I'm trying to embrace this process of mourning. As most of you know, I could write a book about my experiences. I was conceived by two drug addicted parents--a mother who tricked my father into getting her pregnant because she was so desperate to have a daughter that she chose to overlook that she had caught him in the very act of molesting my older sister, and a father who was a raging porn addict with a "thing" for the weak. Fast forward through 28 years of abuse, eating disorders, deadly codependency, and finally learning to stand up for myself and you get me now: the woman who loves Jesus with all her heart, but has been so damaged that truth is nearly unrecognizable.
I was a child adult from farther back than I remember. I was required to care for my dad's sexual needs, and cater to his guilt trips. I was forced to fend for myself by a mother who called me every name in the book, rejected my independence, left me in horrible situations and then blamed me for the outcome, and slept away most of my life when she wasn't caught up in cybersex or moving strange men into the house. I never had a chance to mourn because for me mourning was dangerous. I could not allow myself to do so because there was no one to hold me together. And as an adult that has done great damage. It has taught me to react in fear because I never learned to be comforted. I realized something the other day. After two years of counseling, my counselor has repeatedly prayed and tried to get me to seek comfort from the Lord. I never quite latched onto it. Comfort is not in my vocabulary. As I look back, all my life when something terrible has happened I've always prayed, "Lord give me the strength to get back up. Help me to go forward again. Help me to move on." In a sense I used God to escape grief. Asking for comfort meant I would have to hurt. It meant that no one was there to hold me together. So, though I know that I should ask for comfort, I don't really know what it is. This is odd because I am probably one of the most nurturing people you will ever meet. I know how to comfort people. But applying it to myself is beyond foreign. I am a striver. I am a go-getter. I move forward. I don't sit and ache. And I guess I don't mourn. To be honest, it scares me to mourn because I don't know if I'll feel like I'm hanging off a cliff the whole time, or if I'll ever come out of it.
Escaping mourning has caused me to react in fear because I never learned comfort. It has caused me to cling because that child inside is scared and doesn't know where to turn. It has not allowed me to see a more nuturing side of God, and has left me to be the inadequate nurturer of myself. It has rooted pride in me, a pride of dangerous independence; and left me deceived as to the reality of how to live in a fallen world. It has made me deceptive to both myself and to others. It has caused me to live in denial. These are things I don't want. I want to live in the reality of God's Kingdom, and what He wants for my life. I want to want to experience pain and overcome it, and not simply step on it in arrogance.
So as I embark fearfully into what God has for me, I know that He will be faithful. I know that this is a part of His plan for my life. But I am, nonetheless, afraid... of pain, of isolation, of whatever else may come up.
