Healing Hurts

    It's not easy to admit you need to be healed.  It's not easy to be wholly honest and open.  The storm clouds are coming in this season for me but the sunrise to follow will be woth it all. 
  For more than 20 yrs I have not looked at it as a problem I could fix. This past few years it has been something that I have slowly opened my eyes to.  The pain and hurt of not only losing my sister when she passed in 1998 but the fact that I lost my mom that day as well.  I never understood it as a child why she would just run off to her brothers and not come home until I had cried myself to sleep.  Now just in the past few months, I realized what was happening she was trying to hide it from us.  The pain she was dealing with was overwhelming and she had found her way of coping.  I remember that first Christmas wanting to put up the Christmas tree but she said "There will be no Christmas this year there is no point without Mandy" I honestly couldn't tell you what we did for Christmas that year. I am guessing we still had a tree dad and I probably got it and I decorated it by myself.  I don't remember much about what her and I had for a relationship over the next few years other than that she missed all of the important moments. Graduation photos, my one home run in a state softball game because her love for other things had drawn her away.  I remember being the only girl on the team that didn't have a parent at our softball game that I got hit in the elbow by a pitch I drove myself home and dad took me in the urgent care when he finished up chores.  

   I don't write this out of a place looking for sympathy but an honest place of a child with a parent that chooses a substance over you.  If this is similar to your story I want you to know that you are not alone and there is healing.  I am just starting this journey of cutting into 20+ years of not thinking I am good enough for my mom the one who carried me for 9 months inside her. I am trying to fathom that the lies she has told me through the years are not where my value is placed.  The steps to come to the realization that I am able to overcome this pain still seem daunting.  God has put me now in a  group of people to guide me through and remind me he was my true creator and parent. As I prepare to dig into the biggest hole filled with the hurt I am going to try to respectfully share this process.  Healing myself first and praying that God can and will do the ultimate healing of our relationship.  I had a dear friend pray over me about this topic and that night was the first time I remember my mom truly taking interest in what I do. She apologizing for never knowing the amount of work it takes to do my job.  God is good even in this pain because let me tell you I am only 1.5 chapters into the book on the healing process and it has pulled up so much past hurt I didn't realize was there.  I have my first counselor appointment in 2.5 weeks and from there it will begin another level I am sure.  I have been looking at these verses as they keep coming back to me. 


Romans 8:18-23 New International Version (NIV)Present Suffering and Future Glory

18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that[a] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.

My prayer for you today is to be willing to let God bring out the hurt so that the healing of relationships can be restored.  That you will find his love overflowing into your hurt and that its flowing water will be like salt as the pain comes so will the healing. May God bless you today!