Pain changes you. Trauma changes you. Sometimes it’s subtle. Pieces of you, who you once were, your hopes and dreams, sometimes they slip away so quietly you don’t even realize they’re missing. Little things, like the carefree way you used to live, or laugh, or the way you found joy in the smallest of things. You lose them. You lose little pieces of yourself along the way and you don’t even realize it.
Then there are big changes. Big wounds, things you can’t not see or feel, big gaping pieces, just gone, that you can’t help but feel the emptiness from. They were such a huge part of who you were, pieces of your heart that you know, no matter how much healing comes, you will never be able to get those pieces back. You will never be the same.
But it’s in those changes that God begins to form something new. Maybe He allows us to forget those small pieces of ourselves to move us forward to become more Him and less us. Maybe He allows the big changes, the ones that run so deep, to, not define us, but to help us remember where we once were. Who we once were. But He won’t keep us there. I won’t ever be the same me I was yesterday, or a week ago, or even a year ago. And I won’t be the same me tomorrow.
As I move forward through this process of healing, I have been sorting through it all; Good, bad, keep, toss. Piles in my heart and mind. The good things I will keep. The sweet moments that no one else but the two of us shared. The things that only I got to see. I will tuck those deep in my heart for now, maybe to be sorted later on, but for now, they are mine to keep. The bad, I will toss. No longer letting them define me. They’ve changed me, yes, but I believe God allowed them to change me, to change me into the woman I will be today, and tomorrow, and each day forward.
Today, I’m stepping into my new identity. Not knowing who that is or even what that is quite yet, but there’s something beautiful in that unknown too. Something mysterious and exciting. Something new. And this time, I will love her.
