It is amazing really, what can take you back to a place you thought you had left long ago. As I lay on the massage table, just moments after, I could not help but to smile. Not at the event itself, but at how in this moment I can see all roads collide.
I woke today just like most days. Although it was a little different this morning, as just the night before I had made a decision to devote today to pampering myself. My daughter in law Kassie had given me a gift certificate for a pedicure, and my hubby had been encouraging me to go back to the Massage therapist that I so adore here in town, and I had finally given myself permission to do both. A day of pampering I had decided. It was my way of celebrating the 7 pounds I had lost.
My usual hurried morning routine was slowed… on purpose. I had been “forcing” myself to drink a cup of hot lemon water and a glass of water before allowing myself my first cup of coffee…. determined to get my water intake. With lemon water in hand, I made my way to my comfy chair, flipped open my bible and began my daily reading. As I finished, I, like every day for the last 18 months invited God to guide my steps today. Now with my 8 oz glass of water I made my way to the shower and off to my day of pampering.
Nowhere in ‘my’ plan was there anything to do with witnessing a lady being bullied by what seemed to be an ex partner. No where in my thought process of the events of the day where my feelings coming to the surface again… the sadness and the anger of feeling invisible…. but there I was. With me all day, was the little girl I was, reliving all over again the abuse I had endured, facing again the emotions that come with the feeling that no one was coming to our rescue. All I could think of, as I laid their trying to collect myself was…. that for each person who passed by her in her time of need lent to the feeling that she was not worthy of more.. why is it that “we” – the collective- have ourselves convinced that by doing nothing – we are not making a choice. I swear it takes more fortitude to pretend to not see – then it does to see and act on it.
I have spent a large part of my life wondering what my life would have been if someone… anyone would have stepped in and stepped between our abuser and us. I wonder who my mom would have been had she lived longer than the 27 years that she did. Who I would have been had I not been separated by my siblings. Who my step dad would have been had be not been a convicted murderer.
Trying not to get stuck in the would have been (s)… my mind rushed to all the things in the present. The book I am reading, Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic” and the countless discussions with my Girls of Big Magic book clubbers- my devotional – my God Whispers that have shifted my thinking to instead of things being done TO me, understanding that just possibly things are being done FOR me.. to move me forward.
Perhaps my friend and fellow writer Jody Conrad ( “When Goliath Doesn’t Fall”) said it best as I tried to describe to her all I was feeling…. in her quiet brilliant way she said, “this is a day that inspires novels.”
It is true, days like today unblock the writers block and propel me forward. They are brutal on some levels, and freeing on others as I continue to work through my own life experiences, embracing the strength those experiences have left in me.
As I settle in tonight I know that it isn’t always bad that God assigns me moments to help me remember all that he has brought me though, all the things that He has used to shape me, all the things that make me me.
My mind goes back…….
A Cowgirl Called 