i'm working through my old fiery trials still

I decided to write this blog because I've been in a weird rut in my mind. Lately, it's taken to remembering things in a slanted view point, in attempts to make me feel inadequate, then guilty, for having such memories. But there is a God who loves me and wants to rewrite the memories of my past. I refuse to look at the things that have hurt me and let them continue to hurt me. I'm done with that. I need to forgive, I need to forget. I need to let go. I need to feel freedom for the emotional baggage of things I could not control and cannot change.

About five and a half years ago, my life changed. I was hurt, broken, confused. What did God do?

God surrounded me.  My group of friends surrounded me, prayed over me, let me live in their room (until the school made me move out...), encouraged me, resurrected my inner beauty confidence, rejoiced with me, healed me. God took this time to give me a support group. My soul was bare and bruised, and my friends picked it up, put it back, and tended to it.

God enriched me. I found ways to write out my hurt, move on with my heart. I am better. I can see the world from better eyes, and I have been taught to not settle for the present options if they are mediocre.

God affirmed me.  Despite heartbreak in the beginning of a semester of college, I put my heart into the degree I desired. I worked at it, I learned I grew, and when that broke too, God still affirmed me in my education.

God showed me forgiveness and redemption. I was broken from the brokenness of it all. I was broken from the sin that was there and the heavy duty commitments I had made that were broken.

And God took my heart in His hands, and took my hand and pulled me out of my darkness into an incredible raw real beauty that only He could create. He put the breath back in and tended the fire of passion in my soul and started the engine again. And I picked up speed and I opened my eyes to the world around me as I passed by. And I learned, and I loved and I felt every step again. 

My heart was full again. 

A year and a half later I took a test and I passed. And a treasure began to accumulate inside.

And suddenly I was viewing the world fly by
out of my control,
and I didn't care,
and I didn't want to be doing what I was doing with school
and I just wanted to be married so that the shame and words behind my back wouldn't hurt so badly.

And suddenly my lack of passion and energy caught up to me and dissolved in thousands of tears and feelings of bitterness and betrayal and shame

Everything was blended together and I could see no support from the people I'd looked up to all this time. My friends, my love--they were there for me, but not the people who brought me to that point.

Two professors of mine, at a later time, expressed to me that they opposed the removal of my BSW to a liberal arts with a concentration in Social Work. One, who was on sabbatical at the time felt things would have been different if she'd been there.

But I couldn't--I can't keep dipping into the "what if's" and the "how it could have gone" because that's not how it did go and I can't change it, I couldn't change it.

And I need to let go and let God.

God is still working on me. This was a hard time. These feelings still create a complicated web that I get stuck in, though not as often as I did a few years ago when it happened.

God shows me how to forgive. Although I am stubborn and frustrated (still) by everything that occurred, I begin to look at each person's actions objectively, and begin to understand how each thing happened.

The person that I need to forgive is myself. Even though I did not make the ultimate decisions that removed my intended degree from my possession, and I did not fire myself from my internship, I made decisions that let that happen. I didn't speak up (and I can always give my reasons why, but that still won't change my situation) that my internship wasn't going well. I didn't tell my male professor leading the internship coordination that I was pregnant. I worked hard and things still fell apart because the few places where I didn't work hard were the places that the people who mattered noticed the most and felt were the most important.

God is unfailing. I think the hardest thing to say about this whole situation despite it's outcome is that I didn't fail. I didn't. I did my job, I worked hard. I did my homework, I contributed to class, and I was exhausted and nauseous everyday and I was over-blamed for things that happened, and I was uncomfortable with confiding in my male professor that I was pregnant, and I thought that I had made better connections with the leadership at my internship than I did, and before I knew it, everything had flip-flopped and I was sitting in my car, with tears continually running down my face trying to pick up the pieces and figure out how I was going to tell my professor, and friends, and family that I had been fired, because it was as much of a surprise for me.

It is easy to say now that everything was over-reacted. It's like my internship supervisor and my professor and all the people who looked at the evidence provided were on the pregnancy hormones running through my veins at the time. And the decisions that they made, several times through voting, broke my heart.

So my grief in this time was not just for the loss of an arrangement of words on my official transcript, but the loss of trust and support from a professor I thought was on my side.

And even in this time, God was seeking me and working to heal me. I was feeling it. I sought the word of God, but it was hard to pray because I was holding so much of this inside, every time I set myself to open my soul to God the grief would spill out.

And I do care that people see that I am alright, and I wanted to be alright and to be done with it and through it, but when I was by myself in our home with our baby with no one to talk to, I would relive these events again, and feel it like it was just a few days ago.

And God. So I still ask myself if I see the conclusion of this event in my mind. Other old, hard memories have been settled. I can't decide if time or remediation or prayer or counseling or something else would give me peace and strength--so I would see the growth and gains I have made from this time.

and of course I can see them--two beautiful children. A strong marriage. a different city, a different state (this helps, of course). Success in other areas, no longer desiring to work in social work (this is a growth, I think, recognizing in myself that I take others stories and apply them to my own family much too easily). Embracing motherhood and the true joys of not having to leave my children to work. Understanding my great desires to work the soil in my garden and grow things.

and I move on. I have worked hard to let Scripture come alive for me and fill my soul so that I gain strength from it. I have written songs that have been better prayers for me. I am a different woman than I was four years ago. Consistently coming back to Scripture until I let the words enter through the cracks in the callus I built up from not wanting to be hurt anymore.

God humbled me. God prepared me. God heals me. God was there in the car when I saw the storm crash around me. He was in the office with me when my degree changed. He was walking beside me every time someone from school took note of my growing belly. He prepared me to overcome my strong emotions and challenges to have a healthy labor.

God is healing me. God is guiding me. 

and I can choose to look at it this way.