Contemplating Life

  I recently posted about the 'closet cleaning' that is going on in my heart. As a youth I was sexually molested by a leader in the church for many years and I never really dealt with the brokenness that created. This year I have finally faced it head on. Reliving old pain that wasn’t dealt with, opening wounds that never healed correctly, facing things that I never really wanted to look at, and retraining my brain and my body to view the world differently has been an absolutely exhausting journey. Really truly exhausting. But Jesus once spoke about how “knowing the truth sets us free” and I really want to be free of all this. I want to be made healthy and whole. There aren’t enough blog pages to share what all I have experienced and learned, but I just recently understood something that I would like to share. First let me say that anger is not a go-to emotion for me, so I find it hard to manage. I have a history of go-to emotions such as self-blame, shame, discouragement….b

  2023 has been an interesting year. I have spent most of it cleaning out a closet. Have you ever had a closet where you shoved everything that you didn’t want to deal with or didn’t have time to find a place for? Maybe there were things you didn’t want others to know you had, things that might be embarrassing or you were ashamed of and were afraid you would be judged for, but you didn’t know how to let go of them so you just kept hiding the stuff, packing it in the closet willy nilly so it was out of sight and you didn’t have to see it? (For those of you who might have watched Friends in the past, think of Monica’s closet.) Well, I have had a closet like that, a huge closet that was packed to the ceiling. It wasn’t, however, a closet in my home – it was a closet inside of m y heart . The Holy Spirit has been helping me clean out this closet. (He is such a wonderful Counselor and Friend, willing to roll up His sleeves and get at it.) Cleaning out this hidden and stored away junk ha