What's Next

After spending the last year on my book "Finding Friday", and now it is all finished, I am looking to see what to write next.  Through my two books that I have written, I realize I want to tell a story, but, have it make an impact, change something, or wake someone up.  I also realize, that people are transient, sometimes wanting to tell their story, then changing their mind because of whatever is going on in their life.  That can be a good thing, moving on to better places, putting the past behind, healthily, or it can be not wanting to face the things that have hurt, trying to gain acceptance, or approval, from the very people who have hurt, enabled, or abused in the first place.

I have found in my journey through the fostering and adoption process, that many people who are victims return to their abusers even though they know it is wrong, destructive and leads down the same paths that have caused pain before.  It is like a moth drawn to a flame, knowing all the while it can be burned, incinerated to the point of death.  I am reminded in particular of one of my children's mother who just cannot keep out of trouble.  When she is away from the deadly scene of drugs and alcohol she is the sweetest person, but it is the little moth within her, that when things go wrong, all she knows is the comfort of the very things that bring her down, change her, make her dependent on abusers.

I visited her in jail just recently, and once again found the sweet person, who loves Jesus, wants to amend and atone, change forever, and yet finds it exceedingly difficult to climb the mountain and claim freedom from ghosts of her past.  I know of the pain that was caused in her childhood, that turned her to this terrible world that has claimed most of her life, but I don't understand how it consumed her to the extent of losing her children as well as her life.  I cannot imagine giving my children up for any reason, but I know, that there are many whose fears are so great that they will sacrifice anything to hide, be approved of, gain recognition, be a hero, or a fraud, so long as they do not have to face their pain.

My husband always says "The best disinfectant is the light of day".  He is right.  When we try to cover up our insecurities or our fears, or my case, many years of feeling like I was the "odd" one, and begin to change our behaviors to either suck up to, or crawl if you prefer, be wrongly influenced, or bullied, into decisions we shouldn't make, try to mend damaging relationships, we need to stop, remember, and carefully consider whether this valley is worth revisiting.  For it is a deep, dark valley of bones and graves.  The mountain is worth climbing, is worth the struggle, the physical effort to take one step, one day at a time, towards healing, and reclaiming our very own life that was given to us, and nobody else, to rob, or steal, of each day that was pre-planned for us before we were born.

I feel perhaps there is a story that I will tell of someone who wants this so badly, that they will be prepared to bare their very soul and inevitably help someone else who is going through the same struggle that they have managed to climb their way out of.  "Finding Friday" is that struggle, one Isaiah is still dealing with, but, he IS climbing the mountain, and is not lost in the valley of bones and death, but on his way to freedom and life.  I know he will not turn back, for he sees where he has come from, and has at least a little "glimpse" of where he is going and that is so much greater than from whence he has come.