websters dictionary defines “impasse” as; a situation in which no progress seems possible; no obvious escape; or a deadlock…

These impasses, by my definition, were places of darkness…

A place where what is really happening is not being seen, said, or heard…because fear as now come into play and has over-ridden or filtered-out love and balance.

A place of darkness…a personal space where judgment and belief about what is really happening is seen through the eyes of distortion.

He and I always came to this place when we were in disagreement…this place of impasse.

I couldn’t give him an answer that night to his question.

I didn’t know how to tell him what I didn’t understand myself.

I felt like a spectator to our demise…as all I could do was watch our relationship crumble into Impasse…

I felt powerless to save it. I watched as his actions became as out of control and helpless as I felt.

He was visibly upset, angry, confused and hurt.

As I watched his reactions to me, it felt like I was looking into a mirror….He seemed to be a reflection of my pain or was I a reflection of his?

It seemed he was feeling everything I was…

I watched him shut me out… and push me away once again.

It was just like every other impasse…except for one thing…

This time I was coming to the very sad realization that…

I was too broken and in too much pain to do anything for the man I loved but hurt him.

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love.”
― Sigmund Freud

Seeing his darkness…

 

It was October and a beautiful evening in east Tennessee when this amazing and very complicated man unexpectedly walked back into my life.

I was separated and divorced now for more than fifteen years from a thirty year marriage.

Of course the divorce had been devastating but enough time had passed that I had finally become comfortable with where I was…

 I had consigned myself to the fact that I would never find another love in this life time.

Anyway, if I believed in fate I would say that “FATE” had something else in mind for me that October night, but I don’t… believe in fate that is.

However, I do believe in God’s blessings.

I believe he answers our prayers…but not always in the way we expect.

Almost from the beginning I believed it was God who had brought him back into my life.

Even now as I’m writing this…I realize I still know this is true.

He was invited by his brother to dinner with a group of friends of whom I was a part.

Our reconnection was pretty typical for two old high school friends who hadn’t seen each other after a whole life time.

That is, there were a few questions, hugs and smiles and that was about it.

There wasn’t too much time for anything else, because there were lots of others in the group to visit with as well.

The evening was getting late and several of the group had started saying their good-byes. He approached a small group of friends who were standing and chatting with me. He smiled and put his arm around me to say good bye.

As I looked up into his smiling face…déjà vu sent total recall buzzing through every memory cell in my heart. It scanned through the years to 1965; opened the file marked ‘high school romance’; and started playing our song.

Okay…that’s pretty dramatic I know….what I mean is I was still attracted to him. :)

While still gazing into his eyes, and I’m sure with a silly grin on my face; I became acutely aware of his hand on my back.

But not until I felt a shiver run up my spine did I snap out of it…“Holy Cow!! I’m still attracted to him?”

I was caught off guard with these feelings and so I immediately tried to dismiss them by saying good bye and telling him how nice it had been to see him.

He invited me to call him sometime so we could get together, chat and catch up.

He said his good byes to the group and thanked me for inviting him. He hugged me once more, turned and walked away.

I then turned my conversation back to the others in the little group.

However my attention there was short lived as I was suddenly startled by a dark image in my peripheral vision.

This image totally threw me…and I could not look away from it. It had my total attention so much so, that it scared me.

“What is that?”

I have always been able to read people’s moods pretty good and have sensed darkness like this at other times in my life.

So, I wasn’t surprised to be seeing it…but I was surprised and shocked at who I saw wearing it.

He was walking away…

His gait was slow and deliberate like there was some great burden holding him back.

His head was bent low and looking toward the floor.

I had the impression he was in deep thought over some very sad circumstance in his life.

He had done such a good job of hiding this in front of me and the dinner crowd.

But now somehow, as he was walking away, his guard was down and darkness seemed to be completely surrounding him. In fact it looked attached.

In a way, it seemed like I was standing there looking at him for several minutes.

But really all this rushed through my thoughts in just a few seconds.

What I didn’t know was why I was seeing this.

Was this some kind of warning for me to stay away… or something else?

 “Why does he look so sad? I didn’t even get to talk to him.” This was all I could think about as I watched him disappear out the door and into the night.

For the next couple of weeks I could not get this image out of my mind.  I replayed the whole scene again and again…picking it apart to try and figure out why the heck I saw this. I really just wanted to find a way to justify dismissing the whole thing as a mistake. But I couldn’t.

I finally determined I had to call him, if I ever hoped to understand.

He was very open, honest and sincere in our first conversation. 

And I was pleasantly surprised to find that he still sounded kind and humble but playful and fun.

The same combination of charm that attracted me to him the first time many years ago.

He told me about the recent death of his mother and all about how he had been the one to find her early that morning.

He talked a lot about his religious belief, a little about his political views, and then just shot the breeze with nonsense…so typical of the young boy I so fondly remembered.

He admitted to me that he had resolved in his life to never marry again. 

And he described for me a regretful trail of failed marriages and lots of other stuff he said he was not proud of.

