God, Needs and Abuse

God provides us with everything that we need to get through each and every day. You have only to look at the creatures of nature to see proof of this. Yet we find it so easy to doubt that he will provide for us in our moments of need. Is it that we mix up our wants with our needs and get confused? There is after all a difference between needing a car and wanting a new one. God intends for us to be happy and that is why he sees to it that our needs are met. Do we intend for ourselves to be happy?

In abusive relationships we often find ourselves wanting and needing things. Something to hold onto that provides a sense of security and comfort. This can continue to find its way into our lives after we leave the abusive relationship. We collect things and hold onto them knowing that no matter how much we collect it is never enough. The thing that we do not hold onto is our relationship with God and the comfort in knowing that he is there. Perhaps that is because of the anger we hold towards him for allowing us to be in the position we were in. Perhaps it is because we feel that he had abandoned us in our time of need.

He was there for us and he did provide for our needs and yes even at times our wants. He made sure there were safe points for us and he did watch over us and protect us. We had only needed to ask and believe and trust that he would bring us out of harms way and into safety. That is something that is very very hard to do when you live in fear each and every day. When we choose to accept the help he sends for us than and only than do we begin to allow him to help us and he can do miracles for us when we let him.

The scares of domestic violence

As a survivor I have a responsibility to myself and to the people that I care about to protect myself from those that would hurt me. We all have that responsibility and at times it can be very hard to do because the way we look at things are a bit twisted to start with. Depending on the kind of day I am having I will either trust everyone or no one. There are going to be those that will say things out and truly not realize what they are saying and then there are those that do know.

I have no way to tell the difference between the two and so I need to verify something that I am being told before I commit to taking action on it. At least in doing that I protect myself from being hurt and I also protect people that I care about from being hurt by the words of another. Trust is something that I do have a very hard time with and that causes me to feel very insecure in my day to day activities. I never really know that I am on solid footing and able to build something special for myself.

There s always that lingering doubt that whatever good is going on will last. I am not sure how to be able to build a sense of security and stability in my life, money just does not seem to be the answer and relationships of any kind are always filled with insecurity. The best that I can do is to work a solid program of recovery and place the issues in God’s hands. I am sure that everything will happen when the time is right and the hard part is knowing that at some time in the future the time will be right.

For now it is a matter of doing things one day at a time and praying hard for peace to come into my life in a meaning for way. I have found it for brief moments of time so I do know that it is real and that I can have it. I also know that it feels real good when it does happen and because it has happened it will happen again. No matter what happened to me in the past it does not mean that is has to happen again in the future. If I am vigilant and take it one day at a time I will be “ok” and for today that is good enough.

I always have the ability to build on what I have accomplished today and that is something that cannot be taken away from me. One of the hard things I had to deal with is seeing how the abuse I suffered has impacted my kids. I had hoped and prayed that they would have been freed from the damage, even though I know that that is not possible. So I watch my kids struggle with many of the same issues I have been dealing with and that is hard to see. I can only hope that they will get the help they need to not have the life that I have lived.

Today any hope I had for a relationship with a certain person was ended. She just could not find it in her to love me as more than a friend. This is something that I have grown to expect over the years and it has made life a real challenge. The only ones that were interested in being more, would do the abusing in my adult life.

Considering all the things I have been through, I still feel the need to seek more and to be more than I seem destined to. I want and strive to have a normal life, though I have no real idea of what that is. For me normal is always being on the lookout for the next person that will hurt me. Then feeling totally devastated when I choose to allow myself to trust someone, only to have that trust broken.

I do not know if I will ever have the life I want. I may have a great job and make good money but there is more to life than money. The abuse I have suffered has left me feeling alone and isolated in this world and unsure of what to do or even how to do it when I do figure out what to do. I do have a strong faith in God and yet when my heart is broken I cannot help but ask why.

Is there a reason that I should be denied the love and closeness that so many others take for granted. Today my heart lies in ruins and my hopes seem dashed upon the rocks of life’s shore. Yet I know that with each passing moment is a chance for a new beginning and a chance for love and acceptance. I cannot change what has happened to me but I can change how I choose to deal with it and how I choose to live my life.

I know and understand that God has a place and a purpose for each of us and I have chosen to use the pain to help others heal from their pain. I can only hope that I will also e allowed to heal from my pain and not dwell on what might have been but rather what is. I have no way of knowing what I might have been like had I not been abused for I spent so much of my life being abused.

