Want....Need....Life-giving

Thanks to an old friend I did not spend my Saturday evening alone...bored...restless...the usual. Poker night with a group of incredibly funny people, good food and drinks, and a healthy dose of competition. Poker chips grew and waned, waned and grew, amid laughter and good natured ribbing. There was never any fear of losing to this woman...my poker face is worse than my poker skills and that's saying something as my poker skills are sadly lacking.

Driving home after, in the latest of snow storms, I thank God once again for the kindness, compassion and love of friends and strangers alike. I made a connection with a group that along with once-a-month poker games has invited me to join their ball team.

It is a strange feeling.... disjointed and slightly unreal...the mind struggles to keep up with the foreign, yet heady feeling of freedom....

Freedom to laugh without reprisal...a verbal beat down later to keep me in my place...

Freedom to be me....freedom to have conversation without guarding my words....freedom to interact without jealousy, envy and resentment filling the air and choking the life from your lungs...freedom to do what I love... playing ball....

It truly is a mixed bag of emotions...

You, dear hearts, lived in a prison with no bars...lived in a concentration camp with no fencing...lived surrounded by a no-man's land fraught with peril....

With no physical proof of that prison the mind shatters, then while busy picking up the pieces and fitting them into something resembling sanity, your jail guard...your puppeteer continues to set off land mines to keep you rattled and with arms held protectively round bout your head, time passes....time passes while you stand still hanging on to life and love and peace with everything you have, battling a force designed by an evil heart for evil deeds.

It would seem a losing battle...and yet....there is a place within that the world shrinks down to.....the warrior within knows this place, battle scarred and bruised, we know this sanctuary....

Within your spirit, within the very heart of you lays a place of hiding...of survival. There, the warrior of all warriors lives....waiting, nursing a small ember of rebellion against the horrors being perpetrated upon your person, upon your very being.

Do not give up on hope my friends....do not go gently into that good night...you are worthy of so much more and are not the lies being fed to you. You are not who the abuser said you are....you are not what he/she speaks over you...

'You are fearfully and wonderfully made...' Psalms 149:14

Do what you must to survive.... you are strong enough, woman enough, warrior enough...