We talked for almost an hour, mostly about his life and everything he had ever done that he regretted.

I found him to be completely open and sincere. I felt safe.

I can’t remember how it finally came up in the conversation, but just when I had decided I must have imagined the whole darkness thing… he actually brought it up.

 His very words were, “I have a darkness about me Linda”. 

I was stunned that the words fell from his lips so easily…without any prodding from me at all.

Although I was stunned, I tried not to over react, but took his words as my confirmation that what I had seen was indeed his darkness.

So I had seen his darkness…now what?     

Puzzled now are we?

Why would I walk into a relationship where there was darkness?

What good could possibly come from it?

The answer…

At first, I honestly believed that God brought us together because he needed me…this may or may not be true for him…I don’t know for sure. My guess is…he did not need me at all….but you can never really know the power or impact your life might have on someone else.

As for me, my first belief is no longer true...God brought us together because I needed him.

I needed to see his darkness…in order to understand my own.

I needed to love him….in order to know that I desperately need to love myself.

Most people who fall in love find they have a few different ideas or beliefs than their partners. We all view life through the belief systems that we ourselves have created or chosen.

Those of you who have looked into the eyes of a beautiful healthy and lovely little child understand the purity and innocents that accompany that new born into this life.  I believe that this little child has just recently left his home who is God.

God is love, light and balance.

Leaving that world of light and being born into this one…might feel something like waking up in a strange and curiously dark place…not so bad if there is a night light.

For some of us this transition into the world isn’t so bad and seems like a smooth and easy experience.  

First we sit up from our sleep and turn on the night light beside the bed.

Once our eyes have adjusted to this light, we can then move to the light switch on the bedroom wall.

There we can adjust the intensity of the light as our eyes are ready to receive it.

When our eyes have adjusted we are ready to move into the next room or experience.  

This slow moving approach might give you some sense of control.

From this experience you might decide that life isn’t so bad.

Congratulations! You have just established your first belief about your life.  

Another way to enter this life might lead you to a different belief…in fact it may feel like the full blown head-lights-in-your-eyes approach.

This approach to some may feel like life is an on-coming semi on a dark unknown road.

You don’t even have time to see it coming before its glaring in your eyes and piercing your soul.   

The pain is blinding. 

The magnitude of the experience may leave you feeling out of control and that life is a scary place.

You determine right then and there to find a way to deal with being caught off guard the next time.

In this scenario…God bless…you have now formed your first judgment and belief system about life.

No two people on earth will ever have the exact same reaction to any one of life’s thousands of different experiences.

But we will all form belief systems that shade and filter how we see and view life, love, people, relationships and more importantly, ourselves.

We are all walking around with our shades or filters on.  And what is more interesting is that the shades are all different.

Depending on the belief you have determined about your life experiences the darker the filter or shade you might be wearing.

Some shades are pretty dark prepared for the worse of bright lights and others just lightly tinted.

And God bless us…some of us are so accustomed to wearing these filters now that we don’t even realize we have them on.

When I think about what was happening that last night of our relationship now…I realize I was seeing it through my life experiences and beliefs…just as he was seeing it through his.

We were judging the experience through the belief systems we had each created for ourself. Probably beliefs we had chosen many years before we fell in love.

Unfortunately most of us are walking around on the planet still shaded by the first painful exposures of life….Some of us our still viewing life through the sun glasses we created to protect us when we were kids.

 

“You know how to dance in sunlight when everything is going fine, but you have to learn to dance in darkness when the sun is gone and nothing is going well.”
― Therese May

 

Before this relationship…I knew I wasn’t a perfect person…I knew that much. But man…I did not know I was broken. Or that I was capable of darkness.

The pain that was triggered from this realization…sent me desperate to heal it.

After a year I have come to better understand myself, who I am and why I believe the things about relationships that I do.  

More importantly I have come to realize that some of the beliefs I have about relationships, love, life and myself are no longer serving their purpose. And it is time to move on from them.

As a young girl I had a painful experience and in order to deal with the pain of that experience and protect myself I made some decisions about life, love, men, women and me.

And for that young girl, and at that time in my life, I was doing the best I could with the information I had. I had found a way to cope with that pain and successfully moved on past it.

I was a survivor.

As a child, we don’t always get all the information, and even if we do we cannot process it like an adult.

I have come to believe that this was okay…I was doing the best I could.

So, why did I go into that dark relationship???

I was drawn to it…because I needed to learn a new way.

In fact I needed to see the light. I would have never ever seen it against a backdrop of light…it took darkness to bring it more clearly into my focus.

I might have given you the impression that this relationship was toxic, painful and dark and that there was no love there at all…for me that would be the furthest thing from the truth…I loved him as much as I have ever loved anyone.

For me learning about my darkness this way, was like looking up into the night sky and for the first time...seeing the Milky Way…

 I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

There is a light in the darkness…if we are brave enough to look for it…that will lead us to a place of peace and love…a place called home.

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the light that is waiting to find us."