Broken Dreams

Here I am waiting to start work and I have slept very little. One hour of sleep is barely sufficient for me to function when I am emotionally well, but, well I am not. I just pray that work will be ok, and I will be given strength on all levels to be able to handle what today offers. I lied awake for hours upon hours last night thinking about what I thought I had successfully buried deep within myself, never really allowing myself the time and opporunity to work through my emotions and experience true healing. The last couple of weeks I have had a similar experience that Candice had expressed earlier. I too thought I was pregnant. I had some of the signs, and I guess I wanted it so bad and felt I needed it (in a sense) to be able to heal from our recent loss, that for sure this time was it. Isn't it?? Surely Heavenly Father was finally going to bless us after feeling so much pain and loss over the last month.Well, I really felt like it was, and I prayed,  pleaded and basically begged my Heavenly Father to please let it be. Please! Please! More than anything else, p.l.e.a.s.e!
But, alas, no is the answer I have come to know well. Or possibly not yet, but it is seemingly the same hopeless answer that I have come to resent. Why?! Why do I have to wait, when others don't?! Why??!!! I think angrily. Why not me? Am I not good enough? Am I not faithful enough? Would I be a terrible mom and therefore God is protecting His children from me? Why? Why can't I get answers that I need so desperately bad? Will I ever be a mom? Will I ever know why I have been denied this most holiest of callings? Will I ever be able to open my heart enough again to give it the opportunity to be made whole and allow my dreams to come true? Will I ever be able to look back over the years and not feel such a sense of loss and pain? Will I ever be able to attend a baby shower or blessing and truly feel joy for another without feeling pain, and ultimately feeling myself close up and lock out the world yet again?
    So, here I go over the feelings and ultimately unanswered questions that have been floating continually through my mind throughout the night just waiting for the sweet release of sleep. Unfortunate for me, sleep is not coming. I don't even have the sweet release of sleep now! Is absolutely everything of value to be taken from me? Well, as I lied awake I came to a very stark realization of myself. I have come to know that I have not so much been healing the past month and a half, but have only buried my feelings for fear of what they might bring, and masking my emotions with food. Then I have been telling myself that indeed, I feel better, so I must be healing and getting better, only not. Not coming to terms with it, and learning to cope with my emotions is a time bomb waiting to happen, but I do it so completely without realizing it. I have felt so much pain over the years, that I guess I am trying to save myself from more unwanted pain by just the act of not allowing myself to feel. I have put up a barricade, and not allowing myself to feel has also kept the promptings, and ispiration as naught. So, a sleepless night is what it takes to finally be able to get through this thick head and stone covered heart of mine. Not my ideal time, which is probably why I am most likely to listen. Listen carefully to what my body is telling me it needs to heal, but also listening carefully for spiritual guidance and promptings.  
   This quiet time of listening has lead me to the realization that I am not doing any good by burying my feelings and emotion. Yes, I seem to more easily be able to handle each day:  to cope, go on living, and muster up enough joy in life to make me feel semi-normal again, but I am not giving myself the time and the opportunity to sort through all my feelings to be able to cope and move on a healthier and happier person.  Because I have focused my time and energy on burying unwanted feelings, I have told myself and really sincerely felt like I have been getting better. Better, but feeling not really better at the same time. People ask how I am, and I honestly say I am getting better, and the days are seeming easier, and its true. I am, and they are, however it is not because I am healing. I know now why I feel better temporarily, but it doesn't stay for very long. Am I getting better? yes, I am GETTING better. Close to being myself and feeling whole again? No, but I am determined to get there! Hopefully a little faster and more steadily now that I have realized I've been keeping myself from healing. I need to sort through my feelings and be able to cope healthily with them in order to heal.
   I guess in a way I don't want my heart to be healed. Now, before you go securing me a place in the nut house, let me explain:
 I have never felt so much pain and heartbreak in my life. My feelings were so raw, and not easily pushed aside, that it scared me. I have been treading on new ground on a painful and heart wrenching level, and I don't feel ready. Ready or not though, its been thrown at me, and I have to learn to cope. I am treading carefully so as to not have to stay here any longer than is needful. So many prayers have been offered by me and other loved ones in my behalf. I know that my savior Jesus Christ knows the pain my heart is feeling. He knows, because He experienced it. He knows the condition my heart is in, and the condition it needs to be in. I know that with my faith in Him, my heart can be healed. But, I also know that with a healed heart, it can also be broken again. There will be steps that I need to take after the healing that can and likely will cause more break, and pain, which then requires more faith and more healing. Am I willing to do that? Do I even have enough faith to be healed? Do I trust my Heavenly Father and in His plan for me? I so badly want to keep the stone I have placed in and around my heart as I have tried to piece it back together the best I know how, rather then pulling out the stone (ultimately allowing myself to feel pain and cope with it) and then allowing God to properly heal it. A poem I have run across a hundred times finally takes on new meaning:

BROKEN DREAMS
As children bring
their broken toys
with tears
for us to mend,
I brought my broken
dreams to God
because He was
my friend.

But instead of
leaving Him in peace
to work alone,
I hung around and
tried to help with ways
that were my own.

At last I snatched them back and cried,
"How can you
be so slow?"
"My child", He said,
"What could I do?
You never let them go."

~Keira