WAITING.....here for You

In many regards, you might call me impatient. In some regards, you might call me controlling. And sometimes, I appear OCD about things like time, organization, and...time. I am not a perfect person, please hear me say that first and foremost. The reason I am impatient, controlling at times, and almost always OCD about something is because I am an imperfect human being.

However, I feel that people are flawed for many reasons....and sometimes those reasons are not their own fault. I have very severe anxiety over very particular situations. In some situations, it is my own fault-because I let satan and his menions get the better of me, allowing my own self to remain in his stronghold. But in the other situations, there is a factor that is beyond my control.

I am the product of abandonment. It is no longer my identity, for I now know my identity which is given to me by Jesus Christ. However, the feelings associated with having been abandoned my entire life appear much too often. It is a vicious reoccuring theme in my life.

See, when I was younger, less than 8 or 9 to be semi-exact, my mother left our family for another man. A man who did not live in the same state as us. So not only was my family torn apart emotionally but physically as well. I was a kid...a kid who wondered every single night before bedtime when mommy was coming home. And although now, as an adult, I recognize that situations in my "family" home were nothing short of a hellish nightmare, I also can not heal the scars she left behind.

Pre-teen years are the worst aren't they? When you're a kid, you don't notice that you're broken....you just realize that you're sad. But when you start entering your teen years, you notice that you are...different. Not because you wear glasses, or have freckles, or smell bad (although, this definitely makes you FEEL different then all of the other glasses wearing-freckle faced-stinky middle schoolers) but different because you only have one parent. One parent who works all the time to maintain money and status. Being a full-time boss leaves not much room to be a full time parent. So the second stage of abandonment entered into my life...the kid who other kids didn't want to be friends with, because their parents were always giving me rides and having to shuttle me everywhere. What was even worse, then finding out my closest friends resented me for being parentless, was being left behind by THEIR parents too. All too often I waited in my kitchen, looking out the window leading out to my driveway, watching for my friends and their parents to arrive. Most of the time, when they showed up, I silently rejoiced in my head-because of the warm fuzzies I felt in my heart having been remembered and "loved enough" by someone. But the times they forgot me, the times I was left standing in my kitchen, looking out of that same window and crying because I had been forgotten, those times scarred me.

The theme of waiting causing anxiety due to abandonment issues has followed me everywhere I have ever gone. Sure, I pray for peace, and sure I know my identity in Christ as well as knowing that God will NEVER leave me. But there is this thing in our brains, where we can remember images of memories...and there is another one where when we regress back to a time in our past we actually feel those EXACT same emotions all over again as if they were really happening. I don't know how to turn that thing off, but if I ever could....I probably wouldn't cry so much haha.

This anxiety reared its ugly head on one of the darkest days of my life. On Saturday January 17, 2009 I wokeup excited because that day I was rehearsing music with my daddy, in preperation of a show were doing in late February. I waited, and waited, and waited and waited....all day I waited. And the clock seemed to only be getting slower. He lived in another town more than an hour away so I tried giving him the benefit of the doubt....but having been let down by him time upon time upon time I gave up. I figured he blew me off. So I went into town to kill time. It was more than 5 hours that I had waited on him at home so I thought doing something semi-productive would help kill the time. When I arrived home, I was met by my cousin who informed me that my dad had been killed in a car accident at 9am that morning on his way into Jonesboro...to see me.

Tonight, I babysat two wonderful kids for a good friend of mine. I was told they would be home at 10:30, and instead they came home at midnight. During that simple hour and a half wait, I experienced every single solitary emotion I had ever felt being abandoned my whole life. From the time my mom left and I waited everyday for her to come home, to my friends parents' forgetting to come pick me up, to dates who would be a few minutes late and I would be such a wreck I would have to cancel because I would make myself sick from waiting, to the OCD of having to be early everywhere I go, all leading up to waiting on my dad all day while he was dying......every single time I wait, I feel these emotions. And trust me, it is un-fun (I bet you're thinking, "man, she needs therapy!" haha--trust me I KNOW!!) Am I mad at this friend for making me wait? Absolutely not. Did I cry my eyes out all the way home? Absolutely! :)

There is no moral to this story. There is no "lesson" to be learned like some of my past blogs. Why do I write it you ask? I feel like when we learn each other's stories, instead of being strangers who walk amongst each other, we start becoming accountable to our brother's and sister's in Christ. Had my friend's parents, my dates, and even my friend tonight, known to the extent of how severe my "abandoned anxiety" is, I would like to think they would have all made an effort to ensure that I was ok...that I was taken care of....or assured me that, they were ok. Does that make sense? It's like, if I know your story and know you are an ex-alcoholic who struggles with addiction demons everyday I am not going to invite you out to the bar to have a drink. If I know that you were beaten as a child I am not going to show you youtube videos or news clips where children are getting beaten by crazy nannies. ((I hope this is all sinking in because I am running out of examples....the two I had weren'te great as it is!))

I don't know much about how to be HEALED except that God is doing a work in me that is beyond amazing.....and my healing can only come from HIM. I don't know when it will be, if ever completely....but I do know that He promises me this

"When your father and mother abandon you, the Lord will hold you near" (Psalms)
And that is a promise I can hang my hat on.

In Him,
Meg