Out of the Depths

What do you do when, no matter how hard you try to focus on something else, you keep returning to a place/time/happening of your past? Agonizing over what was done and how things could be different if only you had done/said/thought/acted in some way differently than you did ... no matter how many years have gone by? What does it say about you when you are having a hard time focusing on what IS and enjoying what you have because you constantly compare it to what WAS and what you had?

There are probably as many quips, quotes, and words of wisdom are there are circumstances to which you can apply them.  Sometimes, however, no matter how often you try to smile and put a happy face on things, it just doesn't happen. You want to cry, scream, throw things, yell at the world ... or is it that you want to yell at yourself? To beat yourself up over something that you have done ... are you beating yourself up over your past? You are not alone.

Right now, I cannot even find the words to express how I am feeling. I feel anger (at myself), remorse (for the pain that I caused) and regret (for what was lost). No distraction technique is working. How do you explain these feelings? How do you work through them? I feel as if I've been thrown into the deep end of an endless pool with no float device. And no, I can't swim.

I am finding no peace tonight, not even in the praise music that has been soothing me recently. The Bible is giving me no peace. I am not resting. Putting on the happy face is stressing me to the point that I want to run away from home, a rather ridiculous point of view for a woman in her mid 40s. When I consider such an action, I remind myself of the realities of the situation: I just returned from a two week vacation. I don't have the time to take off even if I had somewhere to go. I have responsibilities.

What else have  I noticed? I have noticed that pain has become a constant, instead of a "most of the time." Headaches are coming more frequently, and have started to become more intense. While I don't deny that pain can have a physical cause, I think these recent exacerbations are stress driven and emotion related. I need to let go.

I need to let go, and let God deal with it. He did not put me in this position, but He will not desert me here. I need to trust, to have faith, to believe that He can and will show me an improvement -- that He has a plan. I know He does, for I truly believe that I would not be here if He didn't. Sometimes ... and this is one of those times ... I need reminding of what I have. Not what I had, for the choices made were my own (wrong though they were), but what I have.

God, today I am feeling ungrateful and peevish. Please forgive me for my stubborn refusal to let go of the pain. Help me to see that I need you to work through this. Help me move forward to the future that you have planned for me.

"My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body. I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart ... LORD, do not forsake me; do not be far from me, my God. Come quickly to help me, my Lord and my Savior." ~ Psalms 38:7-8, 21-22 NIV