Fifty Years to Say I Love You: Hope for Broken Relationships Healing from Trauma & Passages to Recovery

Focusing on what led to chaos, resentment, and hostility from abuse and neglect during my childhood guides my journey to a testimony of hope and healing. During my search for healing, I discovered it's not the details in my story, but the outcome from my journey that holds great substance. Clarifying what this means to me has come after repeatedly processing the pain from past memories and attempting to make sense of the "what's and why's." I now realize it's more critical to endure the pain of emotional surgery and rid myself of what polluted my heart rather than allowing my mind to be consumed with a past that lead to no positive outcome.

A simple approach I've embraced is gracefully vomiting up the painful details that became my soul's disease since the solution to being free of most diseases requires major surgery. To be set free from the weight of my past, I had to purge all destructive coping patterns leading to my disease and replace them with something else.

I had a choice: remain stuck in these details at a great cost to my well-being, or remove what caused my soul's disease to interfere with everything I desired to be relationally linked to--my marriage, children, and even my worship with God. There's nothing pleasant about regurgitating; however, the effort of doing so brought me great freedom and forgiveness, as the replacement of this weight led to a positively beautiful outcome.

You too can find hope...

"Be still and know that I am God!"

(Psalm 46:10)