Learning To Break Free

  

  2023 was significant in many ways for our family. It started with John and I finally finding a church home in the town we have called home for five years. We had visited several churches in the area. We hadn't felt comfortable until January 2023, when we walked into a place that is now our church.

    My boys asked me to make an effort to share my art and photography in 2023. My heart wasn't really in it, but I did try. That attempt came to a hault when it became evident that John's mom was no longer able to care for herself. Signs of dementia became undeniable. It took time to get her placed in the nursing home she requested. Thankfully, she was accepted where she asked to be with patient caretakers who understood her disease.

    It was a rollercoaster year. 

    Among the highs and lows, I found strength to successfully face something that had haunted me most of my life. Through encouragement and prayer, trying to write my story no longer broke me. Realizing that God really is FOR me - the good, the bad, and the ugly - allowed freedom to accept my past and begin to let go. No longer a temporary fix, but finally fully letting go of the anger, the hurt, the pain, the embarrassment, and the shame of things hidden away under a pretty mask. 

    

    While there is still a long way to go in writing it all out, and some parts may never be shared publically, I will share a little. What you will read and or watch below was just the beginning of a long year of journaling. If the end were today, you would see that learning to break free wasn't easy. It took work, encouragement, prayer, and forgiveness. It took acceptance and faith. It took a Heavenly Father's love. 

    Oh, and that verse about being perfect - the one that heaped shame on my imperfection - has a solution. It's not about us. We can never attain perfection. Jesus Christ lived that perfect life for us. Accepting Him allows His perfection to cover our imperfection. He is the answer to the scripture that tormented me.

 

  Have you ever been at a moment in your life when emotions crowding your heart and mind were powerful enough to create a mental tidal wave? You became so overwhelmed that you were frozen in place while staring at the wave rising toward you. A physical fear of drowning in the wave of those feelings held you in an unyielding grip. You wanted to break free from the paralysis of those emotions and swim away - like an Olympic champion racing from that crushing flood - but you couldn’t move.

There was a time when any negative emotions were bottled up and tucked away. Those feelings built up over years of learning to suppress any unseemly thought, or memory as though it never happened. Meanwhile, I would put on a pretty mask of joy and peace and sweetness – like a perfect bride waiting for her groom.  

Picture a beautiful bride with her flawless white dress, no hair out of place, while her manicured fingers held tightly to a bouquet of perfect yellow roses. That bride represented the theoretical image I wanted to portray.  What was it that no one saw in this hypothetical bridal image?

The marriage was arranged, and she didn’t really know the groom.  From what she heard; he could be cruel. To make matters worse, yellow roses weren’t her favorite. Plus, the florist put something on those flowers to cause an allergic reaction, make her throat swell, and choke out her voice.

So, the truth was that the perfect b-r-i-d-a-l mask was more of a b-r-i-d-l-e. You know – the thing you put in a horse’s mouth to control him – or her.

For years, in our Southern Pentecostal – Assembly of God - church, we were told to be perfect. The scripture was quoted from KING JAMES - Matthew chapter 5 verse 48 – “Be ye therefore perfect – even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.”

But I wasn’t perfect. Far from it. The mask was both a solution and a death sentence. You think that I’m being overly dramatic? I mean, a death sentence, really? Yes. A mental, stifling death sentence and I was on death row for years – wearing my mask on a lonely beach prone to emotional tsunamis - before learning how to break free.