My Childhood Heroes.

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I remember going to see the movie, “Peter Pan,” when I was a very little girl. The scene that sticks in my mind is when Peter rescues Tiger Lily from drowning. From that moment, he was my hero. I probably didn’t know what the word hero meant, but I was in love.

Later on, Superman was my hero and the last one was Cary Grant, the movie star. He rescued a lot of women too. “Notorious” was my favorite movie. He played the role of a spy during WWII. Ingrid Bergman was a fellow spy too and she married a man who was helping the Nazis. Her husband found out she was a spy and started to slowly poison her. The scene I remember the most was Cary Grant coming to their house and finding her in bed. He realized she was very sick and asked what had happened. She smiled when she saw him, touched his cheek and said, “They’re poisoning me.”

At this point in the movie they were in love, but he was angry at her for marrying the other man. All anger left, only love filled the room. He picked her up out of bed and began taking her down the staircase to the front door and his car. The husband heard them and came out. There was a big scene, but they got away.

I think I was strongly drawn to Peter Pan, Superman and Cary Grant because I felt in danger by my father who was abusing me sexually and sometimes physically. I wanted to be rescued. As I aged, I lived in a fairytale world of looking for my hero.

Of course, I never found him, I found human, fallible men who sometimes loved me well and sometimes hurt me badly. I had unrealistic expectations of what a marriage would be. I was asking too much from the men who loved me. I chose men who were overly confident, because I had no confidence in myself. I chose men with a temper, since that is what I grew up with and it was familiar.

I wish I had understood myself and men when I was a young woman. Alas, that isn’t how life usually is. Walking through life is how you learn about yourself and other people. Now I’m 73 and I write about my experiences in the hopes I can help other people. After all, it is through books and therapy that I learned what I was thinking was wrong. But I am happy to report that since my husband had a stroke and we are now together 24/7 all that learning has helped us have a close relationship and happy retirement.

I did finally find my hero though; it was Jesus all along. I wanted to belong to Jesus when I was a little girl, but I had heard you couldn’t sin when you became a Christian. I knew that wasn’t possible for me, so I gave up. But that was another lie in my head. God doesn’t care if I’m perfect. Jesus was perfect for me – the great plan of salvation.

I had all these thoughts about my unrealistic expectation of life as I lay on the sofa listening to Danny Gorkey singing, “This is What it Means.” Here are the lyrics.

I've built some dreams
I've held them close
Celebrated perfect days
I lost the one i loved the most
Now she's 6 feet of earth away

I've cried til I thought I couldn't stop
And I've laughed until it hurt
And I've prayed in an empty parking lot
And my friends were my church

Sometimes the joy can give you wings to fly
Sometimes the pain will cut you so just like a knife
There's fear, there's faith, there's loss, there's grace
I've seen it from both sides
This is what it means to be alive, alive
This is what it means to be alive

I've seen the face, I've held the hand
Of a child without a home
A casualty of circumstance
Written off and all alone
I've cried for the wars that they've been through
And i've walked by their side
I've watched what the power of love can do
And how it changes lives

Sometimes the joy can give you wings to fly
Sometimes the pain will cut you so just like a knife
There's fear, there's faith, there's loss, there's grace
I've seen it from both sides
This is what it means to be alive, alive
This is what it means to be alive
This is what it means, this is what it means, this is what it means to be alive, alive
This is what it means, yeah

Sometimes the joy can give you wings to fly
Sometimes the pain will cut you so just like a knife
There's fear, there's faith, there's loss, there's grace
I've seen it from both sides
This is what it means to be alive

Therapy with God.

"For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace."   Isaiah 9:6

This has been a difficult week for our family. My cousin's husband died in a car crash and a loved member of our family is detoxing from heroin. I didn't even know he smoked heroin. I didn't know a person could smoke heroin. I thought you had to inject it. Apparently not.

Needless to say I've been filled with sorrow about both these things. The man who died was around 55 years old. He and my cousin had a wonderful, Christian marriage. They did everything together after their daughter grew up and moved out. They loved to travel and went to Australia, Europe and Alaska. They were going to go to Arizona after Christmas.

The family member on heroin is a young man we all love. He lost his brother 5 years ago, and began using heroin on the anniversary of his death in September. He refuses to go to counseling, which would help him learn to cope with losing his brother, so what can we do? He refuses to go to Narcotics Anonymous and rehab, so his mother moved in with him this week while she weans him off heroin.

I have been praying for everyone and for myself so I won't slide into a depression. But I couldn't sleep all night after hearing all this. I didn't ask God to help me sleep. I just prayed for help for everyone, but I didn't go into detail.

I was feeling pretty grim the next day, and knew I had to do something. I realized I shouldn't just pray regular prayers; I should talk with God about everything in detail so I did. I could feel the weight lift from my heart as I shared my thoughts and feelings.

 I talked with him about my sleep patterns too and how they upset me, because I hadn't been talking with him about that. I've been understanding more and more how I just need to talk with God. Talk, not pray, just talk.

