That one night she was in bed she heard them come home. She cannot remember what got her out of bed...but she went. Though she wished she hadn’t. He was there in the dark, in the chair. She felt frightened but didn't know why. Fear pressed on her from every angle. Smothering her innocence. After he was finished with her she knew why she was afraid. She went back to her bed and locked it away, silencing what she felt. Muffled emotions would live broken in her now. The secret would be hidden and only fragmented pieces would remain in her like shrapnel. Pieces just sharp enough to cut herself with later on. Seven years old now feels seventeen.
She grew up that night.
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Is it just me, or do you have trouble recalling major events in your life? Exact dates? Even the year something happened? Do you get all twisted when you try to figure out when exactly you met your husband, what you were doing when you went into labor, when exactly was that broken bone or when you first learned to drive? Well, I sure do. And that has annoyed me for too long, the conclusion I have apparently been sleepwalking through much of my life.
The thing is, I like to know why things work and how they work and how they even got that way in the first place. I like details, and dots connected. And while I don’t necessarily believe it is healthy for me to get stuck in the past, it is important to visit it long enough to understand where I came from, and its impact on me today. A look backwards, even a glance, is sometimes beneficial. This includes dates and times and seasons. Life events are important keys to our behaviors, and our faith perspective. Needless to say, I have spent considerable time being frustrated with my own deficiency in recollection.
Admirable are the women who can recite dates like they're the alphabet and have a timeline neatly tucked away in their pretty little heads where memories can be extracted at will. They apparently don't suffer from the same cognitive fogginess I do. Though I don’t have their gift, I do have a plan. I have been working on a life time-line. With a simple line drawn out, (it's actually several pieces of white printer paper taped into a long line) and labeled with years, the last several decades in fact. I am slowly plugging in details like puzzle pieces. And for the first time, things are coming clear. Patterns are emerging and clarity is developing through the fogginess. History is appearing right before my eyes. I even plan to somehow preserve my project for our girls, should they have acquired my lack of recall.
We are linear people, us humans. We live in chronological order. And we cannot stop the clock nor fast forward it. So as simple beings, we will have to piece it all together to remember the things that shaped our lives and make some sense of it all in able to really hold our stories.
What has been interesting about this process is how difficult it has been both logistically and emotionally. I’ve cleaned out file cabinets to locate medical records from surgeries and pay stubs from jobs long ago. I’ve sifted through photos for clues of dates of a broken ankle, vacations we took, moves, accidents, milestones, funerals and all the other moments that changed the trajectory of our lives. It is quite the mission to paint a clear picture of my life, as things have occurred, that made an impact on my faith today.
And as I have filled in the blanks, it didn't take long to recognize things… where the enemy was attacking me but where God held me safe, where my faith was absent but where it matured, where I was lost but where I was saved, where my family suffered losses but how God drew us in.
It also didn't take long to appreciate all we have been through as a family and how resilient we have been. But, just as I have discovered how refreshing it is to have a clearer view of my history, it has had some unpleasant consequences too.
Yes, spending time the last few months trying to piece together how I got here and how my story has developed, I have had to sit in places of pain. Perhaps I didn't realize it when I started, but part of me longed to really understand what was happening in my life when I was at my worst, and in darkest hours. What was going on around me that I hadn't paid attention to? What lies did I believe? What was I running from? How did these things happen? Why did they happen in the order they did? What results did awful events really have on me? (There is another blog post that goes into much more detail with these questions, https://michellehatter.wixsite.com/givengrace/post/digging-out)
Do you also need to take a brief walk backward in order to move forward?
I am still piecing together this life. This time line. I want to see it all, darkness and pain. Sin and and tragedy and all. There is a good reason for this. When I see all of that, I am able to see how far God has brought me.
For it is then that I can fully inhale God’s immense grace. Where I can absorb the full measure of His reigning love throughout my life. The love that brought me here, out of darkness and into His glorious light.
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