Floating (and a give-away)

We drive along northern Lake Superior's color tour route, through a canopy of yellow, the birches bowing over us, cathedral arches over a gravel road. Something about the yellow, the smells and the scene, the place and the time of year, plunges me deep into the murky world of memory. Memory so thick and so real that my eyes cannot see truth, cannot see my husband who tries to draw me back to my body. A hallucination of my past, gritty, agonizing, and breathless. We near Heartbreak Hill, and my heart indeed is still broken and my coping skills are swept away like ash in the wind. 

I feel burned out, like an overexposed photo, my soul a cigarette crushed out by abusers and my own consuming sins. God is absent in this memory, a mere onlooker whose hand I cannot reach.

We reach the hill, and the memory subsides. The cool air outside the car brings me back, but I am somehow stuck outside my body, my soul like a firecracker on a string that I drag behind me as we walk.

I put my thumbprint cross in my back pocket. Something to squeeze when the memories squeeze me in their inexorable grip.

Everything still bleeds out of focus. The memories wash over me like waves. A little girl broken. A girl in college breaking others. The weight of my shame descends upon my shoulders again and I am too heavy to walk far. My eyes blur with tears and they are hot, tears of my guilt, the guilt stain that I cannot rub out even though I know it is forever forgotten by the Savior to whom I confessed it long ago.

How do you keep walking when you know others are adrift in pain because of what you have done in your life?

There is no relief. All weekend, even still now on Monday, my soul is still hovering, afraid to rejoin my mind, which houses these acid thoughts. Without soul, the tears stop, the emotion stops, and I am not afraid or sad or ashamed . I move through the days like the walking dead, seeing and hearing but not absorbing, and I can't force that soul back in.

How can I be kind to myself? How can I find comfort? Where is my help among these jagged rocks on the stormy sea, when I split apart and let soul float behind so I can keep on living? I sing with David, praying for relief.

The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all...Evil will slay the wicked; the foes of the righteous will be condemned. The LORD redeems his servants; no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him. (from Psalm 34)

Perhaps it is He who is holding the string to my soul, floating and ready to come home to my body if only I can open these clenched fists and receive His grace.

Gifts, counted, through the fog:

1011 Husband fighting for me through flashbacks

1016 Yellow carpet in the woods

1017 Laughter rippling through the leaves

1019 Carrots cooked with pot roast

1021 Music on the way home

A giveaway:

1. Comment on this post for one entry

2. Repost to Facebook or Twitter for a second entry and leave comment telling me.
(you can simply click the buttons at the bottom of this post to do so)

3. Mention this post to a friend and tell me in a comment for a third entry.

What you'll get:

A turquoise Comfort Cross from Calypso Studios, just like mine