Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Everything Old is New Again

So it's been a while since I've updated this puppy, and to be honest, I have no desire to fill in all the details. They'll all come out eventually and the reality is that if you're reading this, you probably already know anyway.

I seem to have that habit, to quit writing for months or years at a time and then just pick it up. I noticed this as I sorted through old journals, at least a dozen of them, while trying to clean up my room at my parents' house. Of the 12 or so journals, only one was ever actually written through to completion. The rest of them have 15, 20, or maybe even 50 pages written in before I give it up. When I finally do go back to writing in my journal, I hate to taint my new thoughts with the old ones. It's a weird superstition - that whatever has already been written down has the power to influence what will be written in the future. I spent years running from everything, but most notably myself, and it is written all over these journals.

It's been painful to read them at times, realizing just how hurt and lost I really was. And, at times, I am amazed by my ability to look past all of it and see the truth of my situation for what it was. The following excerpt is just one of those times:

"I think that in order for therapy to work for me, I'm going to have to quit intellectualizing everything. I am going to have to accept myself as patient and stop analyzing every therapeutic encounter from a cerebral perspective. I, in general, I think, need to learn to feel things instead of think about them." --March 23, 2005

For the record, I never figured out how to do that - feeling vs. thinking. And this is precisely the issue that I have to sort out in counseling over the next year so that I can finally get to Africa.

So that's my prayer, friends, if you wouldn't mind joining me in it: that I would find the strength in Him to finally feel things and find healing from them where healing is needed. My heart is ever with Africa, but I know I can't go until I deal with things I've avoided for years.

Love.