Unraveling My Brokenness

You never truly know how broken you are until you are in a situation that forces you to look within yourself. Over the past nine months I have been dealing with personal situations that have forced me to take a deeper look at my mental, emotional and spiritual well-being. God has begun to reveal some things to me that were so deeply buried I never even knew they existed. It’s been painful but the bright side is that I can now begin to address these issues and heal the brokenness to become a better version of myself.

One of the issues that was unburied is where my sense of insecurity and inability to trust came from.  If I’m completely honest, it is the inability to trust men. As a little girl, I had a relationship with my father that was not as close I had wished for, but it was a relationship. I remember my mother dropping me off to spend the day with him and my Abuelita. He eventually got married, and I didn’t see him again for about 15 years. There is one specific time that has haunted me my whole life and that was when I saw him at the grocery store.  I stood right next to him in hopes he would acknowledge me. I’ll never forget how I felt when he turned away from me like I was a complete stranger. Did he see me and just deliberately not acknowledge me or had so much time passed since the last time he had seen me that he didn’t even recognize me? Growing up through the years my mother would encourage me to call him and reach out to him, so I did. We would talk on the phone for a bit and then a month or years would go by before I would attempt to reach out again. The last time I spoke to him on the phone, I invited him to my quincenera and he promised he would be there. He never showed up. A few days later, I remember telling my mom “do not ever ask me to call that man again” because I was done trying. My heart had been broken one too many times by him, and I was not going to allow it to happen again. Little did I know, this would shape how I viewed men for the rest of my life. When he married, he had more children, and I then became just a “person” from his past. I was just another girl once in his life. This other woman, his wife would now be my replacement as was his other children. No fault to them, but this is how I felt. Since then, I have carried the feeling of rejection, unworthiness and insecurities into my adult relationships. These feelings soon led me to finding myself in relationships that mirrored how my father made me feel that day at the grocery store. The feeling of being replaceable or expendable.

When I was 15 years old, I met a boy who eventually became the father of my children and my husband. We were childhood sweethearts because we grew up together. Unfortunately, because of my past I held him to a standard he could never live up to. How could he? He was a child himself! I was a few months older than him so he was only 14 years old when we met. Looking back, we were both broken children looking to each other to fulfill voids we both had that neither of us had the emotional, mental or spiritual maturity to fulfill. We finally married when our oldest son was 18 months old and from that point on Luis Sr. not only became my husband but also the surrogate for my father. So, when he made mistakes, as we all do, not only did he have to pay the price for his mistakes, but the man (my father) before him. As time when on, we grew and matured but never really healed. Our marriage eventually came to an end, and we parted ways. The scars of abandonment and rejection were reopened and the wounds were made deeper.

As a single woman for the past 20 years I had unknowingly fixated my thoughts on “no man can be trusted” and had the expectation they all leave at some point. In the years I’ve been single, my attempts at dating and relationships have not been successful. All these years, I’ve always blamed “the man” due to my inability to trust. I had pushed people away. There were a couple I can honestly admit attempted to stick it out with me and prove that not all men were the same but because of my brokenness, I was relentless in my beliefs to the point I would give them no choice but to concede and prove me right. I have been forced to take a deeper look within myself lately and have asked God to reveal to me the root of what has caused me so much pain over the years. The beautiful thing about God is that He will not force you to address the painful scars of your past until you are ready, its then that He will reveal it to you. Now that I know where the root of my insecurity and mistrust come from, I can begin to heal. Part of that healing is coming to a place of forgiveness, true forgiveness. As one of my friends recently told me “because you have not come to true forgiveness of those who have hurt you in the past, you’ve allowed it to impact your future”. I recognize that now but it has taken me many years, broken relationships and pain I’ve inflicted on others to fully grasp just how broken I was.  It’s taken me so long to come to this conclusion. I not only have to forgive others. I have to remember to work on forgiving myself as well. I also had to finally admit to myself until I address these issues I would not be able to establish a happy, healthy, loving and trustworthy relationship with someone else.

Romans 8:28 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” My purpose and prayer for this blog is that you find hope in healing, courage to face demons and generational curses that secretly haunt you and comfort in knowing you’re not alone in your brokenness. I urge you to seek God ask Him to reveal to you areas of your life that need healing so that you can live the life God always intended you to live. John 10:10 “…I come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly”.

~A Diva Healing Everyday~