Different Standards

 Today I found myself remembering what it was like after my first marriage ended.

I was only nineteen.

Heartbroken.

Traumatized.

Unsure of who I was or where my life was headed.

For a while, I moved back in with my parents.

Instead of finding comfort, I felt shame.

Although they had encouraged—or at least supported—the marriage, they never let me forget that it had been a mistake.

I heard about my failures far more than I heard about my pain.

And because I was a frightened young woman, I believed every word.

I carried those judgments as though they were the truth about who I was.

I didn’t just think I had made a mistake.

I believed I was the mistake.

What has taken me almost a lifetime to see is something I never allowed myself to consider.

My parents made mistakes too.

Some of them were small.

Some of them were significant.

There were choices they made that deeply affected our family.

Yet somehow, I never believed I had the right to feel anything about those choices.

I held myself to one standard.

And I held them to another.

My mistakes became proof that I was flawed.

Theirs became something I quietly carried without giving myself permission to grieve, question, or even acknowledge.

Today, I see that differently.

Seeing my parents’ humanity doesn’t require me to condemn them.

But neither does loving them require me to ignore the impact their choices had on me.

Perhaps healing is giving myself permission to hold both truths at the same time.

I was a young woman who made mistakes.

They were adults who made mistakes.

One does not erase the other.

And neither determines the worth of the people who made them.

For the first time, I am beginning to believe that my younger self deserved the same grace I so freely extended to everyone else.

The Dark Night of the Soul

 Some say

the dark night lasts only weeks.

Others,

months.

For me…

it has been years.

I am still walking through the night.

The old comforts are gone.

The signs I once searched for

no longer appear.

The certainty I once leaned upon

has become silence.

And yet…

something holy

is happening beneath the surface.

The darkness

does not mean

I have lost God.

Perhaps it means

God is teaching me

to trust beyond feelings.

Beyond certainty.

Beyond what my eyes can see.

Transformation

is slow..

Quiet.

Like roots growing

beneath frozen ground.

Old fears.

Old attachments.

Old identities.

One by one,

they loosen their grip.

Not because I force them to.

But because surrender

is doing its quiet work.

The silence

is not necessarily absence.

Perhaps it is another language.

One that cannot be heard

with my ears,

only with my soul.

Even the longest nights

have their rhythm.

A quiet knowing.

A single ray of light

finding its way

Perhaps the dark night

is not about losing God.

Perhaps it is about losing

the ways I expected

to find Him.

Until all that remains

is trust.

Simple.

Quiet.

Asking for What I Need

 There is an inner struggle I am walking through right now.

I believe one of my greatest lessons is learning to ask for what I need.

As a child, my needs were rarely considered.

I don’t remember my mother asking how I wanted my room decorated.

I don’t remember being asked what I wanted to eat.

I don’t remember being asked how I felt.

The message I absorbed was quiet but powerful.

My needs didn’t matter.

Other people’s needs came first.

So I became very good at taking care of everyone else.

It felt natural.

For a long time, I believed I had learned this lesson.

I thought I had found my voice.

But life has a way of revealing the places that still need healing.

This past year has shown me that there is another layer.

I think about the doctor I depended on while searching for answers to my bladder pain.

It took me a long time to recognize something that had become painfully familiar.

I could walk into an appointment with sincere questions.

Yet I left feeling as though my questions had never really been answered.

One day, I told him that the procedures he was recommending frightened me.

I wasn’t refusing treatment.

I was sharing my fear.

His response was, “Then stay in pain.”

Whether he intended it that way or not, those words landed heavily on my heart.

In that moment, I felt something much older than disappointment.

I felt unheard.

I felt as though my fear didn’t matter.

It was a feeling I knew all too well.

For a moment, I wasn’t just a woman trying to make decisions about her health.

I was the little girl whose feelings had so often gone unnoticed.

The difference today is that I no longer have to abandon myself.

I can listen to my own voice.

I can honor my own fears.

I can ask questions until I understand.

I can choose the care that feels right for me.

Perhaps asking for what I need is about more than finding the right answers.

Perhaps it is about finally believing that my needs, my feelings, and my voice are worthy of being heard.

And that may be one of the most important lessons of my life.