One Less Thing...

In the midst of working on the forgiveness part of my abuse, the new memory came to the surface. I was sitting at dinner with my husband and son, and a picture of what had happened just hit me. I felt like, "Wow - this sucks, I am just eating dinner with my family and this has to happen right now?" The picture in my head pretty much rattled me and when my husband noticed something was wrong he asked if I was okay. I told him I had a memory and I obviously couldn't talk about it right then. When we got home I called my counselor and told her that the memory came. I asked her to pray for me, that I would have strength to face the new memory. I had class, so I packed up my books and headed off. All the way there, all I could think about was how young I really was and how much the new information sucked and how much more would there be. Would I ever be done with the memories? After class, I spoke with the instructor for awhile about what was going on. She offered me the hope that I just needed to keep putting one foot in front of the other and that the memories would eventually stop, just as the abuse had. There is a finite number of memories.

That night, as I was trying to sleep, I was crying over the loss I felt. The new memory showed me that the abuse started even earlier than I knew. The picture I had was when I was still in a crib. Knowing my family, I was probably still sleeping in a crib at an older age than many children do, but it was still really young. Probably two or three. As I was crying, another picture came to me that was worse than the one I had at dinner. My heart broke for the little girl lying in the crib. The little girl that had no safety or protection or love. The little girl that knew nothing other than abuse from her very earliest memories. No wonder why I identify myself with the statement, I am abuse. I knew nothing else.

The next day at work was super hard, as I didn't get any sleep and I had these pictures floating around inside my head. I probably should have called off and just given myself time to grieve, and to be sick over what I learned. Although the memory was horrific, it didn't send me into a spin. I just spent a lot of time in prayer and trying to find out what God wanted me to do with this new memory. I think realizing that was where my identification came from was huge. Now that my head is wrapped around that, I think that I will be able to change those old tapes and start identifying myself as the person God created me to be.

At my counseling session, we talked about the new memory and how I felt like it tied so much of my self concept to the reality of what I experienced. It allowed me to show grace toward myself. When I talked about how scary it was to not know how much more there would be to remember, my counselor said to me, "It is not one more thing to deal with, it is one less thing." Wow! That is so true. There is one less thing to haunt my dreams, one less thing to have body memories over, one less thing I don't know about. That was a really freeing statement for me. I am on the path toward healing and freedom from the abuse and now I have one less thing to deal with. I believe that God gave her those words for me. He knew what I needed to hear. Since I am a task oriented person, and at times the list can be overwhelming, God knew that one less thing on my list was what I needed to internalize. So thank you God that I now have one less thing...