Wishing

Welcome to a time of thoughts and reflections. If you have been reading my blog for a while you will know that I am a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) who tries to be her authentic self in an attempt to stay real. First, an apology for the preponderance of negativity that has infiltrated these pages of late. I wish it hadn’t been so. In fact, I would give anything for it to have been otherwise.

Part of the problem is our need for continual adjustment to the world around us and the circumstances we may find ourselves in.

I have been overly focused on my pain, weakness, debility and so on. The onset of SAD hasn’t helped matters much. Light – give me light! And the clocks have gone back an hour in the UK too – and the days get shorter and darker…you get the picture.

Is it still all right to moan a bit if that’s how we feel? It can make us feel ashamed and guilty. Aren’t Christians meant to have a joyous, happy, prosperous life after all? Or so they say. But that’s only part of the whole story. Life is rarely as we might wish it to be or even anticipate.

Perhaps other women reading this will nod in sympathetic agreement that we tend to think life would be better IF ONLY…. we were – prettier, thinner, sexier, cleverer, healthier, better at all sorts of things ___ fill in the blank.

I spent many of my early years wishing things were different than they actually were; I felt so isolated and dislocated from my family at times.

I longed to be accepted, understood, affirmed and appreciated – Just for Being Me. Instead, I felt lost and lonely and soon became my own worst critic.

If others didn’t seem to think much of me, then why should I think much of myself?
The poem below is an example of how I felt in my youth.

‘Wishing’

 

 

Even now I can find myself wistfully gazing into someone else’s life and wishing mine was like theirs. I read a lot of tweets and blogs because I am genuinely fascinated by people’s worlds, words and opinions. Yet it can have a downside if I let it.

The danger lies in making comparisons when we really have little idea at all of what their lives are truly like – beyond what they choose to reveal, of course. I may yearn to look, think, act like, or experience the apparent richness of life which others appear to be having, rather than acknowledge that mine is mainly one of limitation, pain, sickness and challenge.

God knew what He was doing though when He purposefully and lovingly created each one of us as unique and special to Him and that’s how He makes us feel once we are in relationship with Him.

While I might wish I was able to write more positively, wittily or eloquently and live more freely and fully than I am able, I am learning to accept that this thoughtful, poetic, often serious and reflective person that I am now has grown out of who God deliberately made and intended me to be, and is a fruit of all that I have experienced – both good and bad.

So this is me:

• A survivor of childhood abuse and mental heath problems
• Chronically sick – yet active in my mind
• Mostly housebound – but not earthbound
• Living a limited life – with an unlimited appetite for life
• A ‘work in progress’ – sharing my imperfections
• Devoted to God – and eager to make Him known
• Writing from the heart – with particular empathy for the hurting