Washing The Blood Out

“A joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He's not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He's not an eight or a nine, a king or a jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn't belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him.”
― Jostein Gaarder
     
     When you decide to get completely healed, face the truth head on, and do whatever it takes to find freedom ... you do it alone.   People, family, friends can say they will walk through it with you, but they will only walk as far as the truth they can handle, then the most unexpected thing happens; they come against you.  In their need to stop at the depth of truth they can handle they will fight you going deeper because it just might expose them somehow.  Fear takes over.  They don't even have to be a part of your story, but as you uncover truths about unhealthy, you just might have something in common that they don't want to see in their story. 
     It's like being in a war and the enemy has POW's deep in their territory.  The POW's are children, the generations to come and the child you once were.  People come along side of you as you commit to rescuing those babies, but at the first sign of enemy gunfire (truth) half your troop suddenly has something else more important to do.  The deeper you get into enemy territory, not only do your comrades stop fighting alongside of you, but the enemy actually convinces them to join his side.  Sometimes they don't even realize what is happening.  It becomes more dangerous the deeper you go, because you don't know who your friends are, the enemy becomes more determined to keep his captives (so they don't turn against him) and it is unfamiliar ground.  It's easy to play war on familiar ground, but step out into the unknown and  ....
     When you dig down into shame and truth about your life, a rage is released.  Depending on the level of trauma, rage can be severe.  The average pastor does not have any experience with this and if they refuse to learn about battling spirits, and if he battles with rage himself, you can knock him on his ass.  Instead of admitting he knows nothing, he continually digs into his old bag of tricks until he realizes you are exposing his demons more than he is able or willing to expose yours.  I don't believe many pastors should be counseling at all.  Maybe simple every day stuff, but in my case, more damage was done.  I had made a decision to trust again, something I had not done in years and it blew up in my face. 
     As you go deeper into the war zone, the spirits that once controlled you now attack you through others.  For instance, I once was controlled by rage, as I dig deeper, others who are controlled by rage are attacking me.  I still get angry, but I don't rage.  The enemy will stop at nothing to get you to give up and turning those in your life against you is a powerful tool.  Don't let him win.  Keep walking.  It's a narrower and narrower path the further you go, because many stop where truth hits them in the face and fear stops them from walking through it.  You have to respect freewill.  It was a gift God gave each of us and we in turn can't take it away from anyone. 
     It gets more difficult and it gets darker, but the closer you get to the light and freedom, the more willing you are to keep fighting.  I believe there is a point when you reach that biggest hurdle, it actually gets lighter and lighter.  Though, it sometimes seems that when I finally cross the finish line, there will be no one there to congratulate me or share in the victory, but that is not so.  The people who celebrate the loudest with you are the ones who have already crossed that same finish line.
    
“There is the solitude of suffering, when you go through darkness that is lonely, intense, and terrible. Words become powerless to express your pain; what others hear from your words is so distant and different from what you are actually suffering.”
― John O'Donohue

Twisting Satan and Santa

“I need Christ, not something that resembles Him.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed    


