Please Don’t Give Up!

10/26/21

(The talk I’m sharing with you today is Bishop Jakes’  “Internal Arguments (It’s Worth the Fight)” .  It can be accessed by clicking on this link, https://youtu.be/EKMmHfJ9By8  .It’s a Godincident {like ‘coincident’ but giving God the credit} that I heard this after spending [wasting] a few days of trying to give up hope of playing guitar and being capable of a healthy romantic relationship.)

Hello Delightful Person!  (Yes, I do mean YOU!)  And yes, I do get it – if you’re anything like me, there are times when ‘delightful’ would be the last word anyone would use to describe either one of us.  In the interest of complete honesty, though, I don’t aspire to be a person who is perpetually happy-happy-joy-joy. I’d be o.k. with still getting my bitch on OCCASIONALLY and throwing snit-fits and a wee-little pity party every now and then.  That would (hopefully!) keep me from becoming insufferably smug about having emotions completely under control 🙂

So, (usually :)) Delightful Person, do you have hopes?  Hopes that you can’t figure out whether or not they are, or could be, attainable, which makes them so very fragile?  Where you feel so vulnerable just thinking about them and you don’t want to acknowledge them overtly because you’re afraid you’ll let someone else crush them with their inadvertent (or not) reactions?  Or worse yet, that you will with your own insecurities?  Yet, you know if you keep them hidden they have no chance of becoming reality.

That’s part of the reason why writing this blog can be so . . . time consuming, heart wrenching and intimidating.  There’s so much obsessing about what to write, how much to reveal, and wondering if the end result will matter to anyone, including its writer.  This can be quite an exhausting (and exhilarating) exercise carried out with many internal arguments and buckets of (healing) tears that are eroding the walls around my heart and dreams.  

Initially the crying was because of finally being able to feel years of previously pent up grief, etc.  As time goes by though, the pain is being washed away, and in an ever increasing way, some of the tears represent tenuously blossoming joy, peace and budding hopes, with me struggling to believe I’m worthy and capable of nurturing those hopes into fruition.  (With God, I can.  And do.  And will, dang nab it!  :)) (And so can you, dang nab it! :))

So much has been happening these last several weeks and it’s all been a jumble.   There are moments where I can detect a common theme threading through most of the events, trying to reveal the next lesson(s) and wounds that are ready to be learned and healed.  It can be hard to hold onto hope, though, when what’s emerging is yet another reason why what I keep striving for seems to be perpetually out of reach.  I wonder when the reasons that have been worked through will finally be sufficient enough to release the chains of self-sabotage and clear the filters in my mind that keep me from perceiving the truth of what’s going on in the present moment.

There are, what can only be described as shadowing, distorting filters locked in my mind that were instilled so long ago by all the abuse.  They can keep me from understanding what I’m seeing and experiencing – I can’t figure out if what’s in front of me is wishful thinking or reality, or for good or evil, like with the spate of incidents that have happened at the park I (used to) love walking and exercising at.  (I’ll be getting into all that in next weeks post – it’s too wordy for today.)  

I KNOW that God and I, along with therapists, other people, and experiences, have been making (significant) progress at figuring out the decades old codes to release the clasps that hold those filters and chains in place.  Quite a few of them have opened and fallen away, thank God, and with the others that haven’t it can get so frustrating.  I KNOW there’s a way to unlock them, yet the (neural) pathways in my brain seem to be shape-shifting with every new revelation and too convoluted to figure out at this point, and I SO want it all to be healed (ASAP, of course).

I wasn’t sure if the ongoing ‘internal arguments’ I’ve been having were worth the effort anymore, until just now as I was typing this and recalled something I read in the Book “The Crushing”  by T.D. Jakes.  Bishop Jakes wrote that when a person is getting close to a breakthrough God will give us glimpses of living in the beautiful promises he put into our hearts, to encourage us to keep pushing when we would otherwise be convinced to quit. 

One of the ways this has been happening recently is when I’m practicing guitar.  Like I tried to explain to my guitar teacher the other day, there are moments now that what I’m playing is becoming more than just jumbles of discordant notes and tones and I can actually hear music, and it’s soooo right, you know?  And what I didn’t tell him was, it proves to my heart that all the fits, stops and starts of practicing these last few years are finally displacing all the negative crap that keeps echoing in my head telling me I’m too stupid/inept/broken to play anything right.  

(Although, now that I think about it, I have been able to play a bluesy number quite well, consistently, thank you very much.  Take that, you mean, sucky voices!)  

Yet when those moments of clarity pass and I’m back to hacking at the strings, hope can seem like a cruel reminder that I must have messed up, again, and lost the ability to play.  I wonder, ‘why keep trying?’.  I’ve seriously considered selling the gear and letting that dream go in spite of thinking that’d be like letting ‘them’ and all the evil they did and crap they said, win.  

So the perfect timing of hearing the ‘Internal Arguments’ talk and reading about ‘glimpses’ (and other God-incidences) lets me KNOW God is encouraging me to keep going, and that the end result will be better (and FUNNER!) than I’ve let myself hope or imagine.  

That guitar life lesson learned this past week is also a perfect metaphor for what’s been happening in my heart & mind pertaining to the dream of being capable of having a healthy, imperfect, FUN!, romantic, relationship.   I opted to give it up with the realization I’m more likely to stand still when there’s a possibility of danger lurking in the shadows than if someone positive is standing in front of me in the light.  Decided it wasn’t worth all the damn time, energy, trying to peer through the filters clearly, perpetual internal arguments and self-flagellation, and perhaps hurting of another in order to keep trying.  There are so many other areas in life where I’ve made significant progress, and decided it was time to quit believing for change in this one.  Maybe too much hurt had been done to overcome. 

The details of what’s been happening in the park and my heart will be next weeks post.  (Maybe.)  

Looking forward to meeting you here again on Tuesday (or Wednesday), Delightful You.  Until then, I hope you take the time to figure why I call you that.

This week’s song is one I’m surprised I haven’t gotten tired of a looong time ago.  But so often, when I hear it on the radio, it comes on right when I’m in dire need of something positive, and I feel like it’s encouragement from above.   I hope, Delightful You, “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey will encourage you, too.  You deserve to believe in good for yourself, too..