Wounded

The writing prompt is wounded and I debate on where to go with that. It's a word, more accurately an experience, that I'm far too familiar with. Words and actions have both wounded my heart. Violence has wounded my body. Yet with each wound has come the choice to stay wounded or to heal.

There have been times, even recently, when the wound was too big to allow me to focus on other things. Right at this moment though, I can look at some of the pain from the other side of the cavern, from the perspective of healing. I wouldn't fully grasp hope if I had not felt hopeless. While hope is something we all feel at times, feeling hope after hopelessness is like the first warm rays of springtime sun after a bitterly cold winter.

I've been wounded and hidden. I've feared more pain. I've lashed out in anger at God and at those who inflicted the wounds. I've pulled back. I've pretended I was strong while withering away inside. I've wounded in return and I've paid the wounds forward to innocent unsuspecting others simply because I didn't know how to cope with the pain in my heart.

In all of that, I've learned that there is something good that can come from being wounded. Healing can happen. Healing happens when I stop trying to fight the pain and simply accept it and feel it. It is when I accept that my heart hurts and I allow the feelings of pain to overtake me that I can bring the brokenness of my heart and my life to Jesus and let him so gently speak life into my brokenness.

I know brokenness. I know wounded. I also know healing and redemption. I know that my pain matters. I know that no one is too wounded or too broken. I know this because I know the Healer and I know what He has done in my life. I know this because I'm living a life of beauty that was once ashes.

One Word

I had never heard of the idea of a theme word for the year.  That is until several weeks ago I saw this prompt. I knew within moments what my word was.  And then suddenly everywhere I look there are people talking about their word for 2014, including my boss sending me an email about it. How did I miss this?

My word for 2014 is HOPE.

I found myself clinging to hope over the last several weeks of 2013.  The past couple of months have been emotionally hard.  As a girl who has grown up in the church, some of the reasons that I've been desperately needing hope are hard to share.  I have struggled with severe depression for as long as I can remember and about 5 years ago I began to experience severe and sometimes debilitating anxiety.

It is hard to lay those words out on the table in front of my Christian friends.  I have heard more preachers than I can count say that depression and anxiety are signs of weak faith.  I have been prayed over and been told that depression is a sign of demon possession.  I have been told that anxiety means I don't trust God. And while the entirety of the story is for another post (or several!) I wanted to finally shed some background to lay the foundation of my 2014 word.

This holiday season when anxiety rose, it showed itself in social anxiety.  We missed half of advent Sunday worship services because there were days that I sat crying curled in a ball just trying to get out the door to go to church but couldn't make myself move.  I used 2 PTO days at work because of anxiety.  I managed to arrive at the ladies Christmas tea but I struggled to not break down into tears or go running away to the bathroom to hide.  Even team meetings at work and my work Christmas party had me overwhelmed to the brink of tears.

I had been reading The Question That Never Goes Away by Phillip Yancey and I loved his description of Emmanuel.  He talked about the world that Jesus was born into.  It was a dark time and the world needed hope.  God stepped down into our broken world to walk through our brokenness with us.  He is Emmanuel, God with us, because He chooses to walk through our painful times with us.  I clung to those words.  Emmanuel, the God who is with us.

Then someone in a sermon quoted a favorite Christmas hymn and it stuck.  "A thrill of HOPE, the weary world rejoices."  I can't tell you the rest of the sermon, but I can tell you that those words pierced my soul.  The world was weary when Christ came.  The world was dark and tired and overwhelmed, just like me. And in the midst of the dark, tired and overwhelmed  there was a thrill of hope.

The wrongs in the world weren't instantly righted just because a savior was born but the world was given hope.  My life is still not easy but I hold fast to the fact that Emmanuel, the God who is with me, gives me hope in the midst of my pain. Six days before Christmas, I cried out to God on the way to work.  I begged that on that day I would FEEL the hope that I know.  I prayed that He would hold me close and help me to feel the thrill of hope, my weary heart to rejoice.

I walked into work and on my desk was a very small package, a gift from a new friend.  The gift was this bracelet.

He had heard me.  He had known that on that particular day I would need a physical reminder of hope.  And that confirmed what I already knew, God is taking me on a journey of hope in 2014.  

This post was prompted by Bonnie Gray's weekly Faith Jams. 

attitude of gratitude

I have so much to be thankful for.  Tonight however, I'm stressed and anxious and having a hard time FEELING thankful.  My brain wants to concentrate on my son.  On how much I hate third grade.  On how discouraged I am to see my son so discouraged.  I don't feel thankful.  I feel overwhelmed.

It was years ago when I was convicted about my attitude that focused on what I didn't have instead of what I did have.  After completing 30 days of thankfulness on Facebook, I was convicted that I should be concentrating on the good in my life all the time not just in November.  I went straight to searching for the perfect journal.  I needed an Attitude of Gratitude journal to continue to focus on the good in my life.

I began writing in it all the things I was thankful for. I'm so glad I did because not long after my life fell apart.  Some days through the tears I would force myself to think of something good in that day.  There were more than a few days that the only thing I could think of was that I had a cup of coffee that morning, or a hug from my boys, or a song on the radio.

I discovered through that season that gratitude isn't a feeling, it is an action.  Like love, sometimes I will feel the gratitude and sometimes I must choose it when I don't feel it.  Last year a friend gave me the book One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.  It is a great book that expressed so beautifully something that God has already been doing in my own heart.

I have a dry erase board at my desk at work that I write things I'm thankful for.  If you are on my Facebook you see it weekly.  It doesn't mean my life is perfect.  Heaven forbid that anyone sees my pictures or my status updates and thinks I have it all together.  I don't.  There are plenty of days like today that my gratitude springs from the choice that I have made to trust that God is good even when life isn't.

my Attitude of Gratitude Journal and my Gratitude board 

So today, in the middle of my funk, in the middle of my overwhelm, I will choose to be thankful.  Today in particular I am thankful that Hubby took me to work in the snow this morning so that I would be able to walk out of work to a warm car this afternoon. I am thankful for my space heater radiating warmth as I type.  I'm thankful that I'm here and I'm thankful for a place to share my heart.

Your turn, what are you thankful for?