From Renee.

From Renee:
I just wrote five paragraphs about hope, and I also just deleted them all a million times faster than it took me to write them. I deleted them because I think there is something underneath hope. There is something that feeds it, and keeps it alive, and perpetuates it. I
believe that everything is undeniably intertwined, such as purpose, hope, love, redemption and healing…specifically those things, are on my heart tonight…

Many of you do not know me. Perhaps most of you do not know me. You know the story, the image, the picture of the girl in that video you saw that one time…or maybe you know what I desperately long to represent. Here is a little window into my heart and mind these days.

These are the days after the digging and burying. This is the part where I stop running and fight every part of myself to slowly turn around and look into the mirror. This is where I fight to feel, where the ones that I love get clawed up in the process and my heart has to
learn how to apologize. It has to learn how to allow itself to be weak and vulnerable as opposed to calloused and hostile. These are the days that I have to choose healing. True healing, holistically and not just where it hurts less. When we spend our lives trying preserve ourselves, trying to escape, we build a dam. Sooner or later we have to let it out, and the fear of that process knocked me down face first in the mud time after time. My fear came from the belief that such a weight would crush me, that feeling such pain after years of apathy would kill me, and the unknown. What would happen to my heart if I let it feel these things? What vices would I turn to this time? Would the blow of such a burden wipe me out, put the running shoes back on my feet…break me?
yes.
it would.
it will.
break me.
it will break me so that the parts that healed wrong from being ignored so long might have a second chance.
it will hurt my heart so that it may heal.
peroxide.
my fight is not for hope as much as it is for healing these days, and it has taken me over five years of sitting on her couch to touch the edge of this idea. of this new direction.

The other day my boyfriend thought he might have been bitten by a spider. His foot was swollen and red to the point that he was sent home from work. Despite the pain he was in, he didn’t want to go to the doctor. He told me he was afraid. He told me that if it was a
spider bite, the doctor would cut open his foot and squeeze all of the poison out. I think that is what this is. I think that we fear per suing help, healing, because of the pain we will have to go through to get it. The pain might even be worse then the actual wound in the first place. So, we are left with a choice. We can let the poison fester and build, cripple, and potentially destroy us. Or we can choose to face it, fight it, cut it out and let it truly heal. all the way.

The other key component to this path, is who will walk with me. I, in all of my determination and willpower, could not endure such pain on my own. We aren’t asked to do this alone, but our cruel little minds would like for us to forget this. I know mine would. It is my mind that would like to destroy me, it’s the place upstairs that is driven to destruction, and on it’s own it would surely succeed. However, when I choose to go there, and I invite someone else in with me, to hold my hand, to carry me when I am beaten down, that is when healing is possible. This is where I believe we find community and its value in our lives, and this is also the role we are asked to take part in. We are not asked to be the doctor, or the scalpel, we are asked to be the ones who will stand by and hold your hand, when our hearts are not on the table themselves.

We were never meant to live with poison. We aren’t asked to walk around with it determined not to let it impede us. We are not intended to be crippled from our wounds, but we are left with the option of accepting it, or biting down and getting dirty and feeling our pain in all of its awfulness in order that we may be restored. This is one way that bloodletting is good. Maybe that’s where I got onto the wrong track. I took that concept in my life and literally tried to cut out my pain, I was a terrible doctor! But here, two years later, I’m handing the knife over and asking my God to help me let out the poison. I will not walk away this time, in shame or isolation. I will move forward in love and community and with a new found strength, a new kind of hope to offer. I want this healing, first for my own heart, and secondly so that I might offer it to you, my dear friends, dear hearts out there, walking around with spider bites, desperate for healing and afraid of the pain. I spend my Mondays on a couch with a blanket fighting to hurt, to heal, and it is my hope that you might be encouraged to do the same in your own way.

So, hi. This is me. a human being, in all of my frailty. laying myself out for you, that we might walk through this beautiful, awful, strange thing we call life, together. I have exchanged my knife for a pen and some dead trees. I am fighting to turn my will over and put myself on the table. To not just admit that there are some things that need fixing, but to see them for all that they are. It is possible. to heal. to walk away restored from trauma. to acknowledge pain without letting it own you. it is OK to be weak. it is OK to be powerless. it is OK to be afraid. as much as we love to hate anything that isn’t pretty and presentable, sometimes we need permission to just, be. as messy as it may seem, as sticky and heavy and slow as it may be, we have to remember to be patient and gracious with our hearts. It is worth it. There is so much more than merely surviving, and that is far more beautiful than any cleaned up pretty version of ourselves we’d like to walk around with. This is my where my heart is, and this is my hope for you.