     5:30 Christmas morning, 2016 and I have been up for a couple hours already.  This is just another day.  People don't want it to be so.  I read a post yesterday about this time of year being our annual glimpse into what Kingdom living is supposed to look like.  People feeding the poor, stopping to help a motorist, and giving money to charity are just a few of the things we do during this time of year that we don't usually do.  Me?  I bought myself a donut to have with my coffee.  I don't normally do that. 
     Christmas for me is full of bad reminders.  I have struggled this time of year for the last 5 years.  Facing truth, changes perspective on many things.  You see my mother's mother used to cancel Christmas and have mental breakdowns this time of year.  In response to that, every single year as far back as I can remember, I heard the words, "You are not going to ruin my Christmas.  I never had a good Christmas growing up."  So in turn, she made sure ours sucked too.  When my kids were little it was still about her, but when I had grandkids, I decided I don't need it anymore.  She actually made me and my sister go with the person who molested us to get a Christmas tree one year.  I am not a fan of Christmas trees.  If and when I had one it was for my kids and when they grew up, and if they lived with me, they could get one themselves.  What it comes down to is this: I hate fake.  If you aren't going to be nice to me the rest of the year, don't do it now.
     I am house sitting.  This morning I am looking down on this valley and all the lights on in the hundreds of homes and I wonder how many parents will wake up angry from their childhoods, what they didn't get and take it out on their kids.  I wonder how many will fake this whole Christmas thing from their smiles to their "I love the gift".   We know some kids will get nothing, some will watch their parents get high or drunk, and worse things, but I am talking about the perfect "movie set" Christmas getting ruined when mom explodes because somebody accidently knocked a ball off the tree. 
     I would rather hibernate, read my book and work toward healing.  I don't fake smile very well at all.   I have seen nothing this Christmas about Christ.  I have seen Santa, Rudolph, Charlie Brown and Frosty, but no Jesus.  There is that one short scene in Charlie Brown's Christmas where Linus tells what Christmas is all about, but we have to go back to the cartoon from 1965 to find Jesus mentioned? 
     There is so much deception out there.  Very few want the truth.  I would rather face God after telling only one person in my life time His truth, than stand before Him having told thousands a twisted Satan Claus version of the truth.  I would rather have no friends and tell the truth than have superficial friends who don't really know me because I have told them what they want to hear.  Deception comes way to easy to Christians.  I used to think most people were good, until I started hanging out with Christians.  Lukewarm, one foot in the world and most of the other foot too. 

There are too many starving people eating apples in the dark, so they can't see the rotten parts!

Steaming Ahead.

“Everything was perfectly healthy and normal here in Denial Land.”
― Jim Butcher

     About a month ago I sat in the car with one of my closest friends, one who knows most of my story and I told her my plan to forgive.  I told her some of what I learned about myself and that I realized, this is a wall between me and God, between me and my future.  Why?  Why can I forgive a man for raping me, for molesting me, for beating me and all that horrible stuff, but I can't forgive these two?  She just so matter of factly stated, "Because they are the ones who saw you naked."  Huh?  Being molested and full of body shame I right away
began to scan my memories and that did not happen.  But then it slowly registered what she was saying.  She continued, "Your mother and your pastor are the two people you should be able to trust in this world."  Yes, she was right.  They should be.  Many will ask why I feel it is acceptable to talk about the two of them on this blog.  I know they will deny it, they have been doing it for years.
     Another "Aaaaha moment" in the archeological dig for shame was reading this in the book Released from Shame - Moving beyond the Pain of the Past by Sandra D. Wilson Ph.D.

I once read one of the more amusing revelations from postglasnost Russia. It seems the chief of the principal mapping agency admitted that for the last 50 years Soviet mapmakers deliberately misplaced rivers and streets, distorted boundaries and omitted geographical features on public maps. The article went on to say that the correct maps were still "top secret" in the Soviet Union long after space photography allowed foreign countries to make their own extremely accurate m...aps.

"Pepole did not recognize their motherland on maps. Tourists tried in vain to orient themselves on the terrain .... You can get maps of our country in many countries of the world except U.S.S.R.," the (Moscow) evening paper ... complained recently. "From whom, one wonders, are we keeping secrets? From ourselves?"!

That's a good question - one you might want to ask yourself. Unhealthy families (and church families) are famous for keeping secrets from themselves. And as a loyal child you might still be trying in vain to orient yourself to life with a parent-drawn (pastor-drawn) map of secrets and lies.
No wonder you've lost your way and feel confused. You need to begin following a new map charted by truth. But that won't be easy because in unhealthy families, truth brings pain.

 

 

    I have always felt like this.  I have a different map.  I want to get out, but my map is designed to keep me in.    I have a parent-drawn and a pastor-drawn and I can't get anywhere with them.  So many people choose to live in the lie instead of finding freedom, instead of accepting responsibility, instead of putting others before themselves, instead of doing the hard painful work it takes to be completely free.  This book is one of the few that is changing my life.  This came from the same book. 

 

In a study of 14 adolescent males on death row, the researchers observed that 8 of the 14 had injuries severe enough to require hospitalization ... 12 had been brutally abused and 5 had been sodomized by relatives. Their parents had a high rate of alcoholism, drug abuse, and psychiatric hospitalizations. The boys had tried to conceal all this during their trials. They preferred to be seen as bad rather than admit that they were ... victims of ... abuse. The parents often cooperated with the prosecution (and even urged the death sentence) because they had an interest in concealing their own actions.

 

 

     I read a book years ago on confronting your abuser.  It said they would either deny and call you crazy or break down, admit the truth and beg forgiveness.  I confronted one of mine and he denied, said I was crazy just like the book said.  I knew he knew the truth because of a sentence he said word for word in the book.  It was total confirmation.  After that I held my head up and he looked at the ground.  But then my mother decided to stay friends with him and his wife.  At one time she even had them in a picture on her fridge.  I had told him my parents knew, they all knew, but when she did nothing to support me, he went back to holding his head high and I felt like a pile of dog shit steaming on the sidewalk.  I asked her why she had his picture on her fridge and she said it was too uncomfortable to end the friendship.  See, the dog's comfort is much more important than the dog shit.

     They will deny and continue to live the lie.  They will live in the shame by choice, just like I have done for so many years.  I won't do it anymore.  The truth is the truth and I will forgive them for making me believe I am ... was a pile of dog shit.  I am not.  I could expose the lies, but I think seeing the truth is more valuable.  To find out you are not a pile of dog shit is good, but confusing, because then what are you?  Instead I want to show people they are children of God, not born of their past anymore, but born again.   

 

 

“There is a moment in our healing journey when our denial crumbles; we realize our experience and it's continued effects on us won't "just go away". That's our breakthrough moment. It's the sun coming out to warm the seeds of hope so they can grow our personal garden of empowerment.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Healing Insights: Effects of Abuse for Adults Abused as Children    

 

 

Subtle Shamers

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”
― Brené Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame    


