Feelings

So, my therapist has been working with me on breaking through and actually letting my feelings happen. I have stuffed (for those of you who do not live in the counseling world, that means I push my feelings down, ignore them, do not deal with them properly, and then all of the emotions come out at very odd moments in some odd ways). Can I just tell you, the war between actually beginning to let go and feel and to keep doing it the way you have been doing it... well, that is quite a struggle.

Turns out this week, I am actually angry. (Again, apparently, I am now beginning to feel and will need to grieve some things I thought I had already worked through). In fact, I am really angry. I am angry at the man that broke my heart. I am angry that I wasted years of my life waiting and hoping he would become the person I thought he was, the person I believed him to be. I am angry that so much was taken from me. My dreams and my plans. In my dreams, we would find a way to become the people that God intended. We would both choose to love and not be selfish, to give and not take... and in so doing, we would see amazing things that could happen to benefit the world around us. We would hold hands at the weddings of our children and remember fondly all the years of their childhood. We would laugh together at the cute things our grandchildren would do one day. We would grow old together, we would take care of each other through health and sickness. We would look back and laugh at the difficult times, because they had not been able to tear us apart. We would love the God who changed us and made us better people.

Instead, that is not reality. Reality is, one man decided that I was not worth pursuing. He chose to pursue other people and things... reality is, I was forced to make a decision that I never wanted to make. I HATE THE REALITY SOMETIMES.

Has good come out of my choices already? Absolutely. Has pain and suffering come out of my choices? Yes. But, healing of my body, mind and soul are happening. Healing for my children is happening. We are together learning a new way of living. We are learning how to have real, open, honest communication. We are learning how to love, what love looks like and feels like even on a difficult day. We are learning how to express ourselves, and not hide from our pain. So, yes, good things are happening, good things are going to come to us. But for today, as I look at the dreams that I have to let go of, the hopes and plans for my children (which did not include bouncing back and forth between two parents), I grieve. I feel my anger, I feel my hurt, my pain, my rejection... and at some point today I will choose to let it go... I will ask God to apply more grace to my heart. I will thank God for the mercy that brought me out of the hell I was living in. But, I will also pray that tomorrow I wake up with more strength. I will look forward to the new dreams and hopes and plans that will come. I will be open and wait to see what happens, I will not live shut down anymore. I will try not to eat sweets to make my heart feel better either. (Just had to throw that one in there).

Today, it is a roller coaster... I am on that slow upward climb, there is anticipation, fear, joy, the feeling that you are about to have no control whatsoever... and I will look forward to reaching the top of this particular loop of the roller coaster... and maybe in a day or two, I will feel the pure joy of letting go and flying down the hill. I will feel the wind in my hair, the smile on my face will be from ear to ear... and I will laugh, because it is worth the climb up, to fly back down.