Looking back.

Returning to an old journal, I pick it up and scan the writing inked over 5 years ago. My days were full of motherhood, sunshine and being a wife. The years I lived by the sea are held, frozen in time. I transitioned from being a child, to having my own in just a few short years. I welcomed my first son, just a month after my own 22d birthday. Looking back, I wish I had allowed myself more freedom to enjoy the fast changes that were happening all around me. Rushing ahead, out of hurt and into a new season of hope, I left home.

From age 16 through 19 I lived through so much life, I was left reeling as I drove back and forth from mountain town to seaside town, pursuing something new. I was raised in a small town, attended a small church, and graduated from a small Christian high school with 65 other students. Finding myself as a wife by 20 and a mother at 22, I hadn’t yet processed all those formative years.

Healing comes in waves, but before the healing can happen, you have to admit you were wounded.

Yes, I was indeed living wounded.

Being 31 now, as I type this, I think I have held in so much of my story in hopes of protecting other people. In doing so, part of me was left behind. I wonder how many of us haven’t acknowledged our pain in fear we would hurt others? Surely I can’t be the only one.

I witnessed cancer take my favorite teachers life. Leaving me so fearful of hospitals I refused to visit even my own family members who found themselves there. I had a mentor reject me, call me all kinds of horrible names, and leave me because I was such a disappointment-at 17. I was thrown headlong into a relationship that left me utterly wrecked, taking years to unpack all that happened to my heart and mind during its short 3 year lifespan. During those three years, I was accused of hateful actions, humiliated and slandered, I loved friends and lost friends. I watched a married woman attempt an affair with my then boyfriend. I was looked over, passed by, and rejected by so many. Looking back, I was shattered, I never understood how I would begin to move forward. I did, one day at a time. I allowed the pieces to fit back together. I learned how to call the season of life hard, I learned to acknowledge the good, and the bad, and let it just be.

The waves of healing came, surge after painful surge. It took years to learn what that season had for me. The lessons I’ve learned are still with me. They inform my parenting, how I care for people, the way I see challenges, and I am still being hit in the face with waves of healing.

The pounding hurts at first, like trying to paddle out past the shore break.

One crashing wave after another leaves you exhausted. Once you make it past the break, and you are floating in the still waters beyond the shore, you can see a bigger picture.

Don’t let the shore break, the big threatening unknown, keep you wounded. I hope you take this small amount of honesty as an encouragement to go back. To ask, “Why?” “Why was that so painful? Why was I so bitterly disappointed?” Allow the healing to wash over you as you get to the root. The future has more in store for you. You don’t want to miss it, being so distracted you can’t enjoy it, or learn from it.

Saturate yourself in today.

I don’t want to keep rushing forward, it’s so much more challenging to wade into the past and find your joys and hurts there if you never took the time to taste them. My hope is that I’ll do a better job of processing my life as it comes.