A Bird in a Cage Looking in the Mirror with the Door Open.

Today through conversation the last couple of days I was faced with the reflection of the past.

I was brought back to a moment I always hoped was a memory of a child's imagination, but I always deep down new it was real as I shared it.  I found my father standing in our neighbors 10 acres on top of a very large rock that was like the size of a cliff. I was standing at the bottom looking up at him wondering what he was doing. I knew I was younger than seven because my parents were still together, but I really don't know how old I was. I saw my Father raise his arms reaching out to the sky, standing on the very edge and he started to speak. I heard him yell, "God take me!" I have tried for years to remember past that point with failure as the memories would not come. I was sitting eating lunch with my Mom and relational Aunt on Sunday. I don't know how we got on the conversation but I had mentioned that memory, I think deep inside me hoping my Mother would deny it ever happened, to my surprise she didn't instead she said I remember that as my Aunt sat with a stunned look on her face. We never talked about the horrors of the past but now they are coming out without restraint.

Today I was on the phone with the same Aunt and we were talking and the conversation turned to the conversation of alcohol & alcoholism  two familiar subjects to me as my Father suffered from Mental illness & alcoholism, not that he would admit to either.

I was brought back to a time where my favorite song was " How can you love me, when I don't love myself" by Anne Murray, by this time in my life I hated God for everything I thought he had put me through.

 I was just breaking up from my emotionally abusive boyfriend, I was around 20, and my family had showed up to help me move. I was a fan of alcohol back then as we use to always hang out at the bars or always had alcohol in the apartment, it was part of my life. We were moving thing out when a really good friend, or at least I thought, came up to me and asked me how could I screw this up so bad. I snapped and ran out of the apartment down to my car and grabbed the bran new 26oz of Tequila still in the paper bag out from under the drivers seat. I ran and I ran I had no idea what I was going to do I just knew I didn't want to live, I hated myself and my friend making that comment confirmed everything my mind was already telling itself. I was running the streets of PoCo in the dark of night with a bottle of Tequila & a $1,000.  cash from an ICBC(car accident) settlement. I was a lost soul not knowing what to do. I found myself sitting in a back alley behind the bar leaning against the cinder blocks, all I wanted to do was die. I cracked open the bottle of Tequila and proceeded to drink the whole bottle with in a half an hour. I through the bottle down to the ground and in that moment an image of my Father came flashing in my mind and the thought do really want to become the person he was. I know now that this was God speaking to my heart the only way I would listen. I stumbled to my feet and started running my options through my head. I could catch a bus with the money I had and go some where far, far away, but the bus stop was probably closed by this hour. I needed to go some where no one would find me. My boyfriend had brought me to a place they called Don's place, it was the local drug house in PoCo. I remember him saying if anyone wanted not to be found they could go there because no one would rat them out. I wasn't thinking clearly that night, I headed over to Don's place with a $1000. cash in my pocket. I knocked on the door, the door opened to the view of a well stripped home with everything you could imagine a drug house looking like. While I was explaining why I had come one of my boyfriends friends was calling him. He pulled up in his Mustang he called Betsy. I bolted and he chased me through the streets till he caught me. I had no more fight to run and I got back in his car. He apologized and told me it wouldn't happen again. I ended up living with him again and it was a back and forth thing until he had told me if I ever started smoking he would leave me and in my warped mind I had found the way out, I started smoking. He caught me smoking with a friend and he took the back of his hand up the side of my face, where a bruise soon  formed, that was it I finally got up the courage to leave for good.

I'm finding today I feel like a bird in a cage, that keeps looking in the mirror of the past and is stuck in the present with the door wide open on the cage. God has set me free but I am frozen in the present and in the routine I am in, could I be afraid. I  have slowly aloud everything that represents my identity & my independence away until I have lost it all.


Lord of all things, My God, My Father I am weak, I am broken and can't find the strength to stand my ground so I can walk with you without fear of hurting those I have given all of me too. I can't do this on my own Father I wait for you. In Jesus Name Amen.