Loss defines a person.  There is no way to escape the effects it has on you. Loss leaves no part untouched.

This post will be raw and not pretty. To be truthful, it might make you feel very uncomfortable. But, loss isn’t pretty. It is ugly, it hurts, and you don’t come out of it the same; it changes you. Your thoughts are now altered, feelings are changed, and in some cases, your body will forever be changed as well. It is what we do with that loss that truly defines us.

My dad was sick most of my childhood with that ugly thing known as cancer. My childhood was taken from me by that evil beast. It was no one’s fault, we all did what we could but my childhood quietly slipped away as fog in the morning. I remember the smell of bleach in the toilets after chemo treatments. The counter top in the kitchen covered in bottles filled with every imaginable herbal supplement. And don’t forget, the Vitamix always spitting out carrot juices and split-pea soup. Every time he got better, months or years later, cancer reared its ugly head again. Through all this, my parents were still amazing parents! They just couldn’t be ‘present’ most days.  This loss should have pushed me closer to daddy God but instead, it  created a void in me. I felt that I was missing something. Instead of getting closer to God, I started searching for someone or something to fill that void.

I met a man. He seemed amazing, sweet and thoughtful. But best of all, he noticed me, Me! At the beginning, I noticed he was a little possessive of me but I thought that must be normal.  One night the possessiveness became too much, a choice that forever changed me. A choice that would effect so many things about who I was. He told me he was doing this because he loved me, that this was making love. In that moment of extreme, gut-wrenching loss, I not only lost my innocence but I lost myself. I lost something, no, something was stolen from me. The very definition of who I was changed in a instant. I remember looking at a tear streaked face in the mirror, not recognizing who was staring back at me.

Instead of reaching out for help, I ignored the loss. But here is the thing about loss, it is something you can’t run from. It catches up to you and at some point, you have to deal with it. So,  I started looking to something else to heal me. To fix me, numb the pain. Drugs and booze helped with the numbing part pretty well. I became a person I am not proud of. Someone that now, I don’t even recognize. In the haze of denial, I met another man. I was broken but he picked me up. Said all the right things and made me feel safe. But then, his true colors began to show. After being told “You are worthless.” “You are lucky you have me because, no one else will love you.” You start to believe it. I lost my self-worth. I stayed with someone I was terrified of because I felt worthless. Outside, I looked happy but inside I was a raw, ugly, broken mess. What led me to flee? I don’t know. All I knew was that I would rather me alone forever that with a man like that. As gross and broken as I was, someone already loved me. God was there the whole time, loving me, holding me, weeping for my loss.

I made multiple bad choices after that but, in those times of bad choices, I started remembering that God was there. He was waiting for me with open loving arms. Waiting for me to come back; to turn my loss into a choice to come home. Now, I am not saying that I was miraculously fixed when I finally decided to to turn my life around. But, it was a start. Psalms 71:1-2 says, “I run for dear life to God, I’ll never live to regret it. Do what you do so well: get me out of this mess and up on my feet.” God helped me get up but guess what, I was still standing in the mess that I had created.

It has taken me years to heal from my losses, the right way. I had a hard time finding my self-worth and accepting real love. But God is so good. Even in my partially cleaned up mess, He brought the most amazing, loving man into my life. Someone that doesn’t just say the right thing but a man that loves and respects me. A man that loves this scarred and still  healing woman. There are still times where that little voice comes back and says I am worthless. I have to make a conscious effort to remember that God finds worth in me. Messed up, imperfect me!

Writing this post was vary hard for me. Every time I tell of my losses, I experience them again. But God has healed those areas of loss. It doesn’t mean the memory is not painful or that it didn’t change who I am. I am a women that has been through loss and has found herself after the fact.  I didn’t write this post so you could feel bad for me but, so that you can see hope in the losses in your life. That you can take comfort knowing there is life and love amidst the wreckage, whatever that may be.  God is there!