My scars remind me that the past is real

Oh, poor neglected blog.  How you have been abandoned in a frenzy of misplaced spring fever intermingled with the never ending snow showers, basketball madness and an cacophony of untamed thoughts.  I have found it a much safer option to journal my non-nonsensical nonsense in one of the many journals I keep stashed around the house than to try to compile them into, well, sense.  Which means the work on my writing project - I struggle to call it a novel, not quite there yet - has been incredible.  The more I can't communicate with others, the more I communicate with myself?  Fantastic.  I already communicate with fictional creatures and animals, what's the difference?  (My dog talks to me.  Sorry, if yours does not.)

Yesterday was a day of almost uninterrupted sunshine.  And as I peeked out of my office window, I could see little shoots of green just beginning to show themselves on the hedges outside.  Green, people!  The color of hope!  In this time of rebirth and renewal, just that tiny sliver of what will be is comforting.

You see, I need that renewal.  I crave it.  There are days that I feel it so clearly in everything that  I do, every step that I take forward and don't listen to that voice in my head, telling me, "turn back, you can't do this!".  But there has been something in this long, cold winter that wears on my soul.

I have been reminiscing as well (gee, you?  Yeah, I know).  Last year, the week before Easter was one very different than this one.  And I can say with great clarity that *I* was a very different person.  The struggle with hard, dark thoughts was my security blanket last year, not something I am now desperate to shake off.  Believing another spring would never come was my future, not my past.  Now, I sit comfortably on my couch, listening the cabin fever crazed kids outside play dodge ball, despite the not so warm temperature.  I take comfort in the sights and sounds around me, I feel thankful for the day I have had.  Despite a level of anxiety writing this post, my most pressing emotions involve how long I can stay up to watch the late basketball game and what to have for dinner.

Oh, but last year.  Last year as spring was flourishing in earnest and the faithful were preparing for Sunday, I was in a cold, impersonal hospital room having a life or death struggle within myself.  Wondering exactly how it was that I had come to be here.  Wondering if I was well enough to leave, or would be.  Months, years of spiraling behavior combined with rampantly untreated mental illness had come together in the worst of ways. And there I sat.  Alone with my thoughts, again.

This, my friends, is not my story today.  My scars exist, both physically and mentally, and I will bear them for the rest of my days on this earth.  But in this time of rebirth, I am leaving it behind.  I am not that Shan, not any longer.  There is no changing my past, but those sins, that multitude of twisted, unimaginable sins, are forgiven.  I know that they are forgiven.  Only recently have I come to also know that I can let them go, hard as I cling to them.

My story today is that in that worst of times, I found the brightest of lights and the most comforting of hands grab me and pull me out of the muck.  As I cowered in the corner of that hospital room there it was.  A voice that told me, Enough.  Enough of this.  It is time to get up, and learn to walk again in a different way.  On a different path.  This was not a voice I was unfamiliar with, I hope everyone understands that.  But it may as well have been, because it reached me in a way it never had before.  I'm sure everyone has heard that the Lord sometimes needs to bring you to your lowest to build you back up again and for me, that was absolutely true.  All the times before that I thought were the lowest, ha!  Those were pansy practice sessions.  They built upon each other until the weight was too much, until I broke into a million pieces..

But because there is forgiveness for sin, because there is redemption, I was pulled out by my hair, dragged, kicking and screaming.  I will never forget that time, because it makes me who I am, but most importantly I will never forget that it is a gift freely given, this love and grace.  I don't have to dwell.

This Easter was one of great joy from me.  Unlike last year where I sat in a back pew softly crying, having made my husband take me less than 24 hours after getting out of the hospital, I sat in the front.  Yes, there were still tears, but they were a different sort of tears.  They were a triumphant, joyful, loving and hopeful sort of tears.  Among the gifts I have received in the last year include healing, understanding, forgiveness, a renewal (and saving, really) of my marriage and a another shot at living the life that I was made in HIS image to lead.  This is nothing in comparison to the gift that has been given to all of us.

Love your family today my peeps.  (No, not those peeps.  Those are nasty)