It's taken me a while to get to the place where I could write this blog.  I've been struggling with writing for the past few weeks and hadn't really realized why.  Tonight all of that changed.  I needed some couch time, for those who don't know me couch time is when my friends and I play therapist for one another.  I'm fortunate that most of my close friends are actually social workers, therapists or ministers/Pastors.  So I was talking to one of my friends an explaining to her all the things that had been going on in my head, the things God had been showing me about myself and how I'd just been a bit overwhelmed with it all.  Then it hit me.  The light bulb came on and I knew exactly why I was struggling and what I was struggling with.

I'm in a season where everything in my life is new.  New city, new state, new people, new church, new job, new relationship, new everything... That's all great but what I forgot was that with all that newness also comes a new me.  God is challenging EVERYTHING!  My trust, my mindsets, my desires, my goals, prayer life, standards, expectations, EV-ER-Y-THING!  So much of what God is doing has come by way of relationships.  Dealing with people will expose some things in you that you didn't even know were there.

Right now God is peeling back the layers, some of which I thought I'd already dealt with, and once again showing me who I am.  More importantly I'm learning who I'm not!  Sometimes I want to write for hours about everything that's going on and what God is showing me and how it might be helpful for somebody else but then I realize I would have to be naked to do that.  I was not ready to be naked and until last night I didn't even know why.  I have no problem talking about the events of my life, things that have happened to and for me, people I've met, crazy stories of adventures, funny things, tragedies... The thing that I struggle with is the aftermath...

When your're fine on the outside but right below the surface where nobody can see, there are a thousand tiny cracks.  When the relationship ended with my ex I told him that he broke me.  It was the best way I could articulate how I felt about the things that had happened.  His response was.. " I didn't break you!  Do you know who you are? You're Chaconna Downs, nobody can break you!! You might be hurt and upset, but I didn't break you"

The reality of the matter is, he did.  Sometimes things happen to us that change us.  Not to say that I became a bad person or hated him or anything like that, but it changed me.  It took away my ability to trust and give myself completely over to love.  It left me with insecurities that I didn't have before, made me feel like I alone wasn't enough, and like there was something wrong with me.  I spent a lot of time single after that.  I focused on healing and allowing God to restore the things that I'd lost.

Now here we are in this place of New-New, as Loretha says, and what pops up to slap me in the face... that place of brokenness that I thought was healed and whole.  I told my friend last night that this relationship thing is harder than Calculus. She said "That is is..."   I told her well, I failed Calculus twice but I'm working on it! lol  Then I told her I was going to get a shirt that says forget love I'm in Calculus. lol That's how I feel some days.  Like I'm standing in class trying to figure out the x y's and z's and everything in between while the whole class is watching.

I don't like being vulnerable and open and sharing my heart and feelings.  I will not share them in a box, I will not share them with a fox. lol I feel like Dr. Seuss writing Green Eggs & Ham.  Last night as I struggled to process my thoughts and feelings I was glad to have couch time and Godly counsel at the same time.  My best friend told me I set myself up to be vulnerable and open and have to deal with feelings when I prayed for a husband.  I said hey buddy... This is not what I asked for! Not at all!  My other friend told me that we have to be willing to make a choice to bypass the excuse to seek a way out and determine if the risk is worth the Love and life we both desire.  Just slap me with the truth real hard why don't ya!

I said all of that to tell you what I realized in the process.  The old tattered things that we sometimes carry can't hold the blessings that God is trying to give us.  If we don't take the time to be vulnerable, to be open and exposed then we'll never know what needs to be torn down and demolished.  We'll never know that some wounds cut deeper than we thought and although the surface is healed, it needs a lil more time to heal on the inside.  The very things things we need the most rarely come packaged the way we expect them to and occasionally it take somebody to remind you that its what you've been praying for even though it doesn't look like it.  I want God's best for me so I am committed to this process of being stripped down and being in Calculus... I pray this blesses you and encourages you if you've been feeling like an alien like ya girl...