maybe....

So I opened this blog site back in October, apparently. I remember writing a few things - something about strange dreams and bad habits - and then later deleting them all in a fit of humiliation. What if someone actually read my words? Made a comment? Knew my thoughts? What if?

Maybe, just maybe, this time I will leave things alone and just write...because I have some things to say. Seriously.

I am in what I have decided to call Honesty Group Overload this semester. Between my home group through church, group counseling class (which includes two hours a weeks of actual group therapy), and my Recovery step study group, I am being exposed at every turn. Thirty-something years of hiding are being rapidly overturned in such a short season. Now, I have been in small groups for years, even been in individual therapy two different times, but nothing has come close to the stripping away that I am currently experiencing.

It is miserable. It is wonderful. It often gives me tired head.

People so often say that the Lord had to hit them upside the head- or some other similar reference basically meaning that the really dark days had to fall before they could begin to see the light. Well, I am realizing here this spring (ah...so ready for the spring...I need flowers and flipflops and cool sunny days...) that the Lord just had to rearrange my schedule. He made sure that all of these groups lined up during the same 18 week period because He knows me so well. He knows that I procrastinate, that I do things halfway, or even just enough to get by. He knows that I love to talk about what I want to do more than I actually do it, and He knows that I am not disciplined enough to do things well and deeply and fully....on my own. He arranged for me to be bombarded with honesty. I feel like I have been pushed (not even so gently) into this moving river and this time I want to experience it all, do it well...

Two and sometimes three times a week I am finding myself sitting, exposed, in a circle of other fallible, miserable, wonderful, tired-headed folks sharing all of our...stuff...

And I am surviving. Learning even. Getting better. Seeing what healing can feel like, if only just hints of it here and there. Catching glimpses of where I hope to be. Being taught how to get there. And it all begins with letting the God of the Universe love me.

And that is for my next post...