it’s been a while, I know – a lot has gone on since I last posted…
– after praying about it and meeting with natalie and alliece, I decided to head up the truck stop outreach – so far, we have 5 women on the team, and we are headed down to la place for our first outreach tonight – matt yglesias from the ring is graciously going along with us for safety as no men are on the team
I’m not sure yet how this outreach will best be done, but I’m sure god has a plan – my plan is just to show up… please be in prayer for safety and for hearts in the right place
meanwhile, in my own healing, I took quite a few steps backward over the last two months — it’s easy to talk about what is necessary for healing to occur – it’s not so easy to actually go through it…
since april, my perception of what went on in my childhood has been undergoing a 180° shift – from seeing myself as in control and choosing to use my body to manipulate men into giving me what I needed, to seeing myself as being controlled and used by men to satisfy their own twisted needs
that the “choices” I made as a child were not really choices at all, because they were made based upon the lies I had been fed all my life
that I was not a depraved monster, but a victim of the depravity of others
and though I “technically” understood this, apparently that’s not enough for healing to happen — god started to break open the scars, and it hurt – a lot – and I ran
I guess the corkscrew illustration of the journey is right, because I didn’t run as far back as I used to before I turned around again…
this morning I had the coming truck stop outreach on my mind and I remembered my first trucker…
I was 12 and had run away from my first foster home and it was raining and I was hitchhiking – I had some crazy plan to go to springfield, where I was born, and find my real mom… anyway, an 18-wheeler pulled over and I climbed up in the cab – the trucker asked me where I was going and I told him, and he put his hand on my leg and said he might be willing to bring me to the truck stop at I290 and help me find someone going that far if I gave him a little something in return – he was rubbing my thigh and I knew what he wanted and I said, “and buy me some food too”, as I opened my leg further – he laughed and got the truck back on the road – it was only about a 10 minute drive to the truck stop and when he parked, I shut off my heart and I got in the sleeper and let him do what he wanted…
always before when that memory came to mind, I felt hard, dirty, guilty, and even slightly proud of doing what it took to survive on my own
this morning all I felt was pain…
it was like god turned my heart back on and I felt everything the way I should have felt it back then…
that I was young and scared, that he was old and stinky, that it hurt and I didn’t want what he was doing to me —
then I cried like a baby for the larger part of an hour…
…and I think maybe a little of the shame I live with is gone now
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