Chewed Up and Spit Back Out

I ran into one of my top 5 triggers yesterday.  I spent the rest of the night working through it and it's aftermath.  I hate this.  I hate that this is still my life.  That the mention of something can send me right back to being 16 and trapped.  The people who were intended to help me did yet more harm and they used their "God" to do it.  The thought still turns my stomach.  I hate revisiting teenage me.  Not because I hate her, I actually (now) really love pieces of who I was back then.  The intensity of her anger and the anguish of her daily pain - God how did I survive that?  No wonder I wanted nothing to do with faith or God.

I don't want to talk about it.  I don't want this to be part of my story.  Christian Ritual Abuse is ugly.  It takes what is sacred and spins it around, using prayer, faith, and Scripture as weapons against innocent victims.  I hate that so much of what was done to me was done in the name of God.  It still brings up unanswerable questions - and I have nothing left in me today to wrestle with them.

On my good days, I know that the "God" I was taught about is not the one that I choose to follow.  Nor do I see that "God" in the world around me or in the pieces of Scripture that I can hear.  Today is not a good day and I find myself pleading in tears for mercy.  Mercy for my doubt-riddled belief.  Mercy for my angry words of pain.  Mercy in this fight, because today I can't fight.

I can't fight.  All I can do is rest.  I wrap myself in softness and purple.  I let the music flow over my rawness.  I sit in the pool of sunshine and grieve for the child I was.

Gungor's "Please Be My Strength" is one of my favourite songs in this season. It's deceptively simple - a heart psalm, and one that I find myself often repeating.