The real me...

My spouse and I are attending a community group through our church.  The group is small, and everyone is really friendly and helpful.  Last night our topic was the "real me"...the me that God created me to be.  This was a difficult topic for each of us because to be the real you, you have to accept who you are completely.  The good, the bad and the ugly you.  The parts you don't want others to know about.

This really made me think about how I view myself and why I view myself that way.  I'm a survivor.  A survivor of childhood trauma, a survivor of losing an unborn child, a survivor of a war that almost killed me...I am a survivor.  Until last night I really hadn't thought of myself that way.  I was simply an anxiety prone, depressed person with PTSD.  At least that's how I felt.  Then I realized that God did not do these things to me, he led me through them.  He allowed me to experience these things for a reason that is yet to be known to me.  A lot of people experience traumatic things in their lives and they fall down into a dark hole of despair.  They rage at God and ask why them...if I started asking why me, I may never make it up again.  I would simply be lost.

Now I'm not saying that I haven't been lost, by any means.  When I first lost my unborn child I was devastated.  Devastated beyond belief.  I was never able to hold my child in my arms, to rock her, to snuggle her, to watch her grow.  She was gone before I ever got to see her.  Well, let me rephrase that...I did see her little heartbeat, so she was as real to me as all of my other children.  I was depressed and overwhelmed. I was angry with myself, my husband and with God.  I was hopeless and wanted to just curl up and never move again.  I had to though.  I have four other children and a husband who loves me and who I love.  I was not able to disappear into my dark hole for very long.  I grieved silently for a long, long time, and there are days that I still feel that grief as if it were just yesterday.  But God reached down and made me realize that my baby, my precious longed for child was taken back to Heaven to live among the angels.  I will see her again one day and that gives me hope.

Then less than a year later I was blown up, seriously though, I was blown up.  Afghanistan, big bombs, angry people and a tent...not the best combo.  I was left with guilt for leaving my team behind.  I was feeling even more guilt for leaving the country all together.  I did not feel safe, it, they robbed me of my feelings of safety, even in my own back yard.  There are days now that I will not leave my house because of that fear.  I don't let people get close to me because I don't know who to trust, I feel lonely because I want to be alone.  I feel scared because I was robbed of my sense of safety.  I am not the same person I was when I left for that country.  In some ways I hope to never be that person again.

You may ask yourself why I would make that last statement, well I believed in God before my deployment, but I did not follow his direction.  I believed in Heaven and Hell, but I did not really think about how that affected me.  I believed in the coming tribulation, but I did not think about how my family would fare.  My life was turned around that day, 7 Aug 2012.  I know now that I need to really work on my relationship with God.  I need to follow His teachings, pray more, ask for help, read His word.  I need to get my spiritual life in order so that the rest of my life will fall in to place.

"For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad." (2 Corinthians 5:10 (NIV))