Some of you know that I have been going through a season of hardships. At this time the most unbelievable things that could ever possibly happen to one person/family/friends/house/car have happened and have been nearly pulling me under with the one thing after anothers.
Someone form this community even wrote to me personally and asked if I wanted to talk about it privatly with them as they had gone through a similar time. I cried for ages after reading that short and simple email. I was amazed to the extent to which someone who didn't know me cared. I didn't write back. I wanted to so badly but I couldn't. I wasn't ready to go into the extent of it. I started several times, but never sent anything. To that person, just knowing you were there and cared and that if I was ever able I could email you ment so much.
I'm ready to share now
:
In the last year we have been evacuated from our home for several nights TWICE due to very freak accidents, my son got badly attacked by a dog, he had been very sick as well, I had what we thought was a cancerous tumor (thank God it ended up being a fibroid tumor) and had been very sick with one major illness after another (walking namonia- can't spell, astmatic brochitis for a month and a half, the flu, food poisoning and other things on top of it all), I had gotten my eye cut (another freak accident of many) and had terrible pain and had to wear a patch for a very long time, I got it off and four months later a clothes pin broke as I was taking it off the clothes line and the sping flun forward and hit me in the same eye, again I had to wear the patch (arg), my husband and son went through various difficulties and were still having to help me because I was sick or couldn't see or was out of it due to pain medicine, there are other things but I think that's enough for now. I realise that others have had it much worse than me, I am glad that I am not them
. Having said all that, things are getting better now.
In the mean time (on top of everything else) I'm please to say that God has been healing me, my heart, and my past, among other things. It never feels good when God is beginning to prune you, but the bible says it's nessisary to be fruitful. Sometime He prunes away things that you would rather him just leave alone; those things hiding in the background away from prying eyes. Sometimes it hurts, but it's nessisary to bring up old burried hurts to move on and grow further. I'm waiting to grow now, while sitting here licking my wounds. I don't know what relevance this short testimony might that I am about to write may have for you, but I felt like it would help me in the healing process to publicly announce what good things God has done.
Back ground info to the testimony of what God is healing in me just now: When I was a girl I had a really terrible time with school work. This lead to even worse trouble with homework. I was failing and in jepordy of being held back a year. What they didn't know then was that I was very dyslexic and had difficulty learning anything that I had to read or write or copy. I relied on listening and auditory learning to get by, which I bearly was. During this time my mother decided that I was "lazy" and "stupid" and became severly mentally and verbally abusive twards me. I believed what she said. She bagan to degrade and embarras me in front of other people and when we were alone to make me want to do better. Obviously I couldn't do better without help and she did not know how to help me and took no time to try to do so. She refused to let my father help me saying that he was giving me too much attention when I was just being obstinant, lazy, and manipulative by trying to get everyone else to do my work for me. I thought, then, that she was right because I really wanted his help and attention and it would've been wonderful to have somone else do my work for me. After a confrence with my first grade teacher, she came up with a plan to
make me learn. Every day after school I had to set at the dinning room table and do my home work. I remember that my feet didn't even touch the ground, but instead rested on the wooden cross bar between the legs. I didn't know what to expect the first night. My teacher decided on giving me extra homework because she knew that I would be "studying" every night. After school I got out my books and worksheets and sat there by the huge picture window watching my friends ride their bikes up and down the road. I was not allowed to get up until my work was done. I had no help. I didn't get my work done. It was dinner time and my books were cleared from the table. I was allowed to go to the bathroom while my mom put dinner on the table. I was so happy to be done. It had been several house of sitting already. We had dinner. I got up to go play with my dolls and my mom literally screamed my name along with other nasty degrading things about me and literally dragged me back to the table where my books went back on the table and I sat until bed time. I didn't have all of my work finished, so I lied and filled in any word that I thought I might be able to spell into the blanks on the last worksheet. My mom was too fed up with me to check it. She ordered me to put it all back in my bookbag and go to bed. I was happy to go to bed.
This lasted for three and a half years. The verbal abuse, the sitting, the watching kids outside playing, riding bikes, building snowmen, having easter egg hunts in the neighbors yard (which I was really jealous of as I watched and knew exactly where each egg was- how could it take them so long to find them all? I could see them.) and the sitting. My sister who was seven years older would sneak over while mom was doing laundry or in the bathroom and take a few pages of my work to her room and do it, then she would sneak it back into my bag when we were clearing the table for dinner. She wrote the answers messy, just like me. She hated doing it "cheating" but couldn't stand not helping sometimes, about once a week or when I had so much work I couldn't even bluff my way through it. I lived for the weakends as I didn't have home work on fridays usually and I could play with my friends for a few days and my mom and I didn't have much to fiight about because I was "a good girl" other than being "so stupid". Then came my fourth grade teacher, Mr Collins. He helped me. I did well. My mom didn't like him. She said he was "slow". I was also "slow" so we got along well. Forth grade came to an end and Fith grade began. Half way through the year I was back at the table, sitting and watching. By six grade we began to have free periods, study halls, and I learned how to copy other peoples work without it being exact plagerism. I loved to think of other words that ment the same to fill the gaps; a change here a tweak there. It made me feel pround in warped sort of way. I was very good at it. I had very good, smart friends, who loved me and started to help me. By high school I figured out that smart boyfriends were the best kind to have. If they got A's they got a date with me, a "study date", that is. If they wanted to go out with me I had to have my home work done... Everyone thought I was smart enough, but just a really bad test taker. I was neither.
God has healed me, taught me, and showed me how I learn. I quit my full time job and have been writing for nearly a year now with the encouragement of my husband (yes, if you were wondering, he is quite smart as that was the major criteria, since I was a kid, for my marriage to anyone. He wont do my work for me though
but he does edit my writing.) and my very smart son (another blessing).
This is a note I wrote to God to thank him for showing me who He knew I was all along, a writer and a reader. I hope this encourages some one.
Mostly the Sitting
God,
You told me today that you believed in me. You encouraged me. You looked at me and saw somebody, an important person, someone with so much potential. You see things in me that no one has ever seen, not even me. You defend me, no one else ever has. When something matters to me, it matters to you. You even said I matter. No one else has ever thought I mattered, not even me. It’s only now that I know you were always my supporter when no one else cared; my cheerleader when no one else had a kind word to say to me; my biggest fan when I was the biggest disappointment to everyone else.
You sat with me all those nights at the table, year after year. You didn’t go off and do more important things, you sat quietly beside me. We sat together doing nothing, just sitting. All those times when I couldn’t do it, couldn’t start it, couldn’t finish it, you were there. All those times when I missed out, when I wished I were someone else, somewhere else, anywhere else, you held my hand. I cried, you cried. When I had very few chances to smile, but many opportunities to be laughed at, you never laugh at me. You knew what I didn’t. You never left me. Thank you for the sitting, the waiting, the crying, and the caring, but mostly the sitting. When I was all alone and beaten down, when there was no one else who would, you did. I can’t understand why you would love me, but I can tell you exactly why I love you. When things are dark I look at myself, paralyzed with fear and inability, and know you are sitting with me, offering me peace and making me able.
