Trashed

I have been thrown away many times.

I have been pushed aside for the better thing, the feel good thing, and the less needy thing.

I have spent alot of my adult life battling the excessive need to cling, to claw, and to beg for love.

I still walk the line everyday between what is normal love, and what is excessive love.

Alot of days I get it right. Some days I don't.

I firmly believe God allowed my early days to be tainted by grief and horror. He watched as others abused me for their own sake. He could have stopped it. He didn't. And that used to make me angry, but now I can see it more clearly.

God was teaching me to treasure love.

Here I am. I am married, after swearing I would never marry again. I have 2 children, after acknowledging that I probably never should. That it would be an uphill climb every single day to not repeat the past.

But I have done it. And I would do all of it- all of the hurt of the past, relive it all, to be in this skin now.

Love is not easy to find. And it is not easy to keep. It is work, a constant state of compromise and revision of self. It is putting others before you. It is sacrificing for the good of the whole.

Yes, I have been trashed. I have been forgotten and tossed away. I have seen the turned back, the empty eyes, the raised hand. I have been bloodied. I have run away on legs that hurt, with a heart screaming "Please just love me! I am all ALONE!"

I have now, in my arms and heart, the things my own parents never had. A strong marriage, children whose needs are put first, a safe haven from the world. I have a family and loneliness is not something I carry today.

But because I remember, and because I carry just enough of the girl I was, I don't forget.

I have been trashed. But I have also always been treasured- rescued by the One who knows all and sees all- the One who reaches past and reaches higher than I ever could.

And that is enough.