Category Archives: Healing

Sorrow From the Sandlot

Posted on by
Reply

This morning I found out that my childhood best friend lost her father yesterday.  I haven’t stayed in close touch with Dawn over the years, but she was my best friend during the best years of my childhood.  In the late 70s, we had moved from California to Little Rock, AR as a result of my dad’s job.  Dawn was the first friend I made, and it seems we almost instantly became fast friends.  We spent three years in Arkansas – just three years out of my 48 – but those three years were the best years of my childhood.  Sometimes I think they were the best three years of my life.  I was at an age where I was old enough to be allowed to go out, run around the neighborhood and woods, and play without supervision – living a  tomboy’s dream.  But I was young enough that I didn’t know all of the bad things that could happen or were going on in the world.  There was a lot of upheaval, as there always is in life, and yet for me, none really existed.  It was just a great time in a great place with the best of friends.

Dawn DeannaDawn and I both had a strong tomboy spirit.  We didn’t mind getting dirty and we played football and all kinds of other sports.  We even competed together against a bunch of boys in a Punt, Pass and Kick competition.  I’m pretty competitive, and so was Dawn, so when she beat me in that competition, I wasn’t real happy about it.  What I was happy about was that she and I took 1st and 2nd place in a competition in which we were the only girls.  It’s one of my great memories, and the truth is we were girls who could kick butt!

Dawn had an amazing family.  She had the most beautiful mom of any friend I ever had.  She was stunning, and she was kind.  I didn’t spend much time with Dawn’s dad.  I dare say, he probably didn’t even remember me after a number of  years went by, but I remembered him.  I remembered the family he led and raised, of his influence on his family and what wonderful people they all were as a result.  Over the years after we moved back to CA, I lost touch with Dawn until 16 years later when we reconnected.  We spoke on the phone and said we would stay in touch, but then like most people do, we got busy with our lives and lost touch again.  It would be another 12 years or so before we eventually reconnected on Facebook, and in doing so have been able to keep up with each other’s lives even though we haven’t seen each other in more than 30 years, nor have we spoken voice-to-voice since that day in 1996.  Facebook can be a curse sometimes, but in circumstances like this, it is a blessing beyond belief!

So this morning, when I found out about her dad’s passing, I was surprised at how it affected me.  I just sat there and cried and cried, brokenhearted for her, her mom and her family. Pucek family I’ve experienced a lot of loss in life, and I’m always touched and have deep sympathies for the loved ones that are left behind, but this was different.  Maybe it’s because I’m dealing with my own aging parents and the health struggles they endure.  That is a reality my generation is now facing with our parents, aunts and uncles.  We don’t like to think about the losses that may be coming in our own lives, so it hits us harder when that reality is right in front of us.  But it is more than just that piece.  This loss affected someone incredibly important to me, with whom I have such a deep connection in my heart and spirit.  Someone whose friendship I have carried with me and inside my heart all these years.  This loss reminded me of something, and not just the truth of how painful loss can be.  It reminded me of how special and uplifting true connections of the heart can be.  It reminded me that when you love and care about someone, it transcends time, space, and circumstances.  It makes them a special kind of chosen family.  Our experiences with them shape our lives.  They open a vault in our memory in which these experiences are placed, and it lasts forever.  It preserves them forever.

Both Dawn and I have undoubtedly gone through many things in our lives that have been difficult to endure.  Difficult losses or the challenges that come with day to day living.  But you know what?  She is my friend.  In movie terms, she is my “Sandlot” friend, my “Stand By Me” friend.  And today, she and her family are grieving.  Today I weep and I grieve with them.  I honor the life of my dear friend’s father and lift prayers for the entire family and all the friends whose lives he (and they) have touched.

So today, I want to remind you all to take a few moments and open the vault that contains all the memories of those meaningful relationships and amazing friendships you’ve had over the course of your life.  If you are still in touch with them, remind them of how much they have meant to you and the difference they made in your life.  If you have no idea where they are or what ever happened to them, stop and send up positive thoughts and prayers of gratitude for their role in your world.

shutterstock_184599686The movie “Stand By Me” ends with the following words:  “It happens sometimes.  Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in restaurants. … I never had any friends later on like I the ones I had when I was twelve.  Jesus, does anyone?”