Talking is what you do in Therapy. I always learned something new about myself and my life in therapy, just by talking. I also felt better after a therapy session. I could see the way I should go more clearly.

Isaiah wrote that God is our Mighty Counselor.
I believe it.

He also called him the Prince of Peace.
Yes, he is.

"You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory."  Psalm 73:24

"I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you."   Psalm 32:8

I must add to this post that when my youngest daughter heard about the young man in our family, she was feeling very sad. She was on her computer, went to look at Pinterest, and on the first page she opened she saw this:

God is fighting for us and our families.

The Great Sadness.

I just finished reading, The Shack, by WM. Paul Young. This book moved me as no other. I bought it because I heard Mr. Young on a Podcast at, http://rureal.org/  hosted by, Jon Brandon. As they talked about the book, I was intrigued so I bought it from Amazon.

For me, the story becomes beautiful and inspiring when the main character, Mack, goes to the shack after an invitation arrives in his mailbox. The invitation could come from a prankster, a murderer or God. He isn't sure so he takes a gun, just in case.

In this book, Mr. Young portrays God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit as people he meets. I don't want to say any more than that. Each person who reads this book will react to these portrayals in their own way. I will just tell you my reaction.

I fell in love once again with the Trinity through this book. How easy they are to be with. How loving, thoughtful and patient they are. How different they are than the picture most people seem to have of God. They are fun to be with, which I've always suspected since God gave us all such a sense of humor. Many times I say to God, "Now, that was just funny," and I imagine he finds things funny too.

I entitled this post, "The Great Sadness," because along with the beauty and fun there is tragedy, which the author calls, "The Great Sadness."  I immediately related to that because I was sexually and physically abused by my father when I was quite small up until I was around 11 yrs. old. Even when I was an adult, he could be very crass and exposed himself to me a few times. Of course he always said it was an "accident". I know about "The Great Sadness." Every person who has been abused as a child knows it.

The author himself was sexually abused as a child. He knows "The Great Sadness."  If you are one who also knows it, I hope this book will help you. The author said it took him 11 years of therapy to understand what his character, Mack, understands over a weekend; so although this book may not heal all your pain, it is a good beginning. It is a long road to recovery and there is so much to learn. Joyce Meyer helped me through this too and so did many books on why God allows pain, from Philip Yancey to C.S. Lewis. All these authors helped me. I owe them a great debt.

The last few chapters of this book shook me to the core and seeing the love of God through it was something I was grateful for. The God in this book is a God everyone can love and feel at home with. He is the God of the Scriptures; he called himself a servant when he was here. A servant. Imagine that.

Feelings Irritate Me.

Sometimes I have wished I didn't have feelings. Feelings have tripped me up all my life; especially before I read Joyce Meyer's books and watched her videos. She helped me to understand feelings and how I didn't have to let them rule me.

But still, I sometimes wish... My marriage is full of feelings, good and bad. When the feelings are bad I say to God, "Lord, throw my anger into the sea." I thought that would take care of everything. I was wrong. The angry feelings just go down, down, down into my heart and then erupt like a volcano.

So, I tried a different prayer. "Lord, stop me before I start yelling and swearing at him." Oh yes, I do that; not often, but I do it. The Lord did do this for me. The next day my hubby was upset with me about (nothing, trust me) and was irritated and asking why I did this and that. (closed a cupboard door that he wanted open) I could feel this rage rising in me and then I thought, "No." I answered calmly. Okay, this was great.

The next day, I asked hubby something and he said, "Why do you bother me when I'm watching TV?" If I didn't talk to him while he was watching TV I would never talk to him at all. I felt the rage rising. He came into the room, I looked up and screamed, "Lord, help me not to swear at him!"

That night, I asked God, "Where did this rage come from? I don't like it or want it. I want to feel nothing if he hurts my feelings."  I talked and talked with God, and I got my answer as I talked. I said, "I'm tired of being constantly rejected by him. Every time I talk with him he acts like I'm a pain or a bother."

Okay, that's what it was. Something my husband and I had talked about 6 months ago and he had changed and things were better; but now he had reverted to his previous behavior. I wished I could just ignore it, but I knew I couldn't. We would have to have the "talk" about our marriage again. I knew it would hurt his feelings because he doesn't realize how much he hurts me.

I told God I didn't want to talk with him again. I was sick of the whole thing. Still, talking about it and getting it out there was better than rage, swearing and acting not like Jesus. Jesus would never, ever do what I did. He might get some cords and whack some tables, but he wouldn't swear at people.

One thing I know, if I don't confront and face things that are upsetting me I won't get over it. God made us that way. It's like when I was molested as a child. I had to have years of therapy. One day I knew I had to face it head-on and work through it. God made us that way. I wonder why? I'm not sure, but I do know he knows what he's doing. So even though I would like to be a happy robot, I trust God about giving us feelings.