You've been talking in your sleep in My Unpredictable Life ...

I always try to come write here during the week but I stay so busy that it is hard to. But tonight, I am forcing myself to do so because I need a good night's sleep. Hopefully writing tonight will help.

A little quirk of mine is that I talk in my sleep. I always have. Sometimes I wake myself up when I am talking in my sleep. Other times, I have no recollection of it. The Child has inherited that trait from me. She cracks me up sometimes listening to her.

Anyway, lately I've been having nightmares of my past. Mostly about my step-grandfather molesting me. Sometimes about my Mother beating me black and blue. After all these years I've come to expect them. For the most part, I can wake myself up from the dream. I'll get up, go potty, maybe if it was a really bad one I will go outside for a cigarette, get a drink. I try to analyze the dream, maybe try to figure out what happened during my day that would bring about the dream (a conversation with someone, the smell of his cologne on a stranger in a store, etc) and then give myself a "pep talk" about how it is all in the past and can't bother me now. Then I go back to sleep and no more bad dreams for the rest of the night.

Lately, because I have been talking about my past, because I have been experiencing fear again, because my heart is heavy, nothing seems to work. I've even resorted to practicing coping skills I learned way back when to help get me through the bad times. I think the reason I am having such a hard time of it now, or why it is taking longer for those old skills to kick in and actually work is because I can't fully work through them with The Child around, with having to go about my normal day to day activities. I can't say, "Sassy, you need to get right in the head again. Everything can wait. Do what you need to do for you then worry about the rest." I tried telling that to my sink of dirty dishes ... they didn't wash themselves; the mortgage still needed to be paid today; we have to eat. So I continue on with life, working my part time job, raising The Child, being the wife I have always been.

I find cleaning very therapeutic. In between work, running errands, cooking meals, chauffeuring The Child to her numerous things, I clean. I managed to winterize the bedroom windows with plastic. I re-did the closet in my office. I hadn't been able to hang clothes in it due to the previous owners putting in shelves. Since I dress for work at 10 pm, after everyone is in bed, I have to do it in my office. But I had no room for the clothes. Now I do. The shelves are no more. I have enough work outfits chosen for the next 3 weeks. But with all the cleaning, it is not helping like it usually does. It's helping but just not as fast as I would like. Do I need to clean faster or more? Nah, I just gotta work through this, step by step, day by day.

Damn, I got off track lol. I have been waking Hubby up with my talking in my sleep. Sometimes he thinks I am trying to talk to him so he tries to answer me, which the sound of his voice wakes me and then we get pissy at each other for waking each other up. Other times, my screaming out will wake him. Which then scares the shit out of him and causes him to wake me up in a panic. Fun times. And sometimes, I don't say a word, but the fear in my dream will be so severe that I start having a panic attack in my dream, then I wake up to discover that it wasn't just in my dream but I am actually having a bad panic attack right then and there. Hubby especially loves those moments. Not.

So here me loud and clear Universe. Leave my dreams alone. I need sleep. My Hubby needs sleep so that he doesn't actually get himself killed at work due to lack of sleep. My daughter needs me to be 100% on my A game for her. I can not let her down/disappoint her; I will NOT let her down/disappoint her. I'm not going to let you ruin me, Powers That Be. I am better than this. I will beat this. You don't own me.

With that being said, a friend posted something on her FB wall this evening that hit home with me on so many levels.

I knew there was a reason for all the suffering I went through as a child and teenager.

I'm often telling The Child that our reward will be eternity in Heaven one day. That there will be no more suffering, no more tears, no more pain.

But you know, I'm beginning to think that is only the half truth ... I do believe that I am already being rewarded ... I don't have to wait till I die. Sure the first 20 years of my life sucked big time. I suffered things no child should ever have to suffer. But now? I have been given the best gift, the biggest reward I could never have imagined was possible ... my daughter.

And after reading my friend's FB post, I now believe that I suffered what I suffered so that I could give her a better life. If my daughter never knows the unspeakable horror of someone touching her where she doesn't want/need to be touched, then the suffering I went through for 4 years was worth it; if my child never wears a bruise caused by my hands or my actions, never has to wear a black eye on graduation day in front of 700+ other students plus all their family & friends, then my bruises, my scars were worth every one of them.

My weaknesses will make her strong; my tears will have made her triumphant where I was not; the sorrows of my childhood will be the backbone of her having the best childhood I can provide for her.

I know that this too shall pass. Maybe my old age is slowing me down in the healing process. Maybe I'm just out of practice with the coping skills because I have not had to use them in so long. There's much to be said for not living in the past but in the present. Those skeletons in my closet know better than to start rattling around in there. They might think they have won this time, but I am here to tell them, and you, and MYSELF, I will win this. I will fight this until I do. I love myself too much to accept any other outcome.

Here is what my friend posted on her FB wall ....

Read Genesis 45:4–5

Joseph forgave his brothers for selling him into slavery in Egypt and told them that the act they meant to harm him, God intended for good.

For Our Good

In the Bible, Joseph is abused by his brothers and sold into slavery, then repeatedly scarred and neglected by his enemies. But Joseph made an amazing discovery: Anything meant in this world for evil, God can use for good. This is no less true for us today. God is able to take the mess of our past and turn it into a message. He takes our trials and tests and turns them into a testimony.

Romans 8:28 does not say that all things that happen to us are good, but it does say that God is able to work all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

If we trust Him with our broken and wounded hearts, He will bring healing, restoration, and wholeness. He takes the weak, the marginalized, and the oppressed and makes all things new. What someone else would leave for broken, He sees as beautiful.

And very often, the thing the enemy uses to try to destroy your life is the very thing God uses to help others. God can heal every hurt and turn your scars into signs of strength for His glory. Your past mistakes, hurts, and pain can help give someone else a future. Whatever we have gone through enables us to help others. God doesn’t waste one experience of our lives. He uses everything to help someone else. He doesn’t want us to remain crippled, immobilized, or paralyzed by the past. Instead, He sent us Jesus to show us how to step into the future.

I have always known that I was not the only one carrying around such pain. We are all broken in some way. We all have wounds. Some of us use that as an excuse to do nothing, to serve no one, but rather to sit and nurse our misery. That’s not what God wants, and not the model we see over and over again in the Bible.

The biblical model is that God deliberately chooses imperfect vessels—those who have been wounded, those with physical or emotional limitations. Then He prepares them to serve and sends them out with their weakness still in evidence, so that His strength can be made perfect in that weakness.

Point to Ponder

More often than not, it’s our weakness that makes us capable of serving, because those we serve identify with our pain. As always: God works in us so that He can work through us.

Till next time ....