Being a survivor of abuse in some ways had made me tougher than I think I might have been otherwise. Yet in matters of the heart it has left me totally insecure and afraid of what might happen. Can I trust someone enough to let them get close enough to hurt me? In order to feel loved I have to allow someone close enough to hurt me and than it only ads to the damage that has been done my so many before. I keep hoping that I can get to the other side of this pain and tortured existence and be able to find happiness.

Rough Spots

I find that I go through periods of just plain panic and there seems to be no apparent reason for it. Things will be going along just fine and than something seemingly minor will happen and it sends me into a tailspin emotionally. It is something that is really hard on relationships and can send them to the breaking point quickly. I am not sure what to do about it and I can only take things a step at a time and hope for the best.

I have been going through one of those spots over the last few months and without insurance I have not been able to get my meds or any counseling to help me identify the source of the problem. It has unfortunately driven away someone very special to me and I fear that the damage is too sever to be able to be repaired. In the end I simply look like an ass and fall apart over the littlest things.

Most people want to have a relationship with someone that is emotionally stable and that is something that no matter how hard I try does not always seems to be the case. That ends up leaving me feeling like a complete looser and totally incapable of having any kind of real relationship. It is not that I do not try but I also know that I get scared so very quickly and it hurts so much. In fact I find myself wondering why God did this to me.

Why do I have to be such a train wreck and I guess it is for some good reason and I am sure that when the time is right I will understand what it is. I can only take the little victories that come along and perhaps what I see as a little victory is in fact a major victory in the eyes of another. I say this only because I can only see where I have been through my eyes and not the eyes of others. I would gladly trade it all away just to be able to have one healthy, happy relationship. I know that my being an emotional train wreck has hurt someone very special to me and nothing I can ever do will ever fix that.

I only want to be loved and cared about, to be able to snuggle and have romance in my life. I know that so long as I continue to be an emotional train wreck that will never happen. I only find myself in some dark spiral wondering why I am going through this. What on earth did I do to deserve this and am I really going crazy or this just all part of the healing process. I have recovered from drugs and alcohol and I am finding that recovering from abuse if far harder than that was.

In recovering from drugs or alcohol there are meetings I can go to and books I can read that provide answers and comfort. Because in those I know and can see that I am not the only one that has gone through this. When it comes to recovering from abuse it is a whole different animal. Since I am a guy there are no programs to help me deal with it, so I have to figure it out as I go along. In the end it leaves me feeling very alone and very frustrated and it comes out sideways at times.

That is not fair to the people that are close to me, they should not have to pay the price for my trying to figure something out that others already have the manual for. The hardest thing for me to do is feel secure and to trust and those are the two things that are needed most in a relationship, especially a healthy one. How do I deal with it and not leave the other person thinking they are paying the price for the actions of another? I have no idea and perhaps in time I will figure it out but not before someone gets hurt by my own insecurities.

The best I can do is to take things one day at a time. I doubt that in the end it will make a difference in the outcome but I will at least be able to look myself in the mirror in the morning. It leaves me wondering if I will ever be capable of having what I want or if I will be denied that. I know in my mind that I did not ask to be abused and that I never did anything to deserve the treatment I received. I also know in my heart and in my mind that no one else deserves to pay the price for what was done to me. I can only hold on to my faith that there is a reason for all of this and at some point it will all make sense or at least that is my hope and prayer.

Domestic Abuse and Relationships

This is something that happens many times a day in this world and I find it hard to escape the long shadow that it casts on my life. I have had three abusive wives and the emotional damage that they have caused in my life goes beyond anything I could have imagined possible. I have found that the damage and wreckage that they leave behind travels a long way and impacts my life every day.

I often times find myself wondering if I will ever be able to have a healthy relationship. I find the ones I have had have either ended badly or I get the “can we be friends talk”. It seems that the emotional abuse has robbed me of ever having a chance to have the intimate relationship that I want to have. It has left me an insecure emotional wreck that is afraid of my own shadow. This can be very unsettling for someone that you are with and leave you looking clingy or possessive.

In the end the one thing that I want the most may be the one thing that I may not be able to have. I long to have someone that can love me back the way I want to be loved and I do not think that will happen. My past has left me fearing what will happen in a relationship and yet my heart leaves me wanting one. It is a hard place to be in and I am not sure how to get out of it. For the record it has been over three years since my last abusive wife left. I thought by now things would be easier by now and they seem to only be harder. My hope is that it will get better and that I will find a way to get past the shadow of the abuse and be able to have a healthy relationship. In the mean time I am trying to learn about what a healthy relationship is through friends.