Much love and prayers for the Don Pucek family

And blessings to everyone.

Letting Go Instead Of Holding On

Posted on by
Reply

Tonight I am having a hard time getting my thoughts to “gel.”  There are pieces of creativity, phrases, melodies, images that are passing through my mind but none of them seem to rest long enough for me to make sense of them.  It’s like trying to catch the wind and hold it in your hands.  You can’t hold it; you can only feel it, and those two things are very different.  Holding something and feeling something require different things.  One requires energy and activity, while the other simply requires a willingness to be open.   One is achieved through effort and endurance, while the other is achieved through being still and present.   I know it may seem like I’m just rambling, but tonight, I feel a little entitled to do so.

It seems lately my life has been filled with different aspects of death and grief.  Some of it has been people I know who have lost loved ones.  Some of it has been the loss of people in my own world or people who have been seriously ill.  Today I attended the funeral of a cousin-in-law that I never met.  In doing so, I got to meet the rest of that branch of the family tree and immediately felt a connection to them.  I sat in the service, moved to tears both for the beauty of her life and the loss I felt in never having known her personally.   It made me remember all the losses I’ve had over the course of my own life.

shutterstock_3066153After the service, I went to another cemetery to pay my respects to someone I loved very dearly.  I hadn’t gone to this particular grave because it is quite a distance from my home, and I’m not one to hang out in cemeteries.  After all, burial places hold nothing more than the earthly shell of the people we love.  Today I was not too far from the final resting place of my loved one’s remains, so I felt compelled to make the trip.  Upon my arrival at the mausoleum, I searched and searched but to no avail.  I finally asked for help from the cemetery in locating my loved one.  It took much longer than I expected, and then the response hit me like a ton of bricks.  My loved one’s remains had been placed in a community crypt without any identification to the outside world.  It bothered me.  It sat in my heart like a lead weight as I stood in front of the unmarked crypt.  It hurt, and I struggled deeply with trying to square what I believe about death with what I was feeling at the moment.  That isn’t always an easy thing to do.

We all lose people we love at one point or another.  We feel the sting of death and the pain that comes with being separated from the physical presence of the ones we love.  We attend funerals and memorial services to honor their lives, and then we each find our own ways of navigating through the subsequent grief process.  I have found, no matter what the process looks like for each of us, there is one common thing we experience:  the struggle between holding on and letting go.  It seems to be an ebb and flow, but even after many years, we find ourselves still faced with moments of trying to decide when to hold on and when to let go.  When we lose someone we love, our instinct is to hold on.  We hold onto physical items such as clothing, gifts or other items that he/she touched, or things that smell like them.  Our longing for that person to still be with us makes us grasp at whatever we can to keep them here in some way.  We don’t just hold on, we cling.  We sometimes hold so tightly that our knuckles turn white and we lose feeling in our hands, and yet we still can’t find the strength to let go.  Letting go seems like it will only magnify our loss, and we will be left with nothing at all.  There’s nothing wrong with trying to hold on, but we must remember there are some things that just can’t be held.

Letting go usually comes with a sense of fear and apprehension for some people.  When we lose something, we naturally want to hold tighter to what we have left.  If we lose money, we tend to get tighter with what we have because it feels like if we don’t, we might lose it all.  We can become so hyper-focused on protecting our “stash” that we can no longer enjoy our lives.  The same is true with losing a loved one to death.  If we become so hyper-focused on protecting what remains of their lives here, we can become crippled and no longer enjoy our own lives.  Letting go is a process that occurs in stages, but we have to be careful to not mistake what it means to “let go.”  Letting go does NOT mean forgetting; It means loosening your grip.  Open ArmsRemember what I said about the wind in the opening paragraph?  You can feel it but you cannot hold it.  Think about standing somewhere beautiful and suddenly a perfect breeze comes blowing through.  You have two choices:  You can start grasping like crazy, trying to capture it in your hands, or you can stand still and experience its touch completely.   If your focus is on trying to hold it, all you will feel is the lack of being able to do so.  You will grasp tighter and quicker, but all you will feel is the emptiness of your own hands.  However, if you focus on standing still and opening your hands, you will feel nothing but the breeze itself.  Letting go is what enables you to feel!  Letting go is what enables you to remember.  Letting go is what frees you to be present.

