I thought it was time to share a little more of my own backstory for those of you who might be curious about how I came to be where I am. 🙂
In 1999, my husband faced a major life’s event, which triggered a three-year midlife crisis. While still going through this experience, I came online for the first time, in 2002, to share what I was learning, and to help other people navigate this same crisis. When my husband exited his midlife crisis in late 2002, and it was time, I left, then returned years later to begin this work again in 2010. My husband had come out of the crisis with one additional issue that returned back to torment him in less than two years. In 2004, I was already in transition when he erupted again, only this time it was worse than before. Long story short, though I finished my transition in full in 2009, he still wasn’t done. In early 2010, due to the intervention of the Lord, he fell and broke his ankle, which was the catalyst for his final exit in late summer of 2011.
It was a long hard road for both of us, but we’re still together, fully reconciled, due to be married 31 years this year, and I’m really grateful for this experience.
God has blessed me all along the way with people who were willing to share the experiences they had in areas that I needed additional knowledge. In time, after processing everything, I was able to write those aspects out in such a way that was helpful to other people.
I gained most of my knowledge through having lived, and emotionally survived, through the situations I once faced. The rest of it was learned by researching various articles written much earlier than 2002, in places where people had more knowledge that I did. More of it was gained through the generosity of people who trusted me with the most intimate details of their situations, so I could more effectively help them.
God and the gift of Perceptive Intuitive Insight that helped me extract what I needed from my ongoing research, has been what has empowered me to speak so knowledgeably on this subject.
I have built a lot more on the earlier knowledge I had gained back in 2002-2003. I have learned over the years that everything I have endured through, has contributed to the person I have become in this present day and age. I’ve seen serious emotional storms, been through emotional hell, and walked roads of deep emotional pain that have taught me these life’s lessons that I seek to pass on to other people.
It’s really hard to watch people in pain that I can’t take away, nor heal. However, the motivation to come through any trial often requires suffering pain that is often intense. When a trial becomes painful enough, changes will be made by that person.
It happened like that for me, too. It seems human beings won’t step out of their comfort zones into the unknown, until the situation ends up on the razor’s edge, becoming so painful, they can’t stand it anymore…..and it doesn’t even matter if any person truly knows from the beginning that there is more to this trial than meets the human eye. There are no exceptions to the rule of walking a journey that will lead into peace, IF that person will let the experience work on and in them.
Those people still have that journey to walk, that pain to push through, and the change, growth, and becoming that God knows must happen before peace is gained. God is no respecter of person when it comes to circumstances that lead down this emotional road. God never puts any more on any human being than they can bear without asking Him for help to deal with it.
That’s what this crisis is all about–learning that we can’t accomplish anything on our own, that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. You may be angry, because you think you’ve got enough on your plate without added problems to complicate an already complicated situation. All God is going to tell you is to put that anger to good use, and transform it into greater clarity. I can’t explain why God allows what He allows, I just know that all things work to the good of those who truly love Him, and are called according to His purpose.
I have lived a hard life, but I didn’t look at my situation as containing extenuating circumstances. I wasn’t “special” “privileged” nor someone who was “above” going through a trial, just because of what I had already been through previously. You can’t help people unless you’ve already been there. I have more personal experience than just the midlife crisis, than just marital problems, than just being able to recognize people’s behaviors. So much of the experience I have, that contributes to my deep empathy for others, has come from the very painful experiences I had back in childhood.
My childhood was very chaotic, and I’m actually blessed to be alive in this day and time. There were times I didn’t think I’d make it into adulthood. I’ve been beaten, scarred, damaged–physically, mentally, and emotionally at the hands of the two people that were supposed to love and protect me. There were several times when I didn’t think I’d survive a major beating I had received. I’ve hemorrhaged, I’ve been beaten nearly to death, sometimes to the point I couldn’t walk for several days afterward. I made a lot of mistakes, but my parents didn’t seem to recognize that I was just a kid, I didn’t think like an adult, and both parents were extremely abusive.
I saw my brother and sister sustain lasting damage from what happened to us. My brother is deaf in one ear, because I watched my dad literally wrap an extension cord around his head, during one of those beatings, and somehow it blew his eardrum. I watched my sister beaten down the ground in much the same way. When my mother interfered, Dad whipped her, too…yet, my mother wasn’t any better at times.
Looking back on all of that, I suppose I should be a very bitter and angry person, but that’s not the case. I don’t carry any lasting damage from that time, and it was one of many past experiences that I was able to draw on to help other people.
