Lose Your Hurts and Your Offenses

I feel stuck. If you look at the past week of my blog writings you will see that I seem to be going in a downward spiral. I guess that is not really that I am stuck but moving downward. On the positive side I am moving. I am making my point clear? I am running in circles. And heading down.

I am Stuck - My Junk

And the whole point could be that I am focuses on me.

I thought this 40 days was supposed to have me focus on God. I keep wanting to say, “Ugh!” but that does not sound like something an educated writer would say. But “UGH” expresses what I can currently verbalize.

Another positive note is the more I move down, I can only improve as the days eventually go on.

So I dread looking at the next two topics in our church’s 40 day devotional: hurt and offenses.

Some things have happen in the past few days that is causing me to be “off.”  The top shelf in our bedroom closest came crashing down. The Closetmaid braces pulled out of the walls and most of them simply snapped. The plastic was old, brittle and could not withstand the weight. So the clothes and boxes of stuff on the top shelf fell to the ground. As soon as I heard the sound I went in my room and began saving first my husband’s dress shirts and suits. I made piles of nicely stacked clothes all over our king size bed. And today, several days later these piles are still on our bed and the closet is still torn apart. “UGH!”

Positively, I do have a bunch of clothes and stuff. (I am trying to make the best of this, badly, but trying.)

One of the boxes I took from the very corner of the top shelf was heavy so I wondered what could possibly be in it. Opening the lid I discovered it filled with everything that had to do with abuse... child abuse...my child abuse, and copies I had made from library books on parenting and abuse, and copies of letters I had written my parents (I am not sure if I mailed them or not) and a huge manuscript that I had written in the 1980s about my childhood and so many other things that had been buried in the top shelf corner of the closest for a decade or more. “UGH!!”

As people do that have PTSD and other mental conditions related to shattering trauma I have been off kilter.

There I said it.
I am struggling.
My mind is rattled and so are my thoughts.

I am running in this direction and that but I am running, running, running... anything to keep me from focusing. I am agitated, easily made irritable and mentally beating up on myself. I have slept so much, eleven hours last night and that was after five hours during the day. Yes, I have been so NEGATIVE the past few days. Negative, irritable, avoiding, disassociating ... wanting to do anything but focus.

Breathe

“Breath” by mechtaniya Deviantart

Wow! In typing that I was able to take a HUGE deep cleansing breath.

I don’t have a great godly or theological point I am writing about. I am just being real, raw, me... and this is helping so much to get me unstuck.

God pours out his grace and love on me. 
He cuddles me,
And loves me, 
regardless of the condition of my psyche at the precise moment. 

And how much I wish as a church, fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, that we could be like Christ in this way.

I wish people would just wrap their arms around me, pour grace all over me and love me through times like this. I do have friends and my own husband and children that do this, but I wish this was something we as a church were continually ready to do. We all have our histories, our quirks, our issues that stir up the yuck inside that God is still perfecting. We all need grace and love that is supremely bigger than our mess.

Bible

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3).

“Be on your guard. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and comes back to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him” (Luke 17:3-4).

Should I have started with these verses? It might have helped me to focus on God and not me. Sometimes we have to dig out of our stuff, tossing it here and there, work through it so that the light of God’s Word can pierce into our negativity. 

I need to let these verses help me turn my attention to God’s ability to help me when I hurt. One of the biggest mountains that anyone has to overcome is forgiving a person who has hurt him or her. And forgiveness is not something that is a one time act but a way of living. It is the balm, the salve, the medication we need to heal deep wounds. 

Hurts are real, therefore we NEED a God that is REAL and ABLE to heal us. And Jehovah God is! He is who has says he is. He is Jehovah-Rapha, the LORD that Heals! But healing is not magical, it is most always a process that we walk in day by day. 

I wish I could go deeper today but that is all I have.