Whatever is loving, wholesome, and true in your day today! Have you shared God’s goodness with someone else?
I am weary. I have been writing and revising my manuscript for four years now. In writing a memoir, there is the apparent need to go back through the trauma experienced. I have found continued healing while going through this process of writing. The positives are that this going back also reinforces the lessons, techniques and prayer practices that have brought me out of darkness into a world of recovery and true freedom.
Continue reading “Moments of Weariness in our Journey”
Is our inner voice original thought, or guided by someone or something else? If you found your way here, you have experienced abuse or trauma in some capacity. Your mind may be battling with you daily, obsessive thoughts try to guide you one way, blocking your desire to go another way. It can encompass self-destructive beliefs, self-destructive behaviors, addiction, fear, chronic nightmares. Your anxious thoughts trigger your, PTSD symptoms. An inner voice that continually judges and condemns, “You are flawed, less than, or of no value to anyone including yourself, unlovable, unforgivable, a phony.” Our inner voice usually consists of our own internal beliefs that have been given to us, the enemies voice of conviction, and the voice of our Creator who is forever calling us to peace and fulfillment.
Continue reading “DISCERNMENT: Our Inner Voice — Friend or Foe”
I can see the beauty of being a rock in God’s creation. Not a sedentary rock, for when unearthed, I would be moved from place to place. At times, hidden and forgotten. Then a twist of fate would unearth me again. For a time, placed as the centerpiece in a garden. Jagged, rough edges in the beginning, but the friction of life and torrent rains refined and polished me. Now my destination is assured as I have become a paperweight sitting prominently on God’s desk. My polished shine radiates with reflective light attracting others to be soothed by my cool smoothness. This smoothness with signs of wear offers many opportunities, sometimes to bring others beauty, sometimes to help others offering foundational support, and at all times, to be still and take in the beauty that surrounds me in His garden.
Victim. We should only be allowed to use this word to describe a moment in time where something was done to us that was out of our control. It should be an adjective to describe our experience in a tragedy, not to define our character. That moment does not define us. It can mold us, but we have the choice to allow it to continue to victimize us and be subjected to the powerlessness of that situation or we have the ability to become a warrior.
Continue reading “VICTIM”
After what we have experienced in secret the idea of being exposed is quite painful. Had we not already had our bodies exposed to lustful eyes and hands? Yes! However the illumination I speak of has an opposite and profound effect on returning to our pre-abuse identity. Leading us out of a fear filled lonely place to a place of joy filled resilience and healing.
Continue reading “EXPOSED TO LIGHT”
Find your healing space. Create your haven. When organizing a home for clients, where there was hoarding or just messy chaos, I would first carve out a place for the client. To be a refuge from their inner trauma or their addiction to hoarding. Maybe they needed a place to escape the chaos from a partner or child that was troubled with alcoholism, codependency, or other unhealthy tendencies.
Continue reading “A HAVEN FOR HEALING”
Father Richard Shares……Today I share a contemplative poem from CAC friend and writer Felicia Murrell. Felicia’s words combine a deep awareness of God’s presence while clearly naming the collective trauma of police brutality and lynchings. It is worth remembering, as Black liberation theologian James Cone (1938–2018) points out, that the lynchings of African Americans and the crucifixion of Jesus share much in common: “Both the cross and the lynching tree were symbols of terror, instruments of torture and execution, reserved primarily for slaves, criminals, and insurrectionists—the lowest of the low in society.” [1] There is something about poetry that gives us permission to sit with the paradoxes of our pain, perhaps especially when addressing traumatic suffering. I invite you to read Felicia’s challenging words slowly, allowing your heart to break open to God’s love amidst the suffering of the world.
Continue reading “Trauma and Silence”
Untangling the cords of anger that ran through my days, a bulging red knot was revealed.
Tugging harder, looking for the free end that would release me, the knot became inflamed with purple hues.
Continue reading “Anger in Radiant Spectrum”
An account in Exodus finds Moses’ people grumbling at their accommodations in the wilderness. They are in the wilderness due to rebellion and yet Moses cries out to God, asking to supply them with food and water. He is instructed by God to strike his staff on the rock and water would flow. Did they need another intervention, another miracle? Well, the folks who drank from this streaming rock had already been rescued from slavery, through a parted sea! They continued to worship other gods-idols, and so remained dissatisfied, demanding, and disloyal to the Creator of all. Boy-oh-boy, if we saw such a miracle would we not believe in that God?
Spiritual Bondage and dissatisfaction go hand in hand. The shadow of death entices us to desire things that will lead us to dissatisfaction and death. The very things we desire; turn against us if not from God. Allow me to take you back to when I was wandering in the wilderness.
Continue reading “WATER FROM A ROCK”
As if a Jack-in-a-Box opened its lid, the fragments of a young girl’s life were now being exposed refusing to stay dormant and silent. Therapists far and wide have seen enough to identify the Lady Jayne, part of me as the “Child Within”. A young girl, so damaged she had forgotten to grow up was trying to be heard. When I started the AA program and was offered literature from a friend on the subject, I must admit I foo-fooed the idea. Child within? Nonsense! Well before you foo-foo it, allow Lady Jayne to tell her tale.
Continue reading “LADY JAYNE, “READY OR NOT HERE I COME””