When I'm able to believe again,
I'll walk determined down this path again
And you'll look at a smile again
And you'll see that I'm free.

Gonna hear the voice of reason,
Gonna hear the words of God
Won't be loud, won't be loud,
'Til I open my heart to Him.

When I'm able to believe again
Gonna feel this shame diminish,
Gonna pray for God's grace to fall on me,
One sweet day, one sweet day
I will deserve it,
When I'm able to believe again.

So DT posed that somewhat obvious question for me to work on this week. What do I want to/need to believe? This afternoon it was as if God delivered the answer to me as I was driving, because out of nowhere I stopped singing to the radio and it was just there.

I need to believe that someone can love me, as damaged as I am. Somewhere in the back of my mind I've decided that I am not worthy of anyone's love because of how I feel inside. I know my family loves me, but they "have" to.

*But deep down I know that I won't let anyone love me until I can figure out how to love myself.

Somehow that seems like the much harder thing to do.

I am so afraid. The path I have traveled over the past 30+ years has led me on all sorts of twists and turns, stops and starts, climbs and falls and I have ended up here. At the edge of a place I never thought I'd be, a place I never really planned on being, but yet my steps have lead me here.

I feel so alone. I'm on the edge of a confrontation that breaks all my rules. You can't possibly love and be faithful to God and have such anger towards Him. Or even if you do, you don't dare admit it. You become the fake person who pretends that everything is OK, but live in constant fear that your secret will be revealed.

Every ounce of me is trying to pull myself from the edge.

It just seems too dangerous.

I have chosen to write about my journey of healing, maybe through this it will bring more healing as I write out my thoughts and my feelings, and also bring insight and healing to those who have or may not have walked a similar journey that I am now just beginning.

Today as I walked out of my appointment, DT gives me a hug and tells me to protect my heart...

The thought that runs through my mind is how do I protect my heart??? If you ask me, that's what I have been doing for the last 30+ years of my life, protecting my heart, building walls so that no one would be able to hurt me again....

You see I grew up in what most people would call, a HIGHLY DYSFUNCTIONAL family. And I had to learn to protect myself at all costs...to survive no matter what happened....and along the way I built walls, and locked a lot of doors in my heart, and I threw away the key....I didn't just lock people out, I locked the little girl inside me in....

I didn't want people to hear or see that broken, wounded, bleeding little girl inside me....

And for many, many years I have hid her behind the title of being the Sweet Young Lady everyone wanted me to be...
                        At home I am the Mommy and doting Wife,
                        At work I am the dedicated Pharmacy Intern,
                        At School I am the overachieving Student....
but underneath those titles I am just a woman who loves the Lord,
but has never allowed Him into the locked rooms in her heart, never allowed Him to heal the broken little girl who still hides in the corner and cries at night.


So this is my journey...of taking off the masks and allowing God to walk me in a journey of healing. Some posts may be encouraging while others may be full of pain and raw truth....but I am taking a step to show the world the truth, the pain, the joy, and the journey of healing that I am only beginning...

A smile has a powerful message. It relays happiness, contentment, joy and love. It is a natural reaction as a result of one (or more) of these emotions. But sometimes we use our smiles incorrectly. Smiles should not hide sadness, pain, grief or loneliness.

Not only do we use our smiles to hide our feelings, but others do the same. How do we know when someone is truly happy or is using their smile to hide their real feelings? For most of us, we don't. Obviously the closer the relationship, the more you are going to recognize the attempt to cover up, but most of our daily interactions do not involve processing the true feelings of others. So is it surprising that we take the lead from others and plaster a permanent smile on our faces, too?

Today I have realized just how much that affects how I perceive other people. Tonight I decided it was time to get back on the wagon for real therefore prompting me to attend a meeting.  As I listened to the testimony of one of the leaders of the group, and his rocky road with abuse, ****** addiction, drug and alcohol use and ******* addiction, his breakdowns of multiple marriages, abandonment of his kids and the eventual path that lead him to God and to getting his life back in order. Listening to him go through his story, break down when he talked about how abandoned he felt as a young child, how empty he felt when he tried to use *** as a means to fill the hole in his heart, hit me hard. Not 30 minutes before, he was across the room, talking, eating, SMILING like nothing was wrong. And here he was before me, a flawed, hurt and broken person; just as every single one of us in that room is.

Why do we spend so much time hiding who we truly are? Why do we feel obligated to do this? Who are we protecting from our real feelings? There is no pretending that everything is happy behind our smiles. We all know otherwise. And for the first time I realized that I can be real. I don't have to always have a smile on my face, or reply "good or fine" when someone asks me how I am. I can take off my smile for a couple of hours a week and feel safe that no matter how I feel, I will be supported and loved.

Not everyone is given the amazing gift that I am just now realizing I have received. So the next time you put a smile on your face, I hope it is because you are truly happy, not masking your pain.

How do you tell your heart to beat again, when it’s been numb and broken for so long? How do you start living life when all you have done for so many years is go through the motions and try to survive? How do you tell people around you that think you’re doing wonderful, that inside your hurting and not sure how to find God in the midst of the pain?

I have been sort of numb to life the last few months...because the emotions became too much to bear it was easier to pretend and try to forget if only for a few moments....

But deep down inside, I really want to live this abundant life that Jesus bought for me, when He paid the price on the Cross. I really want to walk with my God through the journey of healing, so that I can become the person, He has seen me as, since before I was born. I want to believe I am worthy of love, and that I am beautiful and breathe taking to my Creator.

I know one day I will get to that place and when I do it will be so amazing and this journey I am on will have been well worth it.....

Although right now there are a lot of questions, and a lot of doubts, and many sleepless nights, and tears cried.

For right now I remember the story in Matthew, where it talks about a man who asked Jesus to heal his son, And he told Jesus, “Lord, I believe, help me in my unbelief"...

So today I am choosing to say "Lord, I believe in You and I trust that you are holding me in this and that You will continue to walk with me through all of this, but I ask that you help me in my areas of unbelief and doubts...in Jesus Name...Amen"