Signs

I'm always asking God for signs, real world assurances of my next step in life. I cannot move past a situation or move forward to a new situation until I've gotten a true, verifiable--by my mother--sign. Yet, often times, I wonder if the signs I find are merely signs I want myself to see rather than express shipped from heaven. I can't soundly express how many times I have confused coincidence with celestial intervention, more than I can name without embarrassing myself. Pinterest quotes don't count as signs. Songs on the radio? Not so much. Running into someone you'd almost forgotten when you're happy & doing well, that's just the devil. SOMEONE TEXTING YOU AT 2 AM IS NOT A SIGN, it's just disrespectful, don't do that. God's signs are obvious, just not in the way we have been programmed to expect. They probably won't come hurdling into your inbox when you're in a valley of despair, God's a lot bigger than text messages. Signs probably won't look shiny & pretty & just how you always imagined, they're probably going to tell you a bigger, darker, grittier truth, one you couldn't come to grips with in your own mind.

So I ask God for signs almost every day, because I'm dramatic and cryptic like that, and I always get them, whether I see them or not, though, is another situation entirely. Two nights ago, I had the worst dream of my life, and yet, I woke up and had no idea what it meant. I have had horrible dreams in the past and forgotten them within hours, yet this dream stuck with me, like it was burned into my brain for some significant reason. It was the most symbolic, meaningful message I'd ever gotten through a dream, or at least that I could comprehend.

Rape is probably the scariest thing I can imagine, my body and my control are two of my most important belongings that are mine and only mine. I do not ever get my self into situations where I feel these things can be compromised. Yet, in the past, I have let other things be compromised, my independence, my virtue, my friendships, all because I wanted to make someone else happy. I lost a lot of the pieces that made me the person I had once been and in the process of rebuilding her, I found that though I was not ruined, a part of me was very much damaged in a dark way that I couldn't understand. I was bitter, reserved, cold, distant towards men, not because of who they were, but because of who they could be.

My friend told me a story, just the other day, about a girl who had been raped and the way she acted in the aftermath. How she didn't like to be left alone, anywhere at anytime, how fragile and fearful she could be, how she shook and crumbled. My heart broke listening to this girl's story, and resonated at the same time. I remembered my dream and how raw it left my mind, I couldn't imagine how she felt in the aftermath of that real experience, I wanted to talk to her, to soothe her, yet I knew my words wouldn't change the way she felt inside. I hope & pray that God cradled her, took her under his wing and healed wounds that other hands would only damage.

In the aftermath of a horrible experience, you have to rebuild yourself and you have to forgive. Sometimes forgiveness seems beyond all reason and comprehension, and yet, you still have to forgive, or else your life will never go on. You pray and you cry and you struggle and you grow and then you feel animosity, bitterness, and hatred and it is as if you never changed at all. I have been the girl in the relationship that metaphorically rapes your life and I have been the girl that goes back to that relationship more times than she cares to admit. I have been bitter and hateful and lost sight of all sensibility, and yet, here I am. I forgive today and I will forgive every day until it is no longer an apology that I need to accept. God crept into my mind and explained it to me, he explained the truth, the innocence, and the finality of the situation. God said, "Let it go, I have you now."

Sometimes signs are quiet, soft, whispered in the middle of a loud, crowded party. Sometimes a sign slaps us in the face, and yet, because of our deceitful hearts, we choose to turn our heads from the truth. Sometimes, every once in a while, a sign is so clear, so pure, so right, that we have no other choice but to move forward with that sign on our horizon or, if need be, that sign in our rearview mirror.