I had an incredible miracle today and so I have a vulnerable share.
I wanted to go grocery shopping all week by my hubby was busy at work and I’m still crippled lol so I can’t go on my bike or lift anything heavy or walk very far.
My hubby hates grocery shopping because I like to mosey and look at EVERY SINGLE THING and read ALL the ingredients LOL so he just dropped me off at LIDL.
I said I’d call him when I finished, in about an hour.
I went about the family shopping but I was slow and got tired. I had to ask for help with detergent, milk boxes, anything heavy.
Finally I was done and I left my cart in a corner and walked outside to find my husband.
He was not back yet.
I looked in my purse and I didn’t have my phone to call him like I thought I would.
It’s hard for me to stand so I found a railing to lean on outside, it was slightly foggy and the most delightful blue dusk – one of my absolutely favorite colors.
It’s a Saturday and it was busy and as people walked by they looked at me with curiosity. I waited.
I asked God to tell my husband that I need him now because that usually works and he comes and finds me in almost all such calls because we have a sacred union.
But he didn’t come.
I waited.
I asked God to nudge him again.
I waited.
And he still didn’t come.
There was a deafening silience and suddenly I wasn’t in front of LIDL anymore.
And then the wave came.
Deep dark terror washed over me as I had the thought, “what if he never comes, because something happenned to him?”
I panicked in helplessness and it took me back to my childhood, at about the age my daughter is now, 8.5
I had been left by both of my parents in Bulgaria as they emigrated to the USA. First my Dad left, then 6 months later my mom. I lost both and my home because I moved to my grandma’s little town so she could take care of me.
I was waiting outside of my school for her to pick me up, but she wasn’t there.
She was my person.
My only person.
My last person.
First I lost my father. Then my mother (we were reunited when I turned 12 in Canada but that’s another story).
Now to the logical adult mind, of course she’s not my last person. I had another grandmother in that town, an aunt that lived about 8 blocks from the school where I could have walked had my grandmother really not come, I could have gone inside and asked the principal to call someone for me.
But when you’re a terrified child overcome with emotions too big to hold and there’s no one there to help you and you were never taught that big emotions are part of being human and they’re not going to drown you even if it feels like it, you don’t have the capacity to brainstorm.
You don’t have the capacity to think creatively and problem solve. Because you’re not an ADULT. You’re a dependent child.
Back to LIDL: I realized I don’t speak Hungarian, can’t walk because I am crippled, I didn’t have my crutches because I was using the shopping cart as a walker LOL. I didn’t have a phone so I couldn’t call anyone to help, nor did I know the phone number of my sisters in law or mother in law in memory.
YIKES!
I was the little girl again, swept away by terror, made helpless by my injury and language incapacity.
So small.
So helpless.
I sobbed and something deep and very special released, I held my little girl, I stayed with her in her world.
My body was in front of LIDL but my consciousness went back 36 yrs to a small town in Bulgaria called Gabrovo, at around 2 pm on a Tuesday, I believe it was.
I told her I would stay as long as she needed me and we could cry forever, if she wanted to and needed to.
I figured I’d been holding this in for 44-8 yrs so that’s 36 years so I was gonna cry for as long as I needed to cry.
Right as that released, my husband drove into the parking lot and went to pay for the groceries and brought me my crutches.
On the way home, he asked me what happened and I told him everything and that God was deeply healing me.
And I am going to cry some more now, I said, because I haven’t cried about this for 36 yrs and I am finally safe.
And he said, “yes,” like he got everything and was right there with me.
When we came home I went to lie down while he put away the groceries.
And then as I cried and felt deep deep waves of release and every now and then got swept up in an eddy, fearing I would be stuck in the ocean of this emotional storm forever, I kept telling myself and my little girl that I could cry as long as I needed to.
That there is nothing to do, nowhere to go, my daughter is at a friend’s house, my husband was downstairs putting the groceries away.
And after a few more minutes of deep sobbing and some shaking, I was done.
I was hungry. It was over.
This 8 yr old girl I used to be, who had lost her mother, father and whose grandmother was late, was terrified, but she was so strong. She was so courageous, she was so loving that even after everything her parents put her through, she still moved with them to a foreign country and left behind her grandmother and cat – because she loved her parents and wanted to be with them and thought they were who she belonged with.
She was so much braver than I gave her credit for and her love was way bigger and more unconditional than I thought it was.
She wasn’t spoiled or needy at all. She wasn’t crying over nothing or being overdramatic.
She was sincerely and unconditionally loving and so kind. And I felt proud of her. Like look at her holding this for 36 years so that we could handle it when I was finally ready.
Like Wow.