The Girl Next Door... More and more and more rewrites.....

Hand up against the face; winds screeching, rains trying to slap away all and any protection. Lifting the woolen outer layers of my jacket up in an attempt to add an extra protective layer, the sharp rain felt like a million tiny daggers attacking my person. Everything about me drenched as the relentless onslaught of weather was attempting to take me out and add me to the victims of the storm. Trying to find my way, squinting into the dark evening, attempting to move forward as to find refuge; my feet submerge into the gathered waters as I stumble as the rains and winds over take me...

I rush towards the streets, towards the houses... row after row of finely manicured lawns and houses seemingly lit up. Through windows I can see people dry and warm, except as I stumble towards doors and door bells nothing works. As I try to find my voice to cry aloud for help nothing emerges. The darkness of the night and the raging storm swallow up my cries for help and the thrashing and crackling of the thunder seem to mock my every effort.

Stumbling back onto the road, searching in the darkness liken unto a person who is blind trying to find their way through an unfamiliar room. The lightening streaking across the sky producing something akin to some horrific joker's grin. Is this the joke or the punch line? The evening continues to lay it's own punches upon me as my right hand sweeps the rain and tears off of my face. Again my foot steps falter into the waters swarming at them, pulling me into themselves as if they were a riptide and there is no escape but to be drowned upon the streets of suburbia. Going down.. gasping for air... trying to call out.. everything is swirling.. rain, thunder, lightening, grass lawns, living rooms lit up and seen into through picture perfect windows... all is swirling into a massive spinning wheel of paint liken unto those that one once found at the country fairs of old.

Sitting straight up, I run my hands through my dry hair. Moment after moment passes as I try to gather my wits about me. Where am I? What is happening? Again minutes pass and I begin to catch up with my breathing as to slow it down. I touch my bed. My blankets. My pillow. I look around and the dream world fades as the reality of the present presses into my person.

My dreams are pressing in more and more. While I am awake my thoughts end up being more liken unto time travelers. Traveling about, thinking of the places where my feet have walked and where they keep walking.

The moments turn into hours as wonderment and countless questions play around in my head. Whether I am awake or asleep there are words, like “Awoken” and “Seen,” that haunt me. Questions of playing life safe and moving forward quietly into each next day offer me their answers about playing my roles.. my “part,” and stiff arming anything from the past that would try to edge it's way forward.

Yet it is then in my dreams that I am failed or that I fail. If while awake I succeed in the realm of performance my slumber betrays me and gets me every time. So then I have an option. Maybe more then I realize. But the ones that I see, the ones I can grasp at... seem few. Keep all at bay or open the bay windows and unfasten and swing wide-open the doors and let the light in and let the sound out. Sadly I have always been a very dualistic person. Currently trying to remedy that issue. Black/white, right/wrong, silent/screaming, blind and deaf/awoken and seen. Those are the thoughts I would like to put distance between myself and (fill in the blank.. )whichever dualistic pairing comes knocking upon my door.

This journey into life, to open my mouth, say the things that would rather remain silent has been an arduous one. At times I find myself careless about consequences, so desperate to share while yet at other times hungering for silence, stillness... quiet.

Yet it is the “and yet” that gets me every time; it is having eyes that see into the shadows and ears that hear the silent soulish screams, that gets me every time. The dreams of storms chasing me, catching me, destroying me taunt me and lay threats of my utter destruction. Am I a storm chaser or am I the one perpetually getting caught up into it's voracious path? Do I conquer or am I conquered? Am I a silent shadow sneaking through life pleading to be invisible or do I stand up as living proof that the valley of dry bones did and does still exist? But I will not be it's prey and on the contrary I hold it for the promise it must produce.

When I lived through the days of silence, harm and darkness had their victories. So now upon the days, when the familiar echos of silence beckon me into their lair, the possible and well-known choices sing the refrain I am the most acquainted with. Yet I see other so-called pilgrims. I pass them every day. I actually do pause to look at them, in their eyes and upon their persons. I look at them, wonder about them, linger upon them. I want them to feel seen and known. I want them to be engaged where they are and where they find themselves. I want the essence of my presence and my participation within the moment to communicate to each the dignity of life, their life.. all life.

I have traveled many streets. And I have lived in many houses. It is the first six of them that begin this story. Six streets. Six homes. The first one I have no memories of and yet it still is there, on some road off near Boston. The next one would be in Connecticut. Memories exist in that location. Then it would be off to New Jersey back to Massachusetts and back to New Jersey. No, not military. The world of business and climbing corporate ladders was my father's world.

Upon each street there is a house that was called our home. Upon each street we had neighbors; other families, other people...

It was suburbia after all and the picture perfect grand neighborhoods of people escaping city living for the American dream.

Neighborhoods.. neighbors;

I think upon those houses at times.

I think about the rooms.

I think about the walls.

I think upon the hallways and the staircases.

Do they remember?

