Residuals

This morning I felt like I could be the subject of the old Talking Heads song, Once In A Lifetime. I found myself asking me, "How did I get here?" How did I end up living in south Louisiana, working as an engineer (not my passion, by the way) so I could take care of a child I had with a trifling man (whom I never wanted to marry in the first place), divorced and having just ended a relationship with a man who suffers from a severe case of selfish jackass syndrome? "Well, how did I get here?" I realized it was because of my less than positive childhood.

My parents did they best they could with what they had, and what they had just wasn't enough for what my sisters and I needed. I didn't have an indication of just how less than positive our experience was until our sister's weekend dinner Memorial Day weekend this year. When I remarked to my sisters that growing up with our parents wasn't that bad, all three of them said, "What house did you grow up in?!" They told me that I essentially needed to take off the rose colored glasses and take a closer look. Until this morning, I hadn't done that.

I realized that much like the lyrics in that Talking Heads song, I had been "letting the days go by", not dealing with the residuals that were the roots of the pain that I felt due to my childhood experiences. I realized that the anxiety I often feel now is simply a symptom of the issues rooted in those residuals. Those residuals are the source of the brokenness that's lead to most of my negative adult experiences.

My awareness of those residuals now make me more able for God to work on me in His preparations for me to be ready to share my life with someone. I know that I need to be whole as an individual before I can join up with the man God made me for. I will no longer let the days go by without addressing those issues, because residuals that are not addressed in the present will surely show up in the future.