Ok, so I had a moment this morning. I could say an "ah ha" moment, but I won't. I tend to have a very odd opinion of the "ah ha" moment. I hear people say they have them and I find myself feeling sorry for them. I have those moments everyday. The moment when you learn something big that you previously hadn't known and possibly even big enough to be life altering. My opinion is that if you aren't having those moments everyday, then your life has grown stagnant and you aren't learning something new each day.
Oh boy...let me not get sidetracked!
I believe I have said this before, but it deserves repeating. Music is a powerful resource in my life. That's the simplest way to say it.
On several occasions, friends have told me the song "Blessings" by Laura Story reminded them of me. One friend was even so sweet as to email me the lyrics. Maybe the lines in the chorus "What if a thousand sleepless nights, are what it takes to know you're near?" reminds them of me. Maybe it is the lines "What if trials of this life, are Your mercies in disguise?" I suppose either could be possible since most people who know me could easily apply those lines to me.
The line least impactful was "What if your healing comes through tears?" It would be a rarity for anyone to have seen me in tears. From 1993 - 2007, I think I could count on one hand the number of times I had cried. I certainly couldn't see anyway this line was true.
I love the song and listen to it often. Today was a completely different experience. It was as if the melody was playing, but the only line I heard was "What if your healing comes through tears?" Long after the song was over, the line was dancing over every other thought I was having. Why was this one line blaring through my internal megaphones?
My life was lived up until August 2007 as if my past did not exist. On August 4th, I watched my mom humiliate my niece in front of me by showing me her tiny and severely bruised legs. My niece cowered down in shame while my mom laughed hysterically. The dam which safely held my past at bay abruptly broke.
I began to watch, feel and hear a life playing in front of me that was horrific. The stories were unreal and the little girl in them was me. I knew the girl was me because this horror show felt real, as if I were living it just as it was happening. I would much later learn what I was experiencing were flashbacks. Flashbacks are a very real part of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD for short.
Not only did my dam break which contained my past, my dry as desert eyes became flowing rivers. I cried for days. Up to that point in my life, I don't think I had any memory of ever crying this much. I would cry all day, all night, and wake up crying.
Just three days after the dam broke, I headed to the church counselor believing she would get these tears to stop and I'd be on my way back to a blissfully ignorant life where the past didn't exist again. That didn't happen!!!
"What if your healing comes through tears?"
The dam burst so the tears came. The tears came so I began a journey. The journey came so I could begin to heal. Had the tears not come, I might have missed the journey to healing. And there was my moment. My tears hadn't brought the healing, but instead brought me to the starting point of healing. That, my friends, is a moment of clarity and understand; learning and worth remembering.
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