Raw

Sometimes, I think I've been set up.  


For a couple of days, I'd been thinking how over the years I had opened myself up and wasted energy on the chaos of my extended family.  I wish I had not spent so much time on it.  It robbed my family from enjoying the best of me and I enjoying them, time I'll never have back.  It wasn't thoughts of condemnation but rather of understanding.  


Then a forwarded email arrives and here I am, dealing with it, AGAIN!, right before AJ and I go away for the weekend.  


I am tired.  I want to be rid of it and it just keeps coming back.  Am I expecting too much of myself? Usually I am.  Lord, I beg, I plead!  I want to be rid of it.  It? ~the disappointment, the pain, the attacks, the purposeful attempts to shame and guilt, the minimizing, the denying...  


But it's not going to change.   They will keep doing it because that's what they've always done and they made it work for them.  As twisted and life squelching as it is, they think it works.  I am the broken cog in their wheel.  I am the reminder that something is amiss.  So I must be crushed and shamed, their attempt to draw me back into the darkness or blot me out.


You've breathed life in to me.  You've removed the scales from my eyes and revealed to me not only their sin, but my own.  You continue to break shackles.  You reveal Truth in the suppressing darkness.  


I can't go back....but at. this. moment. I am overwhelmed with the thought of fighting this battle again because it feels as if it will engulf me. 


So I will be still.  I will rest.  I will focus on You, Lord, and let You fight instead.