Today was difficult, and the unexpected situation in which I found myself made it extremely difficult to keep from tightening my grasp after many years of loosening it.  The pain, anger, disgust and sadness that I felt standing in the corner of an empty mausoleum overcame me and brought me literally to my knees.  It crippled me physically and emotionally in a single moment.  I felt lost.  I suddenly felt like I had no footing.  Everything inside me was screaming as it was the day my loved one actually died, and I found myself unable to walk away from that spot.  My emotional hands closed tightly, and all I could do was sob.  And then I remembered what I believe.  I remembered what I know to be true, and slowly I started reconnecting the dots until I could pull myself away physically from that spot.  I stood with my hand on the wall and prayed.  I stood and talked to my loved one.  I knelt and kissed the wall of the tomb in which the remains were sealed, and then I walked out a different door because it was the only way I could make myself leave.

And then something wonderful happened.  I got my shorts out of the car and went back into the restroom inside the mausoleum to change out of my suit and into my comfy clothes for traveling back home.  I forgot to grab my other shoes, so I had to walk out in my shorts, athletic shirt and black knee high trouser socks.I had taken off my dress heels because I didn’t want to look THAT stupid, but I had to laugh at what I looked like.    All I needed was some sandals to complete my “old man” outfit.  I started for the exit, but then thought of how much my loved one would have found my appearance to be hysterical, so I turned and ran back into the mausoleum, into the hallway of the unmarked crypt.  I waited until the security guard walked away from the area and then leapt around, danced and laughed right there in that hallway.  I then whispered out loud, “I knew you’d get a kick out of that so that one is for you!  I love you. ” To some, that may seem inappropriate or even ridiculous, but for me, it was a reminder of the difference between holding on and letting go.

Loss of any kind is never easy, whether through death or some other means.  It is painful, and we scramble to protect whatever we have left.  But loss does not have to cripple us forever, and death is not the end.  Yes, it is excruciating at times.  It can be debilitating in those moments it hits us so hard we can hardly breathe, let alone function.  Grief does not have a timetable, and sometimes it jumps up and grabs us unexpectedly.  And when it does, we need to just step back, be still and open our hands instead of closing them into fists.  If it hurts, let it hurt.  If tears come, let them fall.  Whatever it is you feel, just take a breath and be still.  Open the hands of your spirit so that you can be touched, instead of grasping tightly to what you cannot contain.  Because in the end, the best way we can keep our loved ones with us is to let them go.

Blessings!

Get Out Of Other People’s Closets And Open Your Own

Posted on by
Reply

I recently read a Facebook post from someone I knew from church when I was younger.  We didn’t attend the same church, but we attended church camp and youth events together, and ran in pretty much the same circles.  It was a beautiful post from a beautiful person with a genuine heart for God.  Brandon Beene is my friend and I wish so much that we had gotten to know each other even better when we were younger because we share some very common struggles.   Another of Brandon’s friends shared the entirety of his post on his blog, and it was so impactful that I put a link to it at the bottom of this page because it’s worth reading, especially if you grew up in church.

Something that Brandon talked about in his post was the way he was bullied growing up, much of it coming from the fact he was not a masculine guy.  What Brandon doesn’t realize about me (or hasn’t until he reads this) is that I experienced many of the same things.  Maybe some weren’t to the same degree because I didn’t get beat up physically, but I got beat up in every other way.  shutterstock_184639775The bullying and teasing and humiliation I felt drove me to the point of standing on the edge of a bridge,  picking which car I was going to jump in front of in case the fall itself didn’t kill me.  I understand Brandon better than he probably could have ever dreamed.  We’ve shared very eerie similarities on the opposite side of the same issue.  First of all, I couldn’t agree more with what Brandon said.  His comments about love and what it should be are spot on.  I’ve often written about what love really is and what it means to truly love others.  I’ve written about what God’s love really looks like and how greatly we can affect this world if we would strive to love as God loves.  The problem with loving that way is that it often bothers or even offends most “religious” people today.  It also doesn’t sit well with people who are not religious but who consider themselves to be superior because of their own moral compass.   The interesting thing is that our problems are an epidemic that only genuine love itself can resolve.

