So i was going to start writing my funny blog of all the funny vacation happenings (thats still coming too! Too much not to share) and somehow it turned into the below. Which is long of course and kind of serious.
Some people get messages in a bottle at the beach….i got neon signs at a retiree resort. And I can’t imagine a greater way that it could’ve happened.
If you don’t think God has a sense of humor…..you’re wrong. Take the last 101 days of my life….aka hell on earth….give me a vacation to the beach on a retiree resort and a week where I have never felt better about myself and couldn’t find a date to save my life. I’m sure He is giggling big time.
He made me love me without trying to date or get the validation or interest of a guy. He MADE me spend time with me alone and realize that the person I had become based on someone else’s HORRIBLE treatment towards me, was not what intended for me to believe about myself. Yet He surrounded me with people on this resort who genuinely adored me and love who i am. Validation of sorts but from a whole different realm of people versus validation I thought I needed from a man I could meet down here to date. I guess I was looking for proof that I wasn’t damaged so badly from the last one that I wouldn’t be dateable.
But I am damaged. And thats why He brought me here. Away from everything. To tend to my wounds (Holley Gerth makes a great reference to this in her book “You’re Already Amazing” – read it! ). Its like I was brought to this infirmary where every day and in ways I would’ve never anticipated, my wounds were left open, redressed and I was left to rest and get better for the next days treatment. There are still wounds, but they are being sewn up and protected so that when I head back home, they will not be “open” anymore.
Then, like most wounds that have been sewn up, they will turn into scars which really are just signs of a story. A story that will be told when the time is right.
A story about a girl who thought she was tough, but was shaken to the core and realized she was weak. And it was in that weakness that she found her path to survive. And now “the core” (or concrete pillar as I imagine it) is being rebuilt…..with better and stronger concrete. The kind you need to harden the core but not the heart. But like I said, thats a story for a different time.
I had no expectations of this trip other than forcing myself to be good to myself and truly relaxing. Yet in the midst of this humorous setting I have gained so much more than I expected.
I am forever changed.
Alicia Out Loud 