So I had a post scheduled and all for tomorrow,  I see a title of an article online and then I am brought back to the very post I didn’t want to write… well I didn’t think I was ready to share it but here we are lol  

Heartbreaks are sometimes the best gifts God can give you. I am not talking about just the romantic ‘nyama’ but all manner of heartbreaks… It brings you closer to the Father because here you are trying to understand this pain, trying to understand why you feel the way you felt and why it had to happen and its only in Him you can find your answers. It makes you see life differently, see people differently, it makes you stronger and wiser, more accepting to people’s feelings when it’s healed properly. It makes you understand that many are the plans of a man but the Will of God will prevail (Proverbs 19:21). It teaches you to hide under the banner of His love, teaches you to seek His guidance as the journey of life continues. It makes you realize that in your weakness, His strength is made manifest. (2 Corinthians 12:9) That God sometimes removes the first to establish a better second (Hebrews 10:9)

For me, heartbreak made a writer! It made me more persuaded to want to hear what God was saying and write down so i won’t ever forget it. Heartbreak caused me to be exactly NOW what I needed THEN. Anyone close to me knows I don’t like to share personal stories to anyone but last weekend I realized that the devil likes me quiet, it gives him power over the situation. I also know that my blog isn’t themed naked and unashamed just because! When God told me to start this blog, I knew right from the beginning that some days would get uncomfortable (I’m still bracing myself for the things He has planned for me to share in the near future) but in sharing I heal and in sharing, hopefully someone else heals so it’s a step I’m pleased to take.

When I was 12,  I wrote a book called ‘The inside Man‘. I gave it away and now It’s something I regret. It may not be as good as I imagine it right now but it was mine! It was my very first ‘more than a passage’ writing experience and I wish I had seen the worth of it then! So inside man lol it was about a little girl with an abusive father, He raped her and she couldn’t tell anyone about it because He promised to kill her mother and her little brother and leave her all alone.  She watched her mum get beat up over and over yet her mum wouldn’t say a word. She’d cover her bruises with long shirts, make up and sunglasses and face the world like nothing happened.

I remember vividly my dad and mum calling me to our front porch asking me why I’d write such a story! I remember the look on my dads face so well ” had someone close to us touched her? Did something happen to her?” I remember he said “I don’t drink and I have never hit your mother so where did you pick that up from?” I had no answer for him. I had no answer for myself to be honest but I saw the story unfold in my mind and I just put into writing what I saw. Why it took that gruesome path, I really didn’t know at that point. I stopped writing that story and writing in general because after that talk with my parents, it scared and scarred me. It really hit me what a terrible story it was. Girls my age were reading and discussing babysitters club and here I was writing something so awful.

I’m sure you are wondering why I’m sharing all this, well 12 years later the story came back to me and the Holy Spirit revealed what it was really about. It wasn’t about a girl who was raped by her abusive father. It was a story about a little girl who felt unsafe in her haven. A little girl who had this heavy thing on her mind and couldn’t express it, a little girl who lived a horror story each and everyday from one experience. A little girl who had been scarred for life if someone doesn’t pick her up and introduce her the mighty restorer; Jesus. It was a story of a little girl who thought strength was hiding your wounds and bruises and just facing the world, who thought strength was hiding the fact that you were broken inside.

“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward” – Steve Maraboli

The little girl could be anyone of us (male or female). Majority of us have gone through some things growing up or even as adults and in the quest to move past it, have ignored it by being silent about it and not properly confronting and dealing with it. We are 20 and beyond in age but in emotions we are stuck at the age it happened. For me, last weekend I realized I was a 12-year-old girl trapped in a 24year old body. Some of us have reached a point where we don’t even realize there some things in us birthed because of things that happened to us in our formative years. Some of us have made certain decisions and taken certain paths in life because of that unresolved incident or situation.

