Are you tired of being broken?

Broken Toys
As children bring their broken toys,
With tears, for us to mend;
I brought my broken dreams to God
because he was my friend.

But then instead of leaving him in peace to work alone,
I hung around and tried to help with ways that were my own.
At last, I snatched them back and cried,
"How could you be so slow?"
"My child," He said, "What could I do?
You never did let go...."
author unknown

Sometime we are NOT like the child in the story; we do not acknowledge our brokenness. Not to anyone else and not even to ourselves. We carry it around with us; like a doll with a missing arm; we feel the pain but won't admit that we need some fixing. 

And then once we do admit our brokenness to ourselves, the areas in our lives that have endured abuse, suffered wounds and even been stunted in growth and healing, we tend to try to hide it from others. We don't "let go" of our pain to trust someone else to help us through the healing process. It is painful. We have problems  trusting others because so many have proven untrustworthy in our lives and we don't want to "let anyone in" to see the mess that we live with daily. 

Sometimes, we may trust and believe that God or a doctor or family member are able and willing to help us; but then again, do we trust and "let go" of the pain so that we can be healed and made whole again. We do not have to live lives of brokenness.  We can "find ourselves, heal from abuse and learn to dream again"...and this healing journey begins by ADMITTING THAT WE ARE WORTH IT...and that any brokenness that we will acknowledge CAN be healed.

Try it...admit your pain and you will find your brokenness. You are not "less of " a person but will become a whole hearted and healed person as soon as you make ONE STEP on this healing journey. 

YOU can do it. YOU are worth it!!!

Have you FOUND yourself???

What 

is 

YOUR VISION 

for your life????

Do you remember the High School Social Studies or Language Arts (in my case it was "Human Relations" with Dr. Mac) class where you had to write an essay on "What I see for myself in 5 years"??? I remember mine and I STILL HAVE IT. I just saw it the other day and was surprised to see that 35 years after my High School graduation that I am ALMOST to where I envisioned myself to be now when I was only 17!!!

I wish that I would have understood some of the wonderful tools; like personality typing and other self-evaluating tools that have scientifically allowed us to "peer inside" ourselves just by answering a few questions.

I challenge that you FIND YOURSELF today; if you do not know your Jung (Carl; that is) Personality Type, then I encourage you to TAKE A QUICK ONLINE TEST NOW...
Jung Typology Test™ 
CHALLENGE yourself to "learn more about yourself" today. I am glad that I did.

Jung Typology Test™

This free test is based on Carl Jung’s and Isabel Briggs Myers’ typological approach to personality *. Upon completion of the questionnaire, you will: Obtain your 4-letter type formula according to Carl Jung’s and Isabel Briggs Myers’ typology, along with the strengths of preferences and the description of your personality type Discover careers and occupations most suitable for your personality type along with examples of educational institutions where you can get a relevant degree or training See which famous personalities share your type....and much, much more.

Change your VIEW

What 

does 

HEALING 

look 

like???

• Healing from abuse is like climbing a mountain. At times our healing journey feels like climbing and even scaling a mountainside, we are always pushing ourselves to "go higher" with little to no understanding or expectation of what it will look like when we get to the top.
• Make sure that your FOOTING is secure; this is really an important step (pardon the intentional pun)
• Pause and rest along the way; PACE YOURSELF.
• The "higher you climb, the better the view will look". Seeing FARTHER when we are up higher, gives up greater motivation to continue.
• You will gain a new perspective on your abilities and take pride in your accomplishments.
• Making it to the top is exhilarating; ENJOY the view!
• SING A NEW SONG; live intentionally "in the moment" and focus on the JOURNEY and not just the "end result".

This was an inspired image that I experienced one day while I was trying to explain "how it feels to be healed" on my journey of "finding myself, healing from abuse and learning to dream again".

The part that I did not add are the "other obstacles" that we may run across on our healing journey; the nay sayaers, abusers and inconsiderate and unloving persons who accuse of "of being selfish" in taking time to "take good care of ourselves"...these are VERY real obstacles...we all have persons in our lives who do not encourage us to "find ourselves, heal from abuse and learn to dream again"...they are the selfish people who KNOW that WHEN we are healed, healthy and WHOLE that we will be "Singing a New Song" and we will not want the relationship with them that THEY are currently enjoying; more than likely; you are being abused and your abuser doesn't want you to become aware of their control over you.

IT IS TIME to heal...time to take the time to "be good to ourselves" and to treat ourselves in the ways that we deserve to be treated by others. We deserve to be treated lovingly, respectfully and with great encouragement to live a life where we will be "Singing a New Song".

'Tis better to have dreamed and lost, than never to have dreamed at all.

