Like many children of divorce, I was torn between two homes. My mom had full custody of me and my sister, but we visited my dad on a regular basis. He lived less than 10 miles away. I looked forward to seeing him, but I had learned with experience that it wouldn’t be easy. I always left with a sense of loss and hurt.
One afternoon several years ago, I cried out to God from my prayer closet: “Why do you allow me to feel so much pain?”
I was standing in the intersection of old grief and new grief. That summer I wrote many memories in the form of poems, an excruciating process of reliving past hurts. I brought old hurts out in the open on paper, examined the pain, grieved the loss of what they revealed, and worked to put them to rest.
Too itchy. Too tight. Too breezy. As a highly sensitive child I was keen to feelings, especially to touch.
O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. You … Read more
Joy came from the sorrow of my childhood longing and loneliness.
When I withdrew into private worlds of drawing and reading out of loneliness,