Hello everyone. I do hope your January 2011 is going well. Keeping any of your New Year Resolutions? lol It's pretty tough unless you've picked a couple that are easily do-able.
I've done just that and it feels as though I'm picking up some steam by actually accomplishing it. To explain what that is would probably bore a lot of people, but for me this is a significant indication of an improvement in me. I began my "resolution" about a week before Jan. 1. I have a book collection that I have never read. Books have been given and have been bought. However, I was not able to pick one up and read it because I felt guilty taking the time to read when always there is something among my possessions that needs to be put in order. Never a settled enough thought to let go and read. I had no concentration.
A few months ago I experienced a break-up with someone who simply stopped wanting to talk to me and who found something to accuse me of which I am completely innocent and always have been. I was called the "c" word and whatever threads had remained since the previous no-talking-to time, broke. And, along with them my spirit-flame appeared entirely extinguished. After so much abandonment, abuse, neglect, being lied to, beginning with my parents, and ending with someone I thought was a friend, I chose to live my life out on my own. I didn't know who I was; I'd tried to fit in, to become something acceptable so I could "belong" - only to be so stripped of any remaining dignity that I didn't see myself as anything.
As I slogged through the days alternately longing to hear that voice at the end of the phone line and dreading to hear it (I've blocked my phone from any calls), I returned, like the prodigal son, to my Bible for comfort and support and strengthening. It is the ONLY thing that got me through.
After a long period of time I felt my spirit-flame was alive, just deeply buried. The icy hold of fear and sorrow and resentment began to yield. Then suddenly one day I felt a surge of energy to purge. "Why am I keeping all of these books? I need to get rid of them!" As I went through the shelves I found maybe one I could let go of; all the others remained to appear full of the potential that originally drew me to them. Okay, so getting rid of them wasn't the answer - READING them was.
I moved to the other side of my full-size bed where the wall lamp is. I put a tiny table next to the bed that now holds a 'cube' radio/clock, a compact CD player, and a couple of books I chose to start with - a beloved hymnal, and Judith Isaacson's Seed of Sarah - not knowing whether I would be able to concentrate on the words. Yikes!!
I've now read four books. They're not big books - they just call to me "I'm next!" The windowsill next to my bed has a small row of books waiting to be read.
My spirit began to rise up through the ice built up through the decades. I had hoped that the one I came to love (and fear) would help bring me through the glacier, but instead the ice got thicker, the controlling, the verbal and emotional and psychological abuse continued - it was a burial. I realized that I was going to have to make it, looking only to Father-Mother, God to lift me, for Christ to shepherd me. Or I would die of a broken heart. I knew this to be so.
However, I am a mountain flower - an edelweiss, an alpine lily. My birth was a struggle, and emerging always has been - but breaking through the ice to reach the sun is something I've done again and again. I was born amid alpine snow.
Where am I going with this? - I have always been a 'cheerleader' - encouraging others, giving my version of rah-rah-rah; I have been an enabler, learning to be one since childhood. I don't mean learning to be a kind person - I mean one who enables others to continue their harmful, self-centered ways at my expense. Well, after reading and finding that I not only could concentrate, but that I hungered for accomplishment and was rewarded for the effort, new views on how I could live a happier life began to open up! I saw, and with my true friends' help as well, that I had worth just as I am - that I'm okay just - the - way - I - am! That was a frustration to me for a long time because I didn't know who I was; the 'me' only they saw.
One morning I realized that I had to stop being everybody's cheerleader and be my own. Since the pompom waving is a decades-long activity (lol) I am learning slowly how to back off trying to enable.
Things are slowly improving for me, but I know that the direction is good. Of course, to continue improving more purging is needed - it's not all about books, I know. But in the reading of the books my world is opening up to the beauties contained in them. I am healing. I do hope that these words help others; if not, oh well, it's MY story. :)
I wish you all well.
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