I didn’t feel safe in the safest place I should be; my body and mind! I had so much going on with me physically, I’m not bold enough to share all of it now but what I can share is that I was an overweight kid. What I weighed then is even still too much and unhealthy for my height and age right now so you can imagine as a shorter 12year old. Its a damage I did to myself and I already couldn’t forgive myself for that but that wasn’t fully the cause of feeling unsafe. Growing up, for some reason people assumed I didn’t speak or understand any local language. I’d hear them use such hurtful words in describing me, I’d hear them insult my parents as well, i don’t know for watching it happen i guess. It broke my heart! i mean its one thing to pay for my own damages but to have my family dragged into it was another thing. They would say all manner of things but I wasn’t allowed to cry or react because I wasn’t supposed to understand them. So here I am continually hearing all these things yet I had to act tough. I had to brave it by being unapproachable and mean because then they couldn’t say those things in my presence anymore. I remember from nowhere I started hating myself. I mean at 12 I didn’t think it was hate and harm. At 12, I was just saying everything I heard about myself back to myself. These were people much older than me, some of them were church-goers so they must be right no? These were things I’d heard from different places so they must be true. I mean how can person A not know person B but say the same thing. It must be truth then! At 12, I gave the devil my attention and He fanned and fueled my thoughts with more lies. He warned me not to mention to anyone especially my parents. He told they’d call me a liar, they’d play it off as unserious, He told me being mean and aggressive would make them stop and make me feel better. He told me I embarrassed my family and that they were ashamed of me. I was 12 and I believed him.

“Offenses was wreaking havoc in my relationships, left unaddressed it could have derailed me from pursuing God’s will for my life” – John Bevere

I was angry at God, angry at myself, angry at everyone and everything. I got into moods, became a verbal abuser, put up a wall higher than the tower of babel. I would hurt people for pleasure. i decided to kill my emotions. I mean If it’s dead then I wont have to spend another night crying over something someone did or said. I look back now and I’m shocked at the person I was and thankful to God for how far I’ve come from there. I didn’t give myself the chance to feel at all as a teenager. I look back and I’m now asking myself why I didn’t react to certain things that happened in my life, why I said the things i said and did the things I did. When my hurtful words damaged someone it was so satisfying. I wish I could put it into words but seeing someone shrink and break because of me brought me so much ‘joy’. I wasn’t emotional invested in anyone’s life. Where were they when I needed comfort, when I needed positive words to counter the awful ones I constantly heard huh?

How do you know you have wounds anyway?

Wounds stir up old emotions, sap your energy. Wounds are memories that come with pain, hurt, anger, disgust, embarrassment and they sometimes push us into depression. Wounds are what keep us overly guarded, they stop us from giving people chances, from loving freely. Wounds are what eat us up when we lay in bed at night and sometimes consume our minds during the day. The devil made me believe that some wounds were too old and too painful to bring back up, he told me it was unnecessary but God is showing me how damaged I am because of them and how damaging it is for all my relationships. He showed me how keeping them hidden and ‘forgotten’ is going to cost me. Some spouses, children, siblings, parents are suffering because of the unresolved emotional baggage of someone. Your wound affects people around you, it amplifies any other offence that comes your way. People begin to pay more than they offended you for. Unresolved issues from the past don’t only affect you, they affect the people around you currently and will affect the younger ones yet to come.

” Until you revisit that place, that age, that memory, that incident, have God help you deal with it properly and have that chapter closed for good. You are walking around thinking you are fine but there you are with a  wound that stinketh on the inside waiting to erupt.” – Jules

Maybe this is not your story, maybe not even close, maybe you experienced worse. I shared it because hopefully it triggered some old unresolved memories in you. It set you thinking about what wound you have hidden that is silently causing damage today. Trust me, some of the things would be hard to figure out because its an attitude or character that has existed for so long that you believe it’s part of your identity. You think it’s how you are… our undealt emotions manifest in our every day lives. It determines the paths we choose now, it clouds our judgment about certain things and people. It has stayed with us so long we don’t even notice it. You need to go to the Holy Spirit to reveal and help you heal. If a memory still gets you to tick or to react or situations now cause zero reactions in you, you have a wound. Yes, some things we’d always remember alright but the bitter taste of that memory would not be there when its fully dealt with. You may also notice there is an age or stage in your mind that you don’t remember at all or it’s blurry, some of us do something psychologist call thought suppression where you protect yourself by inducing forgetfulness. God intends to make us whole when we come to Him so believe me, He will not let it rest until it’s dealt with. Talk to Him, let Him take you through the cleanse and healing. He’d lead you to talk to someone or people, don’t ignore it. He’d be with you every step of the way. It may get very ugly and uncomfortable, you may want to give up and leave it as it was but I urge you to trust God, go and grow through it.