Lisa Overman, A Healed Heart

One year ago this month my love relationship ended. I felt like my heart was ripped out and shredded, it happened suddenly, painfully and with virtually no warning. What made it even more painful was that just sixteen days before it ended, the man I loved finally told me he loved me. He said he loved me and couldn’t imagine his life without me. For one amazing week I felt so loved, so treasured. He touched me differently, looked at me more lovingly. 

Life was so beautiful, I felt like I’d been given  such a gift, my heart overflowed with absolute joy, with love. Just looking at him brought me the most intense pleasure and brought my deepest feelings of love to the surface. I felt so blessed, so happy.  Within a week I could feel his fear. I believe it was fear over what I’d expect, now knowing he loved me. I just wanted to bask in his love, to share my heart and soul with him and treasure every single second of our life.

Sixteen days after telling me he loved me, he abruptly ended our relationship. I was devestated, shocked and stunned. We’d been through so much in fourteen months. We’d  faced much together; a tremendous family crisis, health issues, his son’s hospitalizations. There had been much good. There had been many sweet, tender, exquisite moments and some really dark, painful, challenging moments. His fears and concerns had surfaced over and over in the fourