The Welcome Home

  So, tell me about you.  And thus began a very long conversation.  Have you ever asked someone that?  I mean asked them and really meant to be asking the question bcz you really wanted to know — and not for information’s sake but for love – that’s all, just for love.  Well, that’s how my conversation with my cousin began. 

Just for love, that’s all. I loathe actions done for anything else. That’s been a character quality that has brought me both great peace and great anguish.  Great peace bcz I’m a what-you-see-is-what-you-get person.  Great anguish bcz what you see is not necessarily what you see — tell you why.  When you see a seemingly confident person, chances are very good that what you see is not what’s really going on.  O, you may see happy – but happy is learned, happy is a decision… you may see confidence – you may think you see a self assured person, but underneath is a very un-self-assured person.  That’s not to say that seemingly self-assured person is not confident in what they are saying – but that the person is very confident in what they’re saying but not confident being the person saying it.  So, that’s me.  Glad by choice – and not necessarily confident, but confident in what I’m saying – confident bcz God is and has been faithful and I trust in Him.

I guess it’s why I lean so heavily on the “we have this treasure in earthen vessels” verse and feel it so strongly.  It’s another reason why I tell you that line from time to time: I have no mouth and yet I must scream (good line, probably not a good book).  And… that is why two words are so totally profound to me.  Those two words are:  But God.

My cousin and I share life changing events that occurred at the same time  nearly 40 years ago.  Neither of us – probably not fully even to this day – realized how life altering those events would be.  I don’t think any of us — at the time — grasp the significance of what will later become defining moments of our lives.  It was the great collision of my life — which I believe God allowed for my good and His glory.  It was an intersection of my life and my cousin’s life.   And we talked at length about it the other night… and I cried for hours following that conversation.

In that month of August there were two deaths – the death for my cousin was the horrific suicide death of his father. It was a very sad time – crazy emotional.  The other death?  For me – was the death of innocence as I was molested by the man my mother was married to at the time and. is. not. now.  Death that occurs in sexual abuse is like a shooting at point-blank range – only you never see the weapon, the wound, the trail of blood, there is no coroner summoned… and no funeral.  It’s just a quiet death. On the outside.  But I didn’t know at the time that my uncle’s death was not the only death that happened that month.  The reality of the second death that month would be drawn out for three years and then — years later — would be recognized for what it really was.  That collision in the intersection was life changing for me.

There were a lot of people in that intersection that month — it’s taken me years to look at that mental photograph and see all the faces – and longer for me to see the lives behind the faces and what that collision meant.  To us all.  And problem with blogging is – for people like me – that there’s so much to say and it’s been important for me to say it all — but I have to continually gauge the appropriateness of the telling — that’s what’s more important.  All along, this blog’s been a tool to help people see they’re not alone – it’s a place I share what God’s done with what the enemy intended evil and a place for other women to see there is freedom at the foot of the Cross.

The longer I live, the more I see that people like me have this huge need to know and be known – it’s but a part of that refusal to keep dark secrets hidden.   And there’s a –huge– difference between discreetly honouring confidences and hiding dark secrets, lies and indiscretions.