Most of the people who are around me know I’ve never been a girly girl.  I don’t like cooking or sewing.  I don’t like pink.  I hate dolls.  I didn’t like to read love stories.  I didn’t like to watch sappy movies.  I liked watching the creature from the black lagoon, and my favorite author was Edgar Allan Poe.  I burned bugs with magnifying glasses.  I spent all my time outside playing football with the boys.   I participated in all kinds of sports and was good at them.   I even cried when I realized that I wouldn’t be able to play football in high school, because girls weren’t allowed on the team.  I got teased all the time because I was scrawny and gangly, and hadn’t developed physically.  I hate dresses.  I never wore them unless I was forced to.  There were some pastors I encountered that insisted women wear dresses or skirts, and all I could think was how miserable it made me in church.  When I was a kid, probably about 6 or 7, I told a friend at church that I actually WAS a boy.  She pretty much believed it until the day she told me to prove it, and of course I couldn’t and had to pony up to the truth.  My opinion of girls was that they weren’t strong.   They were concerned with makeup, hair, nails and shopping.  Blech!

I got teased and was the brunt of a lot of jokes.  I suffered privately and tried to find other tomboys with which to hang out.  I liked being rough and tumble.  I am glad that in this day and age, it is more acceptable for girls to be that way, but it wasn’t so in my generation.   I even got teased in my family for not cooking or not knowing how to cook.  The truth is that I can cook when I try, and the things I have cooked have turned out well, but I still don’t enjoy it. I go shopping, but I don’t like it.  Another thing Brandon mentioned was that he didn’t really like sports or know the rules of all the different types of sports and I thought, “I know the rules of all the different sports.  Heck, I even know the rules to curling!”  I love sports.  I watch them and play them, and would much rather hang out with a bunch of guys watching a game and having a great time than sitting around the kitchen table with the girls talking about “girly” things.

shutterstock_200320292Brandon also revealed in his post how he was called gay on many occasions and had to endure many times when he was called a fag or faggot.  It was painful to read his experiences.  While I do think that men and boys can be much harsher outwardly than girls with that kind of name-calling, the truth is girls are just as mean and brutal; they just do it behind your back.  Where Brandon had to deal with people calling him those names, I had to deal with the looks and snickering that people thought I didn’t see. I certainly felt the awkwardness of being excluded because I wasn’t a “normal” girl.  I got teased unmercifully for wanting to hunt with all of my cousins and uncles.  I didn’t get called gay or “dike” to my face, but I found out later it was going on all the time behind my back.  I even had an experience where I was called into my school counselor’s office because a friend (who I trusted completely and considered to be one of my closest friends) told a teacher that I was a lesbian.  I’m sure it came from the fact I wrote very expressive poems and writings all the time and shared them with the people I loved.  I loved everyone.  It didn’t matter if it was men or women, or from which walk of life they came.  Unfortunately, that was unacceptable to the people around me.

I would often write how I felt about my friends and my mother even warned me to be careful about what I said to people or wrote to people because they would start to think I was lesbian.  I ignored it and you know what?  It happened.  I really struggled in high school.  I think everyone does.  We struggle with figuring out our true selves.  We struggle with who we are and who we think we should be, and that struggle is made so much worse when we don’t fit the mold of what our family, friends, or religion thinks we should be.  We get sideways glances.  We get rejected.  I had one friend in high school who always understood me as much as anyone possibly could at that age.  She knew that I was just emotional and expressive and was not a girly girl…and she didn’t care one single bit!  I liked to dress odd and funny.  I was a little bit of everything and never really fit into one particular group.  But the rumors apparently continued, and have throughout my life.  Even now, I manage an exceptional team of people on the job and have been successful professionally.  One day a few years ago, we were sitting at the end of a meeting just visiting a bit, and I made a comment about being such a girly-girl and my team all laughed because they all knew I was the opposite.  The newest member of the team made the comment, “Oh, you don’t wanna know what I thought when I first met you.”  She went on to say she thought I was gay.  When I asked why, she said, “ I don’t know.  You just seemed that way.  You are always in a suit and the way you walk….”  I just laughed it off because the truth is I LOVE suits.  I wear them continually and I don’t carry myself in an extremely feminine manner.  I walk heavy.   I’m not one to sit around and say, “Oooooh…aaaah” when babies come into the office.  This woman told me it wasn’t until she saw me with my husband that she realized differently.  She said anyone who sees me with him would know I wasn’t gay.  But me by myself?  Apparently I still give it off.  And you know what?  I’m ok with that.  I had to get to the point where I didn’t care what anyone else thought or I would have to remain captive to their opinions forever.

