Love and Faith Need Each Other

6/15/22

Welcome Wonderful You! 

How is your day going?  What’s the best thing to happen to you today?  And how about the last couple of weeks?

I’ve had wonderful times mingled with ‘growth’ moments (I decided to call anything that’s difficult, ‘growth opportunities’ instead.  It’s all perspective, isn’t it? :))

Just have to mention this first – I think it’s the very definition of irony in action!  Been surprised these last several days that my (indoor) cat has been finishing all her food daily as she usually has a few kernels left over.  Today when I picked up her bowl I noticed mouse poop around it.  Apparently, a mouse has been eating my cat’s food . . . hmmmm . . . think I need to have a discussion with her about the natural order of the food chain. 🙂

I went to a Joyce Meyer conference a week or so ago.  She’s a Christian speaker who’s a survivor of childhood abuses as well as a horrible first marriage.  After that marriage ended she met her current husband of over 50 years, Dave, and they have a great marriage (now – there were some rough years at the beginning as Joyce needed to heal from all she’d been through).

What I really like about her is, she has a sense of humor when she’s talking, she’s honest about her strengths as well as what she’s done in her dysfunction (usually laughing at herself in the process), and she speaks straight and truthful about a person’s walk with Jesus.  It’s not always going to be easy, and we have to do our part and not just sit around waiting for everything good to drop into our laps.  There are some things she talks about I don’t necessarily agree with, but as is oft repeated in support groups, we take what we can use and leave the rest.  

Something really triggered me when first walking into the venue. 

Don’t know if you read or remember the post “Claiming Future Victories Now” dated 2/9/22, but I had mentioned a deeply wounded version of Little Pearl (L.P.), who had been hiding in a darkened and little explored part of psyche.  Well, in the months since then I’ve felt ‘phantom’ feelings of abandonment, betrayal, loneliness, and desperation for someone to notice, rescue, and be kind to me, even though many people have been (kind, that is!  Rescuing moi is not on other’s ‘to do’ list. :)) 

(This is the first time to be realizing this – and it’s starting to hurt much more now that it’s acknowledged.  It’s explaining some of my behavior lately of wanting to isolate yet apparently looking for someone to find me who can handle this emerging part with love and understanding. Unfortunately, wasn’t consciously KNOWING that, and I’ve been a bit bitchy and pushing at people who come near, don’t know what’s going on and how to help {like I didn’t}. Glad to be finally figuring it out so as to start healing it.)

Anyway, back to the conference . . . 

While looking for a seat I kept moving around.  It finally occurred to me that since the sessions were going to be filmed for t.v. there were cameras around.  I asked a (very patient) usher where my sister and I could sit where there’d be no recording devices directed towards us.  We were led to seats right under a camera that was suspended on a mechanical arm that would move overhead.  

Now I’ll try to put this all together in a way that makes sense.  The deeply wounded part of ‘L.P.’ (part of her ordeal is described in the posts “Still Innocent”  and “Unpacking Still Innocent, dated 11/9/20 and 11/11/20, respectively) that’s been coming to conscious these last several months has been causing me, Elder Pearl (E.P.) to sometimes feel the degradation, horror, terror, desperation, etc. she (I) felt so many years ago, and that was triggered more so by the camera.  On top of that, so many people were taking selfies all around and every time someone held up their phone to snap their picture it was like a little dart of pain was penetrating my heart and psyche.  It was so weird to experience that; it felt almost physical even though it was emotionally based.  

(Wow.  It’s blowing my mind right now, how the psyche works and all the experiences it holds buried within it, and how it’ll express itself in order to get the attention it needs when it starts coughing up those memories.) 

That weeping jag lasted for maybe 30 minutes, then I was able to fully enjoy the rest of the conference.

Really needed to hear what Joyce had to say, definitely learned a lot.  Her main topic was about how love and faith have to go together.  

I frequently write about the process of learning to receive and give love the way I and the people in my life deserve.  I (re?)learned at the conference another reason why there’s so much fear to share love when my heart starts getting involved with another person.  I have to have faith coupled with the love, believing that they won’t use my love and trust against me like happened so frequently in childhood.   

Or maybe another way to look at it is, I have to have faith in myself to be able to handle any pain that comes with truly caring and loving another.  

While typing this I’m also realizing that there’s still a belief that something’s tainted to any love I have to share, and it’s not worthy of giving away.  (Yikes!)  Grateful to know this, though; means it’s time to debunk that b.s. on a deeper level.

And healing is continuing to happen in other ways, too.  

I’ve been finding the courage to face and take care of things I’ve done and wished I hadn’t (or not done & should have) that have been bothering me over the course of time.  Also, questioning and letting go of a couple of friendships that have not been mutually beneficial, formerly thinking that was the price I had to pay in order to have ‘decent friends’.   

That’s enough for now, I’ll finish this next week.  In the mean time please enjoy this version of “Baby, Please Don’t Go”  performed by Jakob Dylan.  I’ve heard this tune many times throughout life and decided to dig up some facts about it. The song has been around since the 1930’s and recorded by many different artists, the first of whom was Joe Williams.  He sometimes gave his wife, Bessie Mae Smith credit for writing it.  I hadn’t realized it was about a prisoner asking his beloved to wait for him.  The song seemed appropriate considering the friendships falling by the wayside lately as I’m gaining clarity of how I want to be treated.  That’s a good thing, but there is still some grief and it’s really bringing up the abandonment and insecurity issues.  Thanking God for His guidance and patient perseverance, as well as for SM, a friend who is working with me instead of letting me push her away as the issues are coming to a head.  Her compassion and insight are leading to a better understanding of how the self-protective/sabotaging filters in my mind cause the belief that all people are only here because they want something from me without reciprocation, and love and care couldn’t possibly be a part of the equation.  

This song is for the people who genuinely do care; please don’t give up on me while I’m working on releasing my heart from the prison it never deserved to be locked up in.