A Letter to, well everyone....

How do we get past the way we feel?  How do we overcome our pasts, our memories, and most important the lies we tell ourselves?  Lately, I have had to do some serious soul searching.  I realized how much pressure I have put on others, namely Ady.  As a rule, I do not trust easily.  Trust is a risk I am most often not willing to take.  In my experience, everybody leaves you, everybody lets you down; especially the people who are supposed to love and care for you.  It saddens me to think of all of the good people  I have let slip out of my life because I was afraid they would hurt me.  We cannot live out our lives surrounded by a brick wall of solitude because of our pasts.  We must find a way to move past it and live, because, living is not living if you are all alone. 

Like I said, I do not trust easily, and when I feel like someone is going to hurt me, I hurt them first.  Just so I can say; see, I was right, they were no good.  But I realize now that in not trusting anyone, I have been blind to the people I can trust.  A lot of those people are people that have hurt me.  I know, why trust someone who has hurt you?  Simply put, everyone will hurt you if you stick around long enough.  Everybody will let you down at some point.  So, not trusting anyone is not an option.  You have to be able to let people in. 

Take my parents for example.  For a very long time, I had a low opinion of my parents.  In fact I still struggle with that at times.  But it seems that by distrusting my parents, and by not dealing with that like I should have, I have completely damaged my ability to trust Ady.  He may have hurt me, he may have done damage to our relationship, but no one else on Earth has been there for me more completely every step of the way.  Even after our divorce, he was and is there for me. 

What about my parents?  Sure they messed up, but no one is perfect and I am sure they did the very best they knew how.  I know that they love me and that they would do whatever they could to make me happy.  Now there are people that it was harder to forgive, whose walls it was harder to take down.  But even then; if I want to move on,  if I want to have a life worth living, I have to overcome those memories.  That’s what they are memories.  It is not the present, and it is definitely not the future.  It’s those memories that cause us the most pain.  They are so hard to let go of, that most of the time we just give in to them and let the cycle perpetuate.  When those memories try to overtake me and I feel myself slipping into old patterns, I have a bible verse that I quote in my head and out loud.  It is 1 Corinthians 10:13:

“There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” 

To me that verse says it all.  There is nothing that I could go through, nothing that will come against me, that someone hasn’t experienced before.  How precious is that thought.  Also, God is faithful,  in fact there are numerous times the Bible reminds us of that very fact. We must always remember the times he has helped us through. If we can’t trust anyone else, the bible tells us we can trust in the one true God.  If he tells us to trust someone, we better believe he is right.  If he tells us to run, we need to believe that too. God will always make a way out, he will always be there to help us through.  He will never leave us alone in a trial.  All he asks is that we let him take the pain and heartache we so often feel and turn it around. 

It is never easy to let go of past hurts and painful memories.  But when we hold on to them, it only festers and causes more pain and anger.  Pain and anger usually give way to bitterness. When we are bitter and angry we hurt no one but ourselves. We must let go, it is the only way for us to move on.  It doesn’t happen overnight, we don’t wake up one day and just feel better.  It is a lifelong process, a decision we must make every day of our lives sometimes  more than once a day. 

Self-doubt is another one of those emotions that will fester.  It is a feeling that you can never, I repeat NEVER trust.  It builds as we are constantly battered down by those same painful memories that make us angry.  The same ones that constantly tell us we are not good enough, smart enough, or that it is our fault.  It is the trump card that the Enemy likes to play.  When nothing else can get us down, we better know that self-doubt is always lurking in the shadows.  We can never doubt the skills and talents that God has given us, or what he has shown us to do with them.  If we do not step out and trust that God will catch us, we will never know how good it could have been.

In closing, I just want to encourage all of you to let go of the pain, let the One who will never let you down take the heartache.  Let Him have the memories that keep you awake at night.  Trust that his plan for you is good, and most of all, learn to trust, yourself and others.  It is something you will spend your whole life learning, but it is worth it in the end. 

Love always,

Kelli