shutterstock_266832950Brandon mentioned how he didn’t have a gender identity crisis.  I will echo that statement.  I didn’t/don’t have a gender identity issue.  I had a comfort issue.  I was uncomfortable because I didn’t fit in.  When I was small, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, but as I got older, I realized how rejected and judged I was by others.  I knew I was a girl but I didn’t like anything girls liked.  I never owned a Barbie.  To this day, I hate them.  I walk into something girly and just cringe.  I can’t stand baby showers or wedding showers.  I feel like a man when it comes to those things because I have the same reactions to them.  I’d rather do pretty much anything than spend hours at them. Over the years, I’ve had countless people tell me they thought I was a lesbian.  Of course, they never divulged that impression until they had known me a while and figured out I’m just me, that I’m just quirky…but it still hurt.  Feeling like you don’t fit in is one of the worst feelings in the world, and it can drive you to some very dark places.  When you add on top of everything else that I have a form of bipolar disorder, you can see how my brain chemistry issues complicated things for me.  It made me highly creative and highly connected and intense, but this world doesn’t understand that.

I mentioned earlier that I was constantly the brunt of jokes about my lack of traditional femininity.  It was a struggle when I tried to square what society expected me to be vs. who God created me to be.  It was so difficult that when a member of our high school choir touched me in  very inappropriate ways as we sat waiting to go on stage for a performances, I was frozen and didn’t know what to do because the wounded side of me thought, “Well maybe I am ok as a girl because at least I’m not unattractive to him.”  The vast majority of my boyfriends were guys who liked to hang out.  They weren’t terribly romantic and I was fine with it!  I liked to do the kind of stuff they liked to do.  I eventually married someone who is a man’s man but who loves me because I’m not such a girly-girl. He is the perfect partner for me because he loves me exactly as I am and actually embraces it.  He is a gift from God, himself.

I have friends of all walks of life, including friends who are openly gay or lesbian…and I love them dearly.  I love them because God created me to love people – all people – passionately…because HE loves them passionately.  I don’t have to agree with their politics, religion or choices in order to love and appreciate them.  It has nothing to do with that.  It has to do with loving people exactly where they are.  And maybe I’m even more passionate about that fact because it felt like it happened so rarely in my life.

shutterstock_153650339The truth is that God made me this way for a reason.  When Brandon said God doesn’t make mistakes, I couldn’t agree more.  I have said that for most of my life but it wasn’t until I was older that I realized God wired me this way for a reason because there are certain people out there that I can touch as a result.  As a matter of fact, there are some people out there that only we can touch because of who we are and the experiences of our specific individual lives.  We can reach people that others would have a hard time connecting with because they can’t understand their situation or personality.   I’m different.  I’ve always been different.  I’ve also been ridiculed and mocked for it.  I’ve been called all kinds of names for it.  I’ve almost died for it.   On the outside I may have looked like a fun, carefree, and well-liked person, but in my heart I struggled with many of the same things as Brandon did.  It is time for us to get over our fears and live exactly as we are created to be!  Stop judging each other.  Stop labeling each other.  Stop bullying people who aren’t like you and call it something else.  It doesn’t matter how we try to rationalize our behavior, it is still wrong.  Don’t say you are a Christian and then spend your time making the people around you feel less than you.  God doesn’t do that.  Jesus didn’t do that while here on earth, and He certainly doesn’t expect us to do it either!

