It took me thirty-eight years to understand that it wasn't so much that you didn't raise me as it was that you couldn't raise me. That there was a difference in ability rather than responsibility and that truthfully, choosing life, was the most important gift you could have ever given me. It was in that [...]
I want to be like the Samaritan woman. I want to drop my water buckets, run into town and tell the world about the man who went out of his way, in the heat of the day, meeting me at my lowest and chose me intentionally. A man who knew my whole story, and chose to cover me in compassion and grace. We deserve to be alive in and known for our transformation instead of our sin, for what we did AFTER, and who we BECAME. You deserve that too. So, go ahead and drop your buckets, cancel the well visits, find some shade and a few good people who love you first for all you are and all you are not. Allow God to use your story, to use your heart and shed a light to others around you that shame doesn't live here anymore.
Healing as an adult is ridiculously hard. It requires bravery, brutal and almost blunt-force honesty and it can leave you completely depleted. Especially on the days that sneak up out of nowhere and smack you right in the face. A broken heart, a broken soul or even a broken human can still hold an enormous amount of vitality because broken means open. And, open provides a means of escape for pain and an entrance for hope. Just because it is hard for you to heal does not mean you're hard to love.
So, if you're sitting at someone's house and you've got that pit in your stomach because you just don't feel accepted, or welcome...trust me girl, grab your cute little striped hey dudes you left by the door, and get the heck out off there now. Yes, I know they just poured you a margarita, with salt on the rim, but hear me when I say, that vulnerable moment you'll have which prompts you to share "anything" on drink two... it's already shared with someone who isn't even there. That's why there is a pit in your stomach to begin with. Good friends, and kind people; pits don't accompany them. Growth, sunlight, warmth and happiness surround them, those are your people.
Trust me when I say that in my younger years of stupidity I was judgmental with unrealistic expectations. My preconceived notions of how I would wear and walk in anyone else's shoes better or differently than they had were obnoxious. Especially when I was walking with my shoes on the wrong feet, to begin with, or barefoot even. Fast forward to forty-year-old, heavily flawed me, and while my shoes are now at least on the right foot, I just love walking next to anyone who doesn't have it figured out, who has lost their way and maybe even a shoe or two. Those are my people.
