Get Over It!!!

This week as been a bit of a tailspin.

If you read my last couple of posts, you'll know that I finally came to grips with the "a word": abuse. Even though I fought all these years not to call it that, the reality of it all is abuse it exactly what it was. It was very intense from about 3rd to maybe 8th grade.

I must admit that I acted out a lot. Did and said a lot of stuff that I shouldn't have. I didn't know how else to express the feelings that I had going on. No clue. I was angry that I was hurt constantly in such a way. Sad that so many years had been snatched from me. Confused at how I should move forward. Should I go to counseling? Am I just a messed up person now?

I decided to call my friend Allen. We've been friends since we where 10 and best friends since college. I told him all of it.

"May I say something that might be a little rude?" Allen asked.

"I guess," I replied. "Just don't tell me that I should pray or something." I couldn't care less about something that I didn't see as a remedy at the time.

"My question is," Allen said very matter-of-factly, "when are you going to get over it?"

I paused. Get over it? It all finally just came to me!

Allen began to explain. "Dude, the Verdell you are now is not the same person back then. You're bold, confident, strong. All the things that you shouldn't be. It happened to you back then, yes, but Romans 6 says that the old you died."

I was mad. That was the last thing I wanted to hear. I wanted to be stuck in my strange array of emotions. I wanted to vent, lash out, and do whatever else I wanted. Anything but face the music. Quoting a scripture and standing on a promise is not something that my seminarian mind was grasping at the moment. If anything, it rejected it.

However, it was precisely the thing i needed to hear.

"Vee, you gotta let that stuff go. You aren't that person anymore. Believe God and move on."

So simple, yet so true.