landmines

"There are the kind of events which change our lives forever, dividing our lives into before and after.

When they happen, we wish that life would return, as before.
But 'before' is gone forever.

When that happens, the only way to find peace, the only way to be resilient when these landmines explode beneath your foundation, is first to accept that there is a new reality. Our old lives no longer exist, and the more we cling to the hope that these old lives might come back, the more we set ourselves up for unending discontent."

I read those words in an excerpt of Elizabeth Edwards' book 'Resilience'.... and could not have said it better myself. The phrase 'landmines explode beneath your foundation' particularly resonates with me, as that is exactly what it felt like in my life on one particular day last fall. An emotional IED, long laid dormant in the closest relationships in my life, blew up in my face and changed everything in mere hours. 

The resulting damage to every single facet of my life left me hemorrhaging emotions and control, and ultimately led to the amputation of every thing I held dear to me - including my marriage, my family, my home, my business, my dreams, my spirit, my personal belongings, and my self-worth. For a few days, I even lost my faith, and considered that the only route of escape from the constant battlefield that my life had become was death. 

Thank God my dear friend Lori and my mother pulled me out of that pit of despair, dragging my battered mind from the wreckage of the bombs lobbed by other people. They helped me to see that I was worth more than I believed I was, and that I deserved so much more from life. From relationships. From myself. And that I didn't need to have the strength to survive - God was my strength, and He would hold me and support me and carry me and be beside me through it all. I could count on God, even though I could no longer count on people who said I COULD count on them. The people who counted on me so predictably.

And these two women who are closest to me were right.

I did get off of the battlefield, and I may still have all of my body parts, but my soul will forever be scarred beyond recognition. I have, by the grace of God and with the support and prayers from friends and my parents and siblings, escaped the bottomless pit of depression and pain, and removed myself from a vicious cycle of emotional harm that had beaten me down into nothingness. It has cost me everything except my life.

A doctor, a psychiatrist at the hospital ER, spoke words to me in September that I will never forget...

"There is nothing wrong with you. There is something wrong with your LIFE. 
Unless you want this to keep happening, you have to change it. If you don't, there WILL be something wrong with you: You'll be dead." 

I changed it. And the old me IS dead. 

Thank God for landmines.... They showed me that I was fighting in the wrong war.