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Have you ever felt like you will never be good enough? Like every wrong decision, each mistake is personified with each visit to a certain place? Try experiencing it over and over in the least likely place. Somewhere you should feel loved and accepted, because that's the way you want everyone to feel around you. In a place you once called home, by a person you call family

Imagine being abandoned after you've given your entire life to a person to include a childhood dream that living it requires only a completed application handed to an eagerly awaiting benefactor who holds the key to the kingdom. But you decide that others are more important than your dream, so you say no, I can't, they need me more.

Now think about all the times you may have gone without money, sleep, or peace of mind just to ensure someone else in the family doesn't just so you can have the food you purchased literally thrown in the floor or in your face.

How many times have you worked ridiculously long and intensely stressful hours, driven endless  miles, and come home so exhausted after not being able to sleep the night before, because the physical pain and mental anguish rips at your flesh and burdens your mind. Regardless, for the greater good and your great love, you throw a few pieces of clothing into a sack, grab your vacuum cleaner and cleaning products, stop along the way and grab a bag of chips and a coke after not eating all day, and drag back into the car and drive a little over a hundred miles. For all your love, all the sacrifice, you are ill-treated and told to "get out of my house" if you break an eggshell after treading so softly, tenderly, choosing words cautiously so as not to offend the already angered-by-life person you are trying to help. And only after you've cooked and cleaned for hours so you can drive all those miles in the darkness late into the night back to your own empty rental home and another sleepless night devastated that you've failed again. 

This is a brief description of some of the life I have lived. It gets uglier when my temper finally flares after listening for hours on end about who I'm not, what I have done wrong, or what I didn't say correctly as a young parent, and even how that one would be ashamed to be seen with me unless I change my less than stylish way of dress. I have always been able to laugh at myself. My mama actually taught me this trick of the trade. It's the way we attempt to hide the deep hurt we feel when those we love find it necessary to make us feel less important or point out things we've said incorrectly or mistakes we have made inadvertently while trying to blend in. We have the best intentions always, but it doesn't matter how hard we try, we will always be treated as inferior in some way or another. I will always be guilty of some sin in someone's mind, even if the story being told is fallacious. But the teller doesn't care, because it makes them appear more angelic, heroic, and more deserving of the life that has been stolen. We all make our choices, and the "victim" may not always be one. Perhaps the story has been altered, and the one who has been wronged, the true victim, is just allowing the blame and shame, because they feel they are somehow deserving of it. No one has bothered to ask, not even family or friends. Assumed guilty, so it must be so.

I thought I had finally broken out of that prison of guilt and shame, but it appears I have not, and more healing is needed. So here I am on Independence Day 2016 reliving the memories, the hurts, and the recent insults. Home once more.

One thing I do know as I lie cradled in His arms...Jesus love me, and that is enough. I am free.