Brokenness

However I started out, by the time I was twenty four I was a mess, emotionally and spiritually. It was a bit amazing I was still alive! But looking back on what's happened since, I'm so glad I am.

There really are clouds and they really have got silver linings - thank God!

In my brokenness, I wanted love - was starved for it really, and had gone through divorce after one year of marriage and a civil partnership ending within another year of its start.

So clearly messed up in my own mind and desperate to sort myself out, I spent a summer reading.
(I recently watched SHADOWLANDS starring Anthony Hopkins and Deborah Winger. A wonderful quote from that film: "We read to know we're not alone.")
I began by reading THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING by Norman Vincent Peale. If anyone needed to learn to 'think positive' it was I. And in the reading I was directed to the Bible. So I started at Matthew, the first book of the New Testament. I'm not sure where I went from there but in the process I got to praying.
I suffered a lot that summer, dealing with the break up of what would now be a civil partnership - technically perhaps it didn't even last long enough for that. But what helped me through the pain was the reading and the praying. Then one day I said, "GOD, if you're there show me." The next day I was offered a job so that I could stay in the city of my choosing, in the field of work for which I was trained. For me, given the employer called me (not the other way round) and the fact there were few jobs, I took that as GOD's answer.
So in my brokenness I began to move from hope to healing.
I realized certainly I was not alone, though I was still lonely.
Healing takes time.
My journey would include miracles, misery and a mystery that will never be solved.
More tomorrow....

God bless.