It’s time to be who God called us to be, not who our parents, friends, bosses or churches are trying to call us to be.  I teach this to my Sunday school class all the time.  The things you like, you like for a reason.  The things that don’t interest you, don’t interest you for a reason.  God created us with our likes and dislikes because it’s those likes and dislikes that connect us with others in different ways.

So I’ll close with something that came up for me when Brandon said he can relate to the struggle of Caitlyn Jenner feeling like an outcast.  I thought to myself, “I can’t imagine any man wanting to give it up to become a woman and everything that is supposed to come with it.”  But I can sure identify with the same things about it with which Brandon identifies.  I can identify with hiding mental health issues.  I can identify with hiding suicidal tendencies or attempts.  I can identify with struggling to just be who we are and let God sort it out because NONE of us have a right to stomp on someone else.  Let me just add that Chaz Bono encountered a lot of the same things even though he wasn’t as well-known in his life as Chastity as Caitlyn Jenner was in his life as Bruce.  I could better identify with her struggles because they were closer to mine.  If I were a child today, raised in a more liberal home, I would be “pegged” as having a gender identity issue.  And  if I continually said that I was a boy or wanted to be one, I guess I could more easily become one.  But you know what would be a million times better than labeling a child (or adult) as having a gender identity issue?  It would be saying, “It’s ok that you don’t like all that girly (or boyish) stuff.  It’s ok that you want to do what you like to do.”  Maybe we should sit down with our kids, as well as with our adults who are still struggling and say, “It’s ok to not fit into what our society has defined you to be.  You just be who you were created to be because God loves you just exactly as you are.”

shutterstock_219355915It’s scary to think of how far left of center we have become.  We’ve started labeling people as one thing or another instead of looking within and seeing them as they are.  We have actually started crippling each other by embracing the new politically correct labels instead of dropping the labels all together.   It used to be a shame to be called gay, where now it is embraced by society.  Now it is a shame to be called other things.  In some circles it is a shame to be called a Christian.  It doesn’t matter what era of time we look at, there are always people who did not fit in, who were bullied and mistreated because of their differences.   Society and humanity is cruel because we are continually looking for labels to put people into boxes where we can look down on them and feel better about ourselves.  What an absolute contrast to what God does and what He has asked us to do.  We need to drop the labels and embrace each other.  It doesn’t always mean we will agree, but love goes so much deeper than differences.   It would be so much better if we just simply loved each other.  I realize with an imperfect world and imperfect people it will probably never be that way, but we can hope.  And we can, through the telling of our stories, change the individuals who can eventually change the world.

Blessings!

Brandon Beene Facebook Post

Michael Robison Blog of Brandon’s Post

When the Words Won’t Come

Posted on by
Reply

I sat down several times to write a post over the past week and the words just wouldn’t come.  I thought I would have time to reflect and share things with you over the weekend but that still didn’t bring the words I sought.

lightning sky2Sometimes we have those days or weeks (or even longer) when we want so badly to express ourselves but cannot find the words to do so.  We are faced with so many different situations and emotions that our spirit seems to swirl like a massive cyclone in which we can only catch glimpses of things as they fly past.  I have longed for the eye of the storm over the past few days but instead found the cyclone swirling even faster.  It certainly makes it difficult to find words when you can’t even find footing.

It is hard to explain the sensation of feeling alone in the midst of people or trying to let go of the pains we don’t understand.  It actually hurts to not be able to find the words to express the depth of our emotions…but what hurts more is to actually have the words and not be able to say them out loud.  I think that is one of the greatest pains of all.  Those situations bring a unique kind of pain…a hurt on top of hurt…a loneliness wrapped in isolation.

 

shutterstock_150535259It is not wise to say everything you think, believe or observe, but to feel censored because of the fear of confrontation or being belittled can be challenging.  Bullies don’t always use something tangible to attack others, but the injuries are just as deep.  Whether real or perceived, these things cause us to “clam up” and curl up into the corners of our soul where words are hard to find.  I have found it impossible to try and force words to the surface when the surface is not within reach, and I have found it too painful to reach down into the depths and grab them.

