Healing is a Choice

I have started reading a book titled Healing is a Choice by Stephen Arterburn. As I process what I'm reading, I will be posting what is on my mind as I heal. Forgive me in advance if the posts sound like the ravings of a complete lunatic. We all have to start somewhere, don't we? :)
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I don't know what is happening. Everywhere I turn, there are things pointing me toward unresolved grief, pushing me to face it head on and deal with it right now. I'm not ready. I can't do this. I don't want to spend the days and nights crying. Why are my dreams suddenly - again - being filled with babies and pets and family and all that has been taken from me?

I don't want to hold on, but I don't want to let go. Somehow the letting go trivializes what each one meant to me. Somehow letting go let's them go and I want them here, still, with me. Selfish. I know it sounds selfish. I. I. I. What I want, what I need, what I can't do.

I am instructed to make connections, to interact, to build bonds with people...friendship and love heal...when what I want to do is hide, to seal up this wall that I've built around my heart. I want to both run to and run away. If I'm not connected, then nothing can hurt me...or can't it?

They say it is better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all. I'm stuck on the other side of this...scared to fully love, to fully be in the moment, because I know that loss and hurt are coming. We all die eventually. Some of us stop living long before we die.

What did He let me live for? Why didn't He just let me die rather than live to face one more heart wound, to know that, had I died, no one would have grieved because there would have been no loss?

Part of me says to tuck back, out of the light, out of sight is out of mind and I'll be forgotten and no one will think to hurt me. Another part says to jump right smack dab into the middle of life, phooey on what others think, and go out fighting - and loving. They are in a major tug-of-war, both having a firm grip on the rope.

Who will win? Time will tell, but will it before the bell tolls for me?

These are just some of the things that I am pondering as I make the choice to heal, to get back among the living, to be the me that He intended me to be.