Sometimes, life is hard. We make hard decisions. We suffer from consequences that are hard to endure. We have emotions that are hard to sort. Sometimes, when life is hard, there is something inside me that just wants to scream.
My three year old has this habit; she says something and if you do not acknowlage it she repeats it, over and over, getting progressively louder each time. It's super frustrating when you are trying to hold a coversation with someone. I normally ignor her, and just get progressively louder with the person I'm having a conversation with. She will soon match my volume, and I will again raise mine until I am pretty much yelling at the person I am having a conversation with. Finally, after the person I am now shouting with and I have gotten frustrated with eachother, I will turn to her and exclaim, "What do you want, Kaliah?!"
It feels as though I have a similar little girl living in my soul. Like my daughter, she also gets really frustrated when I don't listen. Often, when she talks, I'm too busy focusing on other things to listen. She can wait until things slow down; when I'm not so distracted or when I'm done with the current coversation. So she starts getting louder. As she gets louder, I lose patience with the things around me. I get snappy and moody because all of the sudden every task or coversation has to be shouted over this inner noise that is keeping me constantly half listening. I begin to lose patience and avoid things in life because I am so sick of yelling and repeating myself. Then at some point, something, makes me realizing I am yelling at everyone I love and they have no idea why.
When my daughter talks, I try to make a point to kneel down to her level, so she knows she's got my full attention. When I listen to the little girl inside me, it normally brings me to my knees. I often forget that I am extrememly sensitive. I assume because my life has been hard, that my skin should be thicker and I should just be able to get over things quickly. The little "stupid" things people do don't affect me because I have been through so much worse. The reality of the situation is that I have actually be healed from those wounds of my past. God has not only healed them, but removed a lot of the scars. So when things cut me, it's a fresh wound. I need to stop, clean it up and then patiently wait for it to heal again. If it's bad enough, I may need to baby it for a while.
My daughters godmother was in the car with me one day when she started talking to me. She only had to repeat herself twice before her godmother stopped the conversation to address my daughters comment. I realized in that moment exactly how avoid the headache we had been experiencing. In a world that tells us to "pull up our boot straps and keep moving", it's hard to remember that we are not super human. When we are wounded, the wound will only get worse if we do not stop and address it. That's what the little person in my soul is trying to tell me. If I had just listened to her in the first place, I would avoid all of the frustration of having to yell over her.