     I am having a moment ... this is a much needed ... leading to health ... very much needed moment in my life ... I want to bite somebody ... I want to bite them hard.  You have to be able to name the offense to forgive.  There were moments in this walk when I had "Aaaaha moments" like when I realized I had been raped though for decades I had said, "He touched me".  When you put the correct label on the crime, you can forgive the correct crime. 
     I set out a couple months ago to forgive the two people I cannot seem to forgive and set myself free.  I try to forgive and I fall back to hate, I try to forgive and yet dream about revenge.  Why can't I get past this.  I have forgiven horrible things, why not these two? 
     I had a friend offer to walk through this with me.  She knows forgiveness.  She knows anger.  So we will meet once a week and forgive these two so I can move on with my life.  I began reading all I could find on forgiveness.  The first thing to jump out and grab me was the statement that every person who rages, who struggles to control their anger has shame.  When I went to my friend and repeated this she actually showed me a diagram with a ball of anger, wrapped in shame and then a layer of something else and another and another.  Those layers I have dealt with, but the shame ... where do you even begin? 
     I started by looking for a book on shame.  They are very difficult to find if you want one form a known author.  If you want a Christian known author it is nearly impossible.  I prayed and found Released From Shame by Sandra D. Wilson, Ph.D.   Like most books, you read through and some where in your brain you know this all makes sense.  Sometimes it's just putting known thoughts into clearer statements.  But then, as in every life changing book experience, the "Aaaaaha" bombs start falling.  When you have been molested, raped, beat, etc. the shame is obvious, the offense is obvious, the forgiveness is correctly labeled because the offense is correctly labeled.  Well, it is after you take down the minimizing signs "he touched me" and "he molested me" and put up the correct "RAPE" signs.  Then you are able to forgive and actually bless those people. 
     So if rage rises up every time I think I have forgiven these two, where is the shame?  First, what is shame?  Shame is believing you have the same value as a steaming pile of dog shit on the sidewalk.  What value does dog shit have?  None.  People avoid it, people wrinkle their noses and look away in disgust, even gagging at the smell and/or sight.  Nobody wants to deal with cleaning you up ... or should I say cleaning your nasty self from the sidewalk.  When people have given you this message over a long period of time and depending on the relationship, it can wear you down to nothing.  If I was to draw a diagram of shame it would not look like the ball with outer layers at all.  Shame would be the roots of the tree and anger the trunk. The shame came before the anger.   All those other things that come later such as comparing yourself to the offender, rehearsing the injury, depletion of energy, altered world view, etc. would be the branches that sprout from the shame and anger tree.
     When you first look at the ways you were shamed, you automatically ask yourself, "Did I do that to my kids, friends, spouse?"  If you have the true desire to heal, you have to ask yourself that question.  As Sandra D. Wilson says in her book, "Yesterday's shamed become today's shamers, as shame begets shame."  One of the examples she first uses is a little girl in the public restroom with her mother.  She drops her coat and washes her hands getting water and soap everywhere.  Shame comes in a look.  I received that look many, many times as a child and I in turn gave it to my kids.  Instead, I could have been taught and taught mine how to wipe up the mess like no big deal and move on with your day.  A quick wipe with a paper towel could have saved a lot of therapy. 
     There is a huge difference in my parents.  My dad, who has done some horrible things, is still someone I want in my life.  His sideways looks when I was a kid were more of a "Check yourself.  Should you be doing what you are doing right now?"  He was encouraging.  He made mistakes and he really hurt me when he left me, but I knew and still know he loves me.  My mother on the other hand, was never pleased with anything.  I got the look all the time, I got the sneers and the "You are ruining my life" looks.  Everything I did, everything that happened to me and everything she regretted doing were somehow my fault, because of who I am.  When I asked her why she never hugged me as a kid, like she hugged my brother and sister, I expected an answer like, "That's not true, I hugged you" but what I got, without hesitation was "I resented your birth".  Confirmation, steaming shit, on her sidewalk of life.  It is possible to not like someone, yet leave them with their self worth.  But who, even resenting their child's birth, would actually tell their child that?  The dog who shit you on to the sidewalk.  That's who.   I am beginning to understand the shame, putting the correct label on the crime and know I will be free one day soon.
     The other person I am struggling to forgive hid their shaming a lot better.  In trying to find it, I even blamed myself for trusting too much.  Maybe I did, but ...   The pastor I went to for help in the beginning of my walk was the opposite kind of shamer.  Actually it was in the beginning that he was a subtle shamer.  "Subtle shamers favor rescuing.  It allows them to look stronger and more competent than the "victim" while also maintaining the appearance of respectful kindness." (from Released From Shame, Sandra Wilson)  When I began to grow out of a place of dependence on him the shaming became blatant, from slamming me and others in sermons, phone calls of screaming everything he thought wrong with me, to sending out a letter warning security to watch for me.  If you ask him, he had good reason for all of this.  Oh yes and I shamed him also, but as in the first example, who was the adult and who was the child, even if in a spiritual sense.  The harm that came from this, added his name to my offender list.  Now, a good forgiver, sees that the offender (shamer) had to have been shamed in their life.  I have not healed enough at this point to care, but maybe one day. 
     As I was frozen in my "Aaaaha moment" of this realization,  I also realized how deep this goes in our society.  If raging, uncontrolled anger is about shame, atheists must have been shamed by a believer at some point, races shamed for skin color, men shamed by women, and so on and so on.  Our society, America is an angry nation rooted in shame.  I think I may have my calling.  To understand the depths of the roots of shame and to share the shovel to dig those roots out, can change a lot of lives.  I truly believe you have to understand the crime, the offense, the true wound, in order to forgive it and be free.  And now, moving towards forgiveness...


Overdependents have been called the "fairy godmothers of the world".  Now the problem with trying to be everyone's fairy godmother is that you keep waving your magic wand but nothing happens.  The truth is this: We do not have the magic power to change and control other people.  We are living a fairy tale if we think we do.  And living in this fairy tale about control traps us in overdependent bondage. - Sandra D. Wilson, Ph.D.

