Denial, noise, truth...ramblings

     A fair warning...this is a lot of rambling.  It goes down a few rabbit trails and seemingly different paths, but if you'll be patient and stick it out, I think I can tie it all back together the way it is in my head.  The all over the place nature of this post is just where my head is.  I'm sorry for that.  I hope you'll be willing to keep reading to see how it all comes together and hopefully makes sense.    

     It's a new year.  People like to make new year's resolutions to make each year better than the one before.  It's more a formality than anything realistic though.  Resolutions are made knowing they will be broken, yet we still like the hope we feel in formulating a plan to make changes and live life on our terms.
     Life doesn't live on our terms though.  We wind up facing circumstances that are messy and hard and ugly and broken.  We end up torn between what we had planned and what is unfolding before us.  We find ourselves at the mercy of truth, and sometimes what is true is what we never wanted or asked for.  So we try to escape the truth we didn't want because that somehow feels more comfortable and more in control (even though we aren't).

     I have spent more years than I care to count trying to escape a truth I never asked for, never wanted, never had a say in.  I grew up with heavy secrets to keep.  I had to leave a room where the unspeakable took place and enter a world where I was "normal" and "fine" and just like every other kid I was around.  So I learned very quickly and rather young how to deny the truth of my life even while knowing what the truth was.  Denial became my truth without my ever knowing it.  Denial meant I survived.  It was good and necessary in those years that the truth tried to kill me.
     Life is different now all these years later.  I'm not living in the nightmare I once was trapped in.  In fact, the tides have turned.  The truth that would have killed me then is what now can bring me freedom.  The denial that was necessary for me to keep living, now keeps me from healing.  But moving past denial is proving to be a terribly difficult fight...denial is a vicious and ruthless opponent.

     I'm sure you must think it strange to talk about being in denial.  After all, when we think of denial, we think of holding fast to a lie that something did not happen when in fact it did.  That is denial, but that just scratches the surface of it.  I don't have the ability right now to explain it all, but I will try to briefly explain the denial I am battling at the moment.
     I do not deny that the abuse I endured happened.  If asked if I was abused as a child, I would shake my head yes.  I keep my distance from it though.  I minimize it.  I do it without thinking.  I've been doing it so long I don't know I'm doing it.  I hold my past at a distance, refusing to let it be real.  I will shake my head in agreement that it happened, but I cannot let the words escape my mouth.  That makes it real.  There are words I have in my head that I know are part of my story, but they are so awful and repulsive that I actively look for definitions anywhere that will define them out of what happened to me.  I know what applies as truth to my story, but I won't accept the truth.
     Not accepting what is true as true and minimizing the parts I will admit to is another level of denial that I am losing my fight with.  It's a fight I can't afford to lose though.  I have to win this fight if I am going to find healing.  But I am stuck, going in circles with denial while feeling truth pull at me, quietly requesting I sit and rest from the dizzying circles I dance with denial.  My feet keep moving though, and I feel the tension rise between denial and truth.  I know I have to be honest with my truth to myself in order to take my truth honestly to the One who can redeem it.

     As I dizzy myself with denial, truth keeps finding ways to make her presence known.  The last few months as I have struggled greatly feeling stuck and falling into some rather deep, dark pits that I wasn't sure I could get back out of, I have had this noise in my head grow louder and louder.  The more I see the denial I am stuck in and realize even more how badly I need out, the louder the noise gets.  It is particularly loud in the evenings when the house is quiet and my family is settled in for the night...deafening, frightening, always there.  It isn't audible noise, but the word noise is the best description I have for this stuff inside my head.  
     I'm not completely sure of what is in the noise.  There is a mix of a lot of things.

• there are words...inexpressible, and sometimes incomprehensible, words
• there are feelings...but I don't do feelings, I just DON'T
• there are tears...liquid terror, instant anxiety attack
• there is truth...all the truth I have not yet accepted
• there is _________...more that I don't have words for or can't understand yet

     And the noise is relentless!  It leaves me restless every evening, moving about my house on edge.  I know I should listen to it little bits at a time.  I know it has a purpose.  There is something or lots of somethings in my head, making all this noise, that need to be heard, spoken, felt, grieved, walked through, but I want nothing more than to drown it out.  It screams at me, so I scream louder with meaningless, mindless activity every night to ignore what is begging for my attention.

     Then I struggle desperately to fall asleep.  My mind refuses to unwind, to settle, to quiet.  My body, tense with the fight between the noise screaming at me and me screaming over it, refuses to relax.  Sleep is a fight which drains me instead of refreshing me.  My body begs for sleep, but my mind won't let up until my body empties itself of all it has, and my mind is forced to shut down.  Then sleep comes but never rest.
     The noise fights to be heard.  It knows it holds the truth.  But I'm terrified of what it has to say.  I don't know how to listen to it.  I can't understand the screams.  I cannot sit still.  I fear the noise will break me if I knew what it wanted.  What if it wants more than I have to give?  My stores are already so depleted.  So I pray and read Scripture and seek to be filled, but the noise just wants more and more and more.

God I am empty!  I know You can see!  Can You see I am empty?

     Now it's a new year.  I see more clearly than I ever have how entrenched in the mire of denial I am.  I know now more than ever how desperately I need to face the truth.  It's a battle.  It's raging fiercely within me every.single.day.  

     Denial spins me around while the noise screams at me that truth must be heard and walked through.  I know that I will not have to walk through it alone.  I know somehow God will meet me in it.  I know He is there waiting for me, for He is the God of truth.  Yet still each day, I drown out the noise as I dance with denial and truth tugs at my heart to just sit and be still.

     So this year, I have a goal (for lack of a better word).  I want to learn to listen to the noise.  I want to sit down with my truth and begin to accept it, piece by piece.  It will mean learning how to hear what is true, feel what is true, speak what is true, grieve what is true, walk through what is true, all while clinging to the God of truth who promises to be with me in the pain of what is true.  I know it will not be easy.  I know it will be a process and involve a lot of hard work.  This year, I want to find God with me in the terror of truth and learn, in the midst of all the hurt, to rest in His arms of love and comfort.  I know the only way to healing is through the hurt of truth.  As much as this terrifies me, I press on.