Personally, I struggle to understand why some people think or do the things they think or do.  I struggle to understand why some people seem to thrive on controversy, contention or confrontation.  I struggle to understand why it hurts so much to not understand.  I struggle just like the rest of you with these things and maybe there is comfort in that fact.  Maybe it is our collective struggle to live in peace that binds some of us together.  And maybe…just maybe that makes a difference.

Since hurt is made bearable by the salve of love, I pray we all feel that love in a way that binds our wounds and helps us heal…

even when there are no words.shutterstock_154402385

Blessings!

Shelter the Innocent

Posted on by
1

child_abuse_symSome of you may be aware that April is Child Abuse Prevention Month.  I was very fortunate and blessed to have had a childhood where I was loved and safe but many people I know personally were not as fortunate.  They endured terrible abuses of every kind and yet most of them have become some of the strongest people I have ever known.  It is a difficult thing to watch the people we know and love endure these scars in their lives but I have been inspired to see them come to places where they realize just how beautiful they are and have always been.  It is such a process but it is one that is well worth going through.  Healing never comes easily but it IS possible for it to come.

About a week ago, a song came to me in a matter of minutes as a result of reflecting on situations that some of the people I love have had to endure.  Since this is Child Abuse Prevention Month, I thought it fitting to share the lyrics with you so I have added them to the end of this post.  The song is titled, “The Mirror” and it speaks to what is seen when we gaze at our reflection.

shutterstock_92486212Children really are so innocent and need protecting.  We all hope they are raised in loving and caring homes, by good and loving parents but we also know that is not always the case.  It is our responsibility to step forward not only when we become aware of severe abuse but we should also pay closer attention to the children in our lives no matter where we encounter them.   They are a treasure and we should strive to be good examples to them in every way.  We need to love and encourage them whether they are “ours” or not.  We need to talk with them and listen to them and when there are concerns, we need to voice them!  We need to always remember what it felt like to be a child and how real our fears were to us, regardless of what any adult may have thought.  We need to be the ones who genuinely care and help lift them up to be all they can be.  It doesn’t matter where they come from or where they are.  Even if they come from seemingly wonderful homes, they can never have too many supporters and encouragers in this life.  Life can be hard no matter how old we are and I still have people in my life today who listened to me as a child.  I still go to them sometimes.  I still feel warmth and love from them to this very day and it strengthens me continually.

shutterstock_76099252So reach out to the children around you.  Be available.  It doesn’t take much for us to provide a rock to hold onto when their little worlds are crumbling.  It simply takes a willing heart and a few moments of time to make all the difference in the world.  Give them the greatest gift of life they could ever have.  Give them you.

Blessings!

The Mirror

Just a little child broken and abused.  Treated like a rag doll – utterly confused.  Focusing on nothing, she stumbles through the door and looks into the mirror as she hides there on the floor.

And she says, “Mirror mirror on the wall, why can’t I see someone pretty looking back smiling at me?  Will there ever be a time when the ugly finally fades and all the pain I’m living now turns into yesterday?”

Just another woman haunted by the past.  Survival left her empty ‘cause she had to grow so fast.  Afraid to trust another – afraid to ever tell that all she sees is ugly when she tries to see herself.

And she says, “Mirror mirror on the wall, why can’t I see someone worthy looking back smiling at me?  Will there ever be a time when the shame will fade away and all the pain I’m feeling now is lost in yesterday?

Down through the years, now when I look, I see I’m not defined by what they took.  And though there are scars, they’re beginning to fade.because I can see I am wonderfully made.

Now in the mirror on the wall, I can finally see someone beautiful and strong smiling back at me.  And should there ever come a time when the doubt begins to rage, I’ll let it go and turn my eyes away from yesterday.

The winds of change have carried me on the wings of love and grace to where I’m free to live beyond my world of yesterdays.”

© Deanna Kay O’Leary 2013

For more information on Child Abuse Prevention Month, please visit:

https://www.childwelfare.gov/preventing/preventionmonth/

http://www.brightfutures4kids.org/blue-ribbon-society/