A Hurting Heart

Yesterday was rough. I woke up from a dream that left my heart hurting. For two years I got to be someones friend. The kind of friend that you get along with better than anyone else; you always feel at home around them; you can talk for hours about everything; you can disagree and agree to disagree; you don’t get hurt feelings; someone you can be 100 percent yourself around all the time. At one point in time we even had a crush on the same guy (she won lol) and I was so happy to see her happy. Jessica Caito was that friend to me and at the age of 16 she was killed in a car accident. You just don’t get that kind of friendship often, I haven’t had it so pure since. In church we sang “I Can Only Imagine” and I was good for most of it, but the pain was back and I just closed my eyes and held back the tears the best I could. That song was sung at her funeral and I think of her every time I hear it.

Since then the closest I have come to someone would be my husband but because of that hurt, I shut a part of me down so it wouldn’t happen again. That accident was 17 years ago in just two days and after 16 years with Travis I am learning to open up again; learning to be exactly who God made me, and I think its bringing us closer.

Pain is never good, but we have to feel it. I am learning that I cannot shut down because of it. It makes me selfish because people aren’t getting to see who God really made me to be. Even when Elizabeth was born I withdrew. I couldn’t bring myself to change her diaper or sit too close to her pod. She was born early, not breathing and I didn’t get to hold her, they wrapped her in plastic wrap and whisked her away to ICU. It hurt, and I couldn’t do it, she wasn’t guaranteed to survive and that would kill me.

I feel God pushing me more and more to be real, be emotional, authentic; that’s scary.

Reading about the gifts of the spirit I wonder what I’ve been given. Am I still hiding from life too much to really know? I can push myself so hard physically and mentally but I am emotionally constipated.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, & calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10