Right Brain Drag

“What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch    


     The blank page has changed.  It somehow does not look the same.  Before it was a canvas and my thoughts would randomly splat on the page to miraculously form some idea, story line, deduction, or other word art.  Yes, it was a canvas.  Now it has somehow become very loud, screaming at me, "THE DREAM, YOUR DREAM IS  DEAD!"  Writing is an impossibility.  Communication is beyond your dead brain cells.  Kayleen - 0  Satan - 2
     I went for prayer the other day and I was honest.  I have no confidence.  I don't want to pray for people.  I am sure I will screw it up.  My brain is not the same and I am not familiar with this new and not improved brain, so communication is an impossibility.  Parts of my vocabulary are gone, completely gone, do not exist anymore.  I am too young to feel this way.  So, I stood in the middle of three trusted friends and admitted that I am nothing and I have no confidence in who I am.  How do you have confidence in dead brain cells?  Their response, "You are right where you need to be".  I hated that response until they continued, "when you are nothing and you know it, you allow Him to be everything".  He has to be.  He has to fill in for my dead brain cells and my live ones for that matter, because the dead ones have some how made me see the live ones have shortcomings of their own.  If God does not write for me, then there will be no writing.  I can't and don't want to write without Him. 
     One of my closest friends in this last year is one who faced his own death and won.  In so many ways he is the only one who understands me at all.  Somehow, people who focus on this immature, me, me, me, me, me trivial crap are more annoying than ever.  The person who chooses to put covering up their own crime before a child's welfare make me ... well, they make me ... Ugh.  I have realized that labeling my feelings is not one of my strong points.  When you stuff them for so long you forget their names.  It's a new thing I am learning - Identify the feeling.  There are more than happy and angry.  Who knew?  My thought process is often like driving in a cluster of round-a-bouts.  They put them too close together and I can drive for hundreds of miles in a half mile radius.
     What I started to say many words ago is that the trivial crap that immature, selfish people get stuck in that is so irritating has taken over my world.  In our conversation about Dr. appointments, memory and accepting the changes in our minds and bodies since our illnesses, we realized trivial, what was once nothing to us, stuff has stolen our dreams.  My blank canvas has turned into a mirror and in it all I see is dead brain cells.  Write a book?  I don't see it happening, ever. 
     My friends dream was about to happen in a year.  Money is not an issue.  His girlfriend will retire and they planned on travelling.  Today he mentioned Italy.  They went a couple years ago.  "How do I enjoy Italy, when I can't taste food?"  He went on to talk about how impossible it is to fly.  His saliva glands were destroyed during his chemo, so he drinks water constantly, and that leads to bathroom visits, lots of bathroom visits.  How do you fly with this issue?  I need water, I need more water, 'scuse me, 'scuse me, can I get out, I HAVE TO PEE!!  "It's a 5 hour flight, Kayleen and that is not counting getting to New York.  I went to a movie last night and had to pee 5 times.  FIVE TIMES!!" 
      These trivial things have affected our relationships with others, because when you mention these things, we will call them N.U.T.S (Not Understood Trivial Stuff. -  people want to solve the problem or claim it for themselves.  Oh yeah I get up several times during a movie too.  FIVE?  There is a big difference between twice and five times.  But you look good.  You dressed yourself, you drive, you talk right, you look fine to me.  Get over the stroke, the cancer, etc., you're fine now. 
     I have always been a multi tasker.  Actually I could have been an Olympian Multi-tasker.  My hands could be doing completely different tasks and they each used a different part of my brain.  There was very little reason for both sides of my brain to communicate with each other.  Now, there are people who have had strokes and they drag one side of their body around, scary movie, left leg, drag, we all know the guy, well, I drag the right side of my brain.  It amazingly sounds a lot like the leg drag, but I am the only one who can hear it.  It's okay to laugh.  Laughing and crying are healing.  I can no longer retain what I read, so I have no idea if this flows or just moves amongst the round-a-bout cluster.  There are some feelings, still without labels that go with them, but we will get to that in the future.  I wrote today to beat the dead dream and my friend is looking into a private jet to fly him to Italy.  Trivial crap.


The last refuge of intolerance is in not tolerating the intolerant ...
George Eliot