heartbeat: God did not forget me.

Hello All,

I'm back at the "heartbeat" series this week with the segment, "God did not forget me."

I've been talking quite a bit about process. It's either about processing or working through a process and most of it has to do with healing on some level. Yet, I'd like to tap into an area that coming up for me as I create more vulnerability and trust in my life, and that is baggage. I've noticed that with someone I care about that the more I let this person come into my vulnerable places that I'm coming out of my comfort zone and into places were I either have a first defense to build a wall, be strong, or feel the need to analyze over and over how I'm sorting things between what my intellect knows to do and what my baggage shows up to do. I talked about the trauma self at some point previously and this was part of my armor in life because I'd gone from feeling naturally confident and more secure in my twenties to living life with more risks and setbacks in my 30's that created a harder shell in my 40's. You tell yourself that you're never going to go through that kind of pain again of constant rejection, isolation, and harm, so slowly, it becomes easier to build an armor that not many will ever have the chance to get into safely. Then someone comes along who might like to break that armor down and you can no longer act confident about how to navigate. You may not be the one completely in charge. This is where I found myself recently. Someone wanted to get to know me better. Someone had created a safe space for me to heal. Then, I'm sitting there wondering how to navigate something that is not completely foreign to me, but life had told me not to trust it because the people always leave. So, I was forced to reckon with that issue of abandonment and what the years of doing things alone had done to my psyche. I had trouble trusting that someone would be there and stay. So, I've had to deal with that lately and figure myself out around that. I function in my normal life and I've figured out how to do so much on my own because a door wouldn't open or someone wouldn't help, and I had to figure out how to get from point A to point B without someone guiding or helping me get there. Don't take this the wrong way, I've had many helpers in my life, and I've always been grateful for those intermittent people who come in, do their thing to help solve a problem, and go on their way. The problem is that same thing: The leaving. I've gotten used to it, really too used to it, so much so that my brain is absolutely not trained for someone staying and a relationship going deeper with any sort of dependability. That's why my spiritual life became so important that that God was always front and center. It's why I pray so much. Nothing has ever stayed in my life so consistently through all of my hardships more than God has. If anyone ever steps into my life as a life partner, I've realized that I may not know what to do with it for awhile. I used to know how to do partnership, the ebb and flow of day to day life with someone you care about. I know what it looks like and feels like. I know what it's like to work on a relationship to give it whatever you can to make it better and sort out problems so you both build a stronger partnership. The problem was that it wasn't coming into my life again so I could experience it. It felt like it was being stolen from me, and I couldn't believe that God would forget me in this journey. God has never forgotten me. So, I realized that people were forgetting, not God. It was that I was traveling through life building some really deep and profound life skills, but I'm at this juncture that I simply don't want to do it alone anymore and I will fight to kick out the distractions until God aligns me with my future husband that is healthy for me. I won't stop until God opens up the pathway to make this occur, so it meant that I've had to make God really huge in my life. Not church. God. Church was a place of so much harm and hurt for me, that I've had to turn to God to try to heal the broken pieces. I realized that I've had all this love and I've needed to put it somewhere. I put it into my work. I've been rebuilding my life and health after finally having the courage to report a 14 year old sexual assault. I've dug deep into my healing of PTSD. I've rearranged my life to become more sustainable by refusing to constantly do so much for free. I've stepped back from making more public influence and I've stepped more into making my life and my body whole. I simply don't want to miss out on having a family after feeling so broken from the experience of my own. I'd like to put chapters of pain behind me because I have too many of them and I am ready for genuine joy. I think it's unfair that rape survivors are expected to never have joy and I'm not looking to have this experience and the resulting setbacks define my life. God has never forgotten me, and God won't forget me now. I've invited God into this because it's important. This is a soul journey and a life journey. It should be life giving and special, and we should care for our life and hold it precious, along with the people who come into our lives to help us heal. God has never forgotten me, and yet my mind was constantly focused on the people who were constantly forgetting me. It was a mental construct and a huge load of mental baggage that was defining my daily thoughts and coping mechanisms rather than allowing myself to walk into a life with people who didn't abuse me so much. This is the heartbeat series, and it's calling me into vulnerable spaces that are more present. It's asking me to trust more, listen more, and get my brain out of old baggage. I just knew that I was tired of a negative energy that wasn't of God trying to dominate my life when I have someone important and special to me trying to teach me that I'm worth it. I had to really be present to all the little signs and all the little things that this person was doing to communicate something deeper to me. God has shown up in the person right in front of me so that I could see and feel what it was like to have this experience close to me again. It was all the little things, and things we can sometimes take for granted if you don't take the time to see and appreciate that God answered a prayer right in front of you. I don't know where the road is going to lead yet, but I feel a special gratitude that this person has shown up in my life to help me close the chapter on abandonment for these moments. Like I mentioned before, it's 100,000 steps or more to the outcome I'd like to see, but for now, I don't want to miss a thing. I pray that I see all these small things and that I can give back the small things to help this person feel worthy too. There's something special in appreciating one another for the day to day messages of love and care that tells someone that he or she is not forgotten. That's God showing up. That's God's energy. That's God saying that you can lean and count on something deeper to be there for you. I'm starting to feel this again, or at least I am trying. I notice that I am a better clinician and teacher when I feel my worth and that the outside world starts to represent what I have been hoping and praying for. It's like God showing up to say hello, and I'm so grateful. It helps me, and I hope we can feel more of this during this year of this "heartbeat" series. Thank you God for showing up in all the ways I needed you. I hope I can be patient, listening, and wise with the blessings you walk into my life.

Until next time,

God bless,

Jennifer