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Thanks for visiting my diary. I've been journaling since 1984 and have chosen to share some of my entries online. They are not all positive thoughts, but I hope that reading them might be a blessing to someone who needs encouragement.
If you are just coming to my diary for the first time, please read my introductory entry, where I share some background that is important if you plan to follow this diary regularly.
Please also visit my music page, where you can hear samples from my debut CD, I Believe, which features songs written based on experiences shared in this journal.
I am sitting here, about to close this thing up and go to bed, and I am completely blown away by God's ability to heal hurts. For the past month or so, I have been pretty much processing one memory after another. There are scattered memories from very early years which have apparently been dissociated for whatever reason. Most of these are only moderately significant. I doubt they are the kind of things which would have had an effect on a person if she had not learned to question the availability of emotional support and the stability of her environment. But from very early in life, I was presented withsituations in which comfort was not immediately available to me. I learned to experience trauma alone, but apparently I must have received comfort at least intermittently because I also learned to hope that comfort would come. I also learned to dissociate. These very early experiences taught me to respond to life's traumas and my own needs and feelings in certain ways. I'm not just talkingabout dissociation here. I'm talking about a whole slew of things which I won't go into in this post. That's for some other writing.
All of these issues came to a head within the last three weeks. I reached a point where several issues met and ran together, kind of like a crossroads. I could not stop dealing with them; for when one thing began to heal, I was left to sort through the ripples it had made through the waters of my life. Sometimes the emotional effects of previous traumas cause me to have difficulty processing present stress or trauma. When enough of these things stack up, the stack becomes a very heavy weight. ... I have been moody, frightened, almost to the point that I was becoming unable to separate present events from the memories they triggered.
Finally, I had to do something about it. Oh, I had prayed about it, but not to the point where I was literally on my knees and in tears over it. I reached that point yesterday. I learned a lot of things about prayer then, and I'll eventually write them out. But what I learned most is that when I reach a point like the one I reached yesterday, when I can no longer tolerate life without God's intervention, and when I am willing to admit to Him with my entire being that I absolutely cannot manage this stuff on my own, He is right here and will more than meet my needs.
I do not understand what happened today. I do not understand how I can move from such incredible feelings of social and emotional isolation and deprivation to a total peace and acceptance of being here, physically alone. I just know that I have. I just know that I cannot pray a one-time prayer for healing of these issues. I know that I must pray the prayer every day, every time I am faced with the issues. The purpose of the prayer isn't necessarily to get God's attention. It is to remind me Who is in control, to make myself look straight in His face and realize that He is my strength and help and comfort. Only then can I trust in Him rather than in my own self. Only then can I feel Him with me. I can't feel Him if I haven't taken the time to communicate with Him and ask Him to be here.
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