Why am I exposing myself in this way? To give a testimony and a voice to the Power of God who is most capable of bringing people through the most difficult of situations, and helping them to become overcomers in Him. It’s never occurred to me to be angry with God for what He allowed me to go through when I was a kid who could not defend myself.
I’ve gotten angry with God in other circumstances, but not for that. God gives people choices, they make those choices. Sometimes, people get hurt, but it’s up to that person to choose to rise above the damage that’s been caused, or spend their lives in bitterness over something they didn’t ask for, nor caused to happen. I got hurt many times, but I came through that many more times, because God meant for me to not just survive, but also thrive, in spite of circumstances.
I’ve done both in my lifetime–survive AND thrive. 🙂 I’m an emotional, mental, and physical survivor of many things, and I have learned to thrive in spite of whatever situation I was thrust into. I didn’t always have a choice of what I was about to face, but I always had a choice about how I was going to choose to face it.
It was from that early experience that I knew that physical beating would always be a deal-breaker, and I laid that boundary when I got married. I can remember thinking about how I could have turned out, had it not been for God, whose hand worked in my life all that time. Did I get counseling for any of it? Not your human variety–God has handled all of my counseling for my entire life.
He counseled me the most during the chaotic time of my Midlife Transition. I needed the help, accepted the help, and He gave me the help I needed so I could make sense of what I had endured, withstood, and overcome over the course of my life. Eventually, I healed, but not without facing the memories of different kinds of pain I had once gone through. The key to finding order, lay in the chaos of my own tormented past.
Chaos does have a purpose, because out of the chaos, eventually comes order….and until order is found, built, or created from a balance, chaos will continue to reign. Such as the crisis that is being faced. In time, any crisis one will face becomes an opportunity to achieve greater growth, not a burden to complain about. We all complain at first, but in time, as our attitudes change through the maturation that comes through our own growth, we should come to realize that no matter what happens, God will be with us, God will walk with us, and God will help us.
As He teaches you going forward, in time, you will learn and should learn that the only way out is through, without short cuts, without avoidance, and without using human aspects to try and “cure” something that God doesn’t mean to be cured.
The only sure “cure” for this emotional trial is completion of the journey, full resolution of the past issues, and full emotional maturation that comes from change, growth, and becoming what GOD means for all of us to be in Him. Nothing else comes close.
One thing to keep in mind as you navigate through this life is the fact that everything you go through will clearly contribute to the person you become at every stage of life you’re going to go into.
Everybody’s trials are different, tailored to what each person needs to learn. Sometimes, people have to go through things so that other people can be helped because of that experience. I can’t even begin to count the people I’ve talked to over the years, and those talks have covered many different aspects of abuse.
If I hadn’t gone through these experiences, I could never have helped the people who had suffered in a similar, if not the same way I had. Their biggest question, was how not to become bitter. How do you live through something like that, and still have healthy optimism, don’t suffer depression, and don’t blame yourself in some way?
The people I talked with throughout the years were suffering through a justifiable anger they were struggling with. It was hard for them to put that responsibility back onto the shoulders of the people who had damaged them. Love covers a multitude of sin, but at the same time, love doesn’t mean you take responsibility for someone else, and it doesn’t mean that you blame yourself for the damage someone else has caused.
The most important aspect I ever shared with these people was the love of God, and His influence in my life. I could never have gotten to where I am, without His help.
As I’d share the different memories I had, they asked how I could remember any of these things without being emotionally affected…
There was only one answer to that–a full emotional healing that God wrought within me that took away the pain, the fear, and the anger that I once had.
I left those experiences behind as my emotional memories healed, but the logical memories were never forgotten. You can’t show others how to navigate through a harsh time in their lives if you can’t remember what you went through that helped bring you forward into the place you stand in this present day.
It’s been the same thing for every trial I have successfully come through, and healed from. It doesn’t bother me, because that was then, and this is now. ((HUGS))
I didn’t write all this to get pity, or for someone to feel sorry for me. It’s the Truth of my Past, nothing I can do to change it, nothing I can do to alter it—the only thing I learned to do was work through it all, and understand that healing would come in time–and for me, it did.
The same can also be said of you–no matter what you face, God really is there to meet you in the middle, help you to survive, help you learn what you need to from that experience, and He will heal you in full. ((HUGS))
If God can do it for me, He can do it for anybody. ((HUGS))