When your dream dies

So many songs, poems and inspirational stories tell of “following your dreams” but I have yet to read one where the promise of a dream come true ends in the death of that same dream, until now.

I once had a dream while in high school, that I would one day have quiche for lunch on the Champs Elysees in France. I didn't know how I would get there. That wasn't part of the dream; or my goal. My goal was to “have quiche on the Champs Elysees”. Simple. When I was 36 years old; I went on a missions trip to France; flew into and out of Paris and the night before I returned to the U.S...I took myself on the Metro and made my dream come true. Oh, it was not the sunny seat on the cobble stoned cafe sidewalk lunch that I had dreamed of; it was a late dinner, inside the cafe restaurant on a gloomy, misty early evening; the kind of rain that everyone says makes Paris look mysterious and even more beautiful. My dream came true; not exactly in the way that I had envisioned but exactly as I had stated.

I dreamed of returning to my first love. To see him once again. To love him and be loved by him and the hope of passionately embracing, kissing and celebrating the return of our lost love...and I saw my dream come true. Hilariously happy, we reunited. Joyfully and enthusiastically “in love”, we relived the beautiful moments, shared the “filler” that had been in our lives for 25 years while we were separated and thought that we had LOVE like no other couple. We even felt sorry for those who had “far less” love than we did. We planned on making our dream come true an happily ever after...until mental illness insidiously revealed itself; the killer of dreams.

Just imagine for moment. You have dreamt and longed to be with someone whom you had loved all your life, and returned to them with “only the clothes on your back” because property and possessions meant nothing compared to love, and have your dream come true only to turn into a NIGHTMARE within 6 months. You are stuck. You have given up means to support yourself, insurance and security. You love him. You want to see him be healthy and happy; hopefully with you. You know he is ill but you KNOW that you do not want to live the remainder of your life with his continual, fervent denial of “any problem” and blaming YOU for the misery that he feels. Rages, hurtful words, anger. That is when I started to read online that I was not alone.I found a forum that explained Personality Disorders for those of us who might have found ourselves loving a person with this mental illness. I realized I loved a mentally ill man.

As if I was experienced a foreshadowing, I circumvented information about BPD: Borderline Personality Disorder since I obviously did not know anyone who suffered from that insidious disease, or I hadn't until 6 months after reuniting with my first love, it was then that I realized that I did know someone. I loved someone and I lived with someone who suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder. I didn't want to believe how deeply dark and painful it was for the sufferer or their loved ones; I clung to the hope that “with DBT therapy there was a promising prognosis of living an healthy and happy life”. But that is only offered to those who suffer with mental illness who will accept and acknowledge their pain and face their emotional dysregulation, impulsivity, rages, black and white thinking (splitting), projection, fear of abandonment and fear of intimacy and so many other very notable and outstanding symptoms of mental illness.

My dream certainly came true. It was wonderful; for a short time. Our love was real and it was the best love that we had ever had known. It was also the rearing of the head of mental illness; that had happened so many years ago, returning to turn our dream come true into a nightmare. Nonetheless, our dream came true and then it died. It is better, even yet, to have a dream come true and turn into a nightmare, than never to have had your heartfelt dream come true at all. I am glad that my dream came true. 

I still believe in dreams. 

Accepting life as it comes

When we are pushed to the edge our our ability, resourcefulness and physical endurance; we have to sometimes stop trying to “make things right” and accept that life will go on; whether we like it or not. We feel helpless. We feel that we fail ourselves and others. We feel alone and confused yet we ask ourselves “What can I do?”. Sometimes, the answer to that may be “nothing” while most of the time, it just may be “more than I could have ever imagined”.

I remember feeling at a loss; grieving for a loved one whom I could not care for: my mother, my stillborn child, several friends whom I would have preferred to “be with” at the end of their lives; in hopes that I could do something to make a difference in their lives like they had made in mine. I remember feeling a sense of obligation; I wanted to be there for them. I wanted to hold their hand and comfort them at their hardest moments. I wanted to be a blessing to them and share my gratitude to how they affected my life; how much difference they made in the world; and in mine.

• Sometimes we “just can’t do” the thing that we would like most to do. 

• We would like to “be strong” when others are weak and most of the time, we feel weak as well. 

• Sometimes we would like to “be happy” when we sense negativity, but then again, for some reason, we get caught up in the same moodiness and can’t seem to “put on a happy face”. 

• Sometimes we would like to be wise and have the answers that others ask for but really do not want to hear.

• We struggle in sharing our experience and only hope that they would take from our example, that it is better to “get messy and make mistakes” as long as we are being true to ourselves more than anything else.

Accepting that we have a great need to "find ourselves, heal from abuse and learn to dream again" is the BEST thing for us to accept; let's start there. 

We are worth it!!!