Do the people who live in those places ever think they hear lingering whispers, shouts or cries? Do you ever think about the doors you open and close? Do you look into the mirrors and wonder what faces they have beheld?

What tears they saw.. what other things did they contain? Did they see happiness? Did they know joy? Did they see horror? Did they tremble as did their inhabitants? Were doors slammed?

I think about those things from time to time. As I remember, as I think back.

I think about conversations. The ones that were had. The ones that were never had. The ones that I wish were never had. The times that the words just sort of hung there in the air. The times the silence hung thicker.

Some of my favorite conversations happen after I have told the stories of this life that I have lived. I've heard a variation of responses throughout time. Many times. Most times I think that they are right, it is pretty amazing that I am alive.

Sometimes I find it laughable how the listener tries to take back that which they have spoken. As if they said something insulting, true... BUT insulting. I don't think I have ever been insulted per se. Left feeling vulnerable but not insulted.

It is after all my life. More accurately it was after all my life. So when the words in some form or another come out that the listener is amazed that I am coherent; alive and coherent, alive and coherent and not sitting somewhere heavily medicated off in a corner somewhere drooling, I guess I just sit with them in amazement rather than be insulted or offended.

I think it is pretty amazing.

I think it is pretty amazing that for so many years so much went left so unseen. I lived out in the open, but might have as well have dwelt in the shadows.

I walked to bus stops, ventured down hallways, spoke to people for years but no eyes ever saw, no ears ever heard, no one ever stopped to try to really take notice. But then I never looked up, I never spoke up, I kept drifting further and further through life. I got lost further and further into myself until I had more in common with a vapor of smoke than any other human. Isn't it interesting, we think we know someone, we think all the thoughts that we have about them and what we perceive them to be or not be, but do we ever have the time (take the time) to really see, really look, really hear.. Do we look beyond the surface and the surface that is presented, to know or allow ourselves to be known?

Well... so this is that, this is my spinning wheel of paint. This is my attempt to share a life that wasn't seen and to awaken those of us who see and hunger to be seen to live a life, this life differently. To participate in the real. Whether it is Alice's looking glass, Dorothy's cyclone, Narnia's wardrobe or the pill of Matrix; I hunger to press the buttons upon each of our lives and implore us all to engage. That we would use the eyes we have and the ears we have and that we would engage more fully. Satisfaction wouldn't be attained by just texts and social media blips, but that we would care to go beyond scratching the surface and we would engage into the human experience in way that each one would feel the movement.

I recently passed a homeless man. He was asleep upon a bench and he was cold. So much occurring within the confines of my life that I was utterly out of control of the circumstances I was facing. But this man before me, I could do something about him. I went home and got a sleeping bag. I drove back to this sleeping human being, this man whose dignity the economy of life had stripped. And laid it at his feet. That wasn't enough for me.. I wanted him to wake up to hot coffee and a breakfast. To the local coffee shop I ran and purchased a gift card and some food. Again I went back to the bench. Back to my co-pilgrim walking this earth, to this sleeping body of a man. I wrote on the card... “From one who sees you...” I guess that's that... I guess that is what fuels me...

I wasn't seen, I wasn't heard... but then I own my part... I didn't speak.. I didn't know how to exit the trance that laid it's dark shadow upon so very many years of my life...

BUT...

Life, ballet dancers, the Amish and a psych hospital would change all that... deans of colleges, a husband, 6 children would eventually change all that... but before it was changed it was... before I was anything else all I was was the girl next door.

In ways of an Introduction..

The words sat there upon the page.

You are my hiding place; You preserve me from trouble;
You surround me with songs of deliverance. Psalm 32:7

I traced the words on the page and stared at them long and hard. Hiding places and preservation from trouble, songs of deliverance... what can that all mean? What does that all mean?

Images from days in the past ran through my heart and again I looked at the words and traced them with my fingers. Thoughts and emotions eclipsed and transversed across the decades in a split second and then I was back, in the present.

What did that look like back then?

Emerging from the grasp of silence, deafness, blindness.. or whatever you or I would call it? What I want, what it is that I desire more than anything to unfold here, more than anything, is the passing on of hope. I wish I could invite you to come have coffee, come and let's spend time together. Come and let's share the story and the hope that has been granted together. The hope that can be granted.

Safe places.

Songs of deliverance.

I've written much of this with my laptop on my lap, sitting on my bed, surrounded by my favorite blue and green comforters. I have sat surrounded by color and softness and life.

Within these pages, within this journey, I was grateful to have color and warmth surrounding me. It has been a process of walking away from lonely and scary and cold places. Step by step I have found my confidence, I have found my voice, and I have awoken more and more into life and living. There have been days and seasons where it felt like the torrent of the storms from the past would continue to overtake me, but each time I have learned to reach in deeper into the core of who I am as well as reach out for the support I have needed. Each season has been a knitting and a re-knitting of sinew entwined with hope that has beaten back the efforts of despair. It is a journey. I've been the pilgrim. For those who long to travel paths into where help comes forth from mountaintops, and enter into dark places in order to shine with light... Then journey forward with me...

In a day and age where there is such a need for a safe hiding place, a refuge from times of trouble and sweet songs of deliverance, I didn't want to create something that is trite. In the decades that I have tried to write my story I hit road block after road block. I would be able to write one part well and then stumble and stagnate over significant portions I wanted to tell, and then shelf the whole thing out of frustration.

But safe places and songs of deliverance are so very much needed and so in this season I pulled my laptop back onto my lap, grabbed my lime green comforter and curled up upon my bed.

To be surrounded by songs of deliverance. What does that sound like? What does that feel like? What are they? How does one learn to dance upon the notes of hope and joy when all that has been heard are the dark chords of abuse and neglect? What could it mean for a mind that has only known fear to be saturated by a sweet sweet melody that brings its refrain forward into reality? And what does it mean for a life when the clash between the sounds makes it war against each other within the same heart?

I think of many different types of scenarios, where the reality of songs of deliverance is what is needed. I found within the expression of words the desire for the melody of love and peace, sanctuary and security.

That is what I want to pass on.

I believe my story and the reality of where my life has landed now breaks forth with the reality that one can find sanctuary and peace amidst whatever troubled waters are experienced and walked upon.

When what you have needed was a hiding place, a refuge, preservation from trouble or songs of deliverance, when what your heart hungered to know was security and safety away from fear, and none of that was around … What did you fall back upon? What are you to believe when hiding places and preservation from trouble seemed far far away from the realities you have known? What then?

I think it has been thoughts like those that have caused me to come back time after time to try and figure out how to write my story down. How to write a story that includes the fact that the majority of individuals who crossed paths with me believed that there were no songs of deliverance for me to be had... that there was no hope. That maybe I should just be written off as lost or gone. A song silenced before it could ever really be sung.

Discordance permeated all facets of the surrounding atmosphere of my days.. of my life...

But you see, even if very faint at first, songs of deliverance play across the landscapes of humanity with a fierce tenacity that cannot be matched. EVER!

The reality of the fragility of one's mental state and the fear that at any moment the horrors of the past and realities of the present are going to steal away from you all that is hoped for in regards to the future can haunt. They can tear at one’s soul and leave one wanting. Except they can also be overcome.

A most famous book begins, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”

What if life was only the worst of times, for the longest of times, without hope that anything would ever change. What if the reality of the state of mind you found yourself in was full of hopelessness and horror? What if you watched others pass you by and wondered what does being human really feel like? What does “normal” feel like? What if the agony of living with the reality that filled out the days of ones life altered the capacity to think or feel? What if all one became capable of was living in alternate realities? False hiding places forged within ones own self? Does one lose oneself? What are songs of deliverance for someone in that place? What does that melody sound like?

Songs of deliverance... Those three words aren't glib nor are they trite. They have been life to me... Beyond this page you find a story... A friend had come to me back in December 2012 and had shared her thoughts, that if I stepped into fiction I would be able to write the story of my life. She was right. Some of it I had to step into fiction in order to write. In acquiring some space for my heart, my fingers flew upon the keyboard.

I would hit some places where the reality of the events and what it felt like to live them needed that personal touch. When I began to understand that truly I wanted to give hope both to the person who suffered and those that loved them.

In a culture where the “in” words of the day are; transparency, vulnerability, and authenticity, I found within myself the need to go beyond their cultural relevance. I journeyed deep into a place that could offer real hope and strength and courage.

I didn't want my story to just be about disassociation, abuse and neglect. I wanted to write something that showed the power of what can happen when someone awakens and speaks and sees. How many of us, in some form or facet, are “The Girl(boy) Next Door?”

 I didn't want to share a story of a girl who learned very early to keep quiet, a girl who kept her mouth closed and her eyes staring off into the distance. This isn't a  story of a girl, who might as well have been a shadow upon the wall. It isn't a piece about a girl who lived a life imprisoned by fear. It is  a story of how we all can awaken, see and be seen, hear and be heard. I wanted to share a story that would open up those prison gates. I wanted to share a story that would create an atmosphere and an environment where eyes would open and awaken and mouths would open and be heard.

These pages are full of a life that could actually be being lived by a person who lives right next door to you.

Seriously, as far reaching as some of the stories within are, I was a person... living right next door to other people. There are those people you pass in the highways and byways of life... what is it that has filled out their life, what really happens to the person who lives next door? As I say at one point.. this is their story, this is our story.. How we learn to see each other contributes into the songs of deliverance that we will personally sing over our lives and over the lives of those that surround us...

Consider this story part of that overarching song of deliverance. My portion in the cantata of freedom for others. What can happen within one generation within a family, what can happen within one lifetime of a person.. well, if one believes and listens .. that which can happen is the beauty of deliverance, restoration and hope and peace.

Songs of Deliverance.

A song... a melody full of sweet and sorrow.. full of fear and full of overcoming... the notes at one point melodious and at other times so very difficult to listen to...