What if all the pain and disappointment in life could all be used for good in ways unseen, unknown? In the process of sorrows usefulness, could there even be joy? Peace? Letting go? I followed a prompting, that I know in my heart to be true and good. I left my home and traveled hundreds of miles away, with the hope that the questions above would be proven true again in my life, little did I know, I would find answers with deeper healing and clarity than ever before. If what they say is true, the greatest indicator of a person's future behavior is found in previous behavior, then trusting a prompting from an unseen source of love and guidance had not lead me wrong thus far.
It has been two years since this latest journey had started, but more than likely this unseen source of love and guidance has been leading me all my life whether I was asking for guidance or not.
It takes time to look back and examine one's own life. When you're a small child you don't quite understand the difficult dynamics of parents corals and their raising many children. When you're a child you might not fully get what happens to the integrity of a family when tragedy and trauma strikes. Mental illness, addiction another trauma can have a splintering effect on the entire family. When you're a kid you might not get your family's lack of attentiveness to you is not a true measure of your worth, your lovableness as a person. When you're an adolescent you don't understand that you seek out in your friendships the belonging that you lack in your family when fate dealt its hand. You just don't get that partying at a young age is just an attempt to fill the void of a fractured family. You don't have the foresight to know that working several hours at a young age would years later result workaholism. You're not quite equipped when an older guy is sweet on you, that you're not emotionally ready to handle intimacy and betrayal, and that further attempts to be loved would still result in heartbreak. This may or may not be something that you can relate to, I certainly can.
It wasn't until I started to look back at my life while breeching the edge of adulthood, gleaning wisdom from different elders along the way, did I start to understand that the events in my early life would somehow shape the trajectory of my choices in the future. I suppose that these experiences helped to form in me the perseverance that it took to face the next seasons of my life. Even with insight, and new found faith I still ventured to receive from lovers what I did not receive in younger years, resulting in much shame and regret. Trials and tribulations of working and studying and volunteering, seasons of recovery, and searching out my ancestral past, resulting in the discovery of my southern kinsman, that these events prepared me for the joys of marriage but also the tragedy of abandonment and divorce.
Yet again, faith and hope steadied my gate to take a deep dive into the heart of community where I have found deep healing and strength to make bigger risks for the kingdom of heaven, and to take a shot at a chance to find earthly love.
During a walk a faith, you just don't know what's around the corner. Little did I know that I would taste again the bitter and the sweet of hopes and dreams deferred, dreams of community and intimate love. Yet at the same time, being tenderly loved on by unsuspected people, sheltering me as I grieved and mourned all of my losses more thoroughly than ever before. And in so doing, discovering the roots of anger and bitterness in my heart.
I could not have foreseen that the journey of hundreds of miles South would result in the sweetest spot that the Holy Spirit has ever guided me to. There's no way that I could have predicted the strength and the confidence and the love and the joy and the peace that I feel from my God. I am seeing more clearly then ever before, that it is He who has planted dreams in my heart and that it is He that will draw them out and bring them forth into fruition, according to His kingdom's purposes. There's no turning back now. It's time to enjoy every second on life's rollercoaster.
