I had the incredible privilege last week to share on the Foundations of Counseling School at YWAM, Muizenberg. After a recent facilitator course I did, I put a lot of the things I had learnt about designing a workshop to it's finest detail. I worked on the manual and the plan around every hour I would have to train. My box was packed with every activity and the plan was ready to be implemented and I felt ready.
What amazed me about the three days was how my life and my journey brought the sugar and spice to the delivery. I think the fact that I could say from my heart that God is a redeemer and healer of the broken hearted. That even though we don't always experience healing immediately in hard times, that we do in time. The only way to see it often though is to look back.
I learnt a wonderful skill in YWAM when I did my DTS in 1991. 34 years ago. The skill was journaling. I did not really appreciate it at the time. It felt like busy work. It did not take long for me to realise though that it was a space I needed to work through the complexity of my mind and heart as I engaged with the world.
In the week, I was looking for the little folder I have where I have saved every card ever written to me in a training space since 2007. The most favourite of these are the ones I have collected in YWAM spaces since 2014, I found them in my journal box and I sat with the cards and read them. It was amazing to look back and remember each person, each place and each conversation. After that, I started reading a journal I wrote in 2014-2015. I did not journal every day, but I sure processed a lot in that space. It was interesting for me to see how much of what I go through now is similar to then, but I am not the same woman. Yes, there are elements of me that will never change, but I could give voice to the woman that has changed and thank her for doing that. It was like I mirroring experience for me with myself.
The most shocking and amazing find in that box that I did not expect to find or even remember I had was a pile of letters I had written my step dad as a child and teen. I only had them because I found them in his wardrobe when we were clearing it out after his death. I never read them, I just put them in the journal box. I had a journal but it mostly had songs and poems I wrote.
I picked the letters and poems up on Thursday and read them. I stopped and looked at the child, the teen and young adult that I was and could see her in a different light through my own words that I had penned back then.
I want to share a poem I wrote in 1993. Simply because it feels relevant to me right now.
I don't see your heart
But the way you are living must be insane
I don't want you to think you are hurting me
You're not!
Look at yourself
Look at the pain
You are trying to resolve the same thing again and again
Over and over and over again
Listen
Listen to your own heart
Listen
Listen to one another
You can't make damage right in a blink of an eye
We have denied it for so long
We run to God with the problem
How often have we kept the pain
"They" used to be our strength
A place where we could seek our refuge
Now they are also gone
The sound of the their crumbling
Rips our hearts
BUT
We face tomorrow
Again
But it wont be long
We will hear the sound of that familiar song
You are not listening
You don't understand
When are we going to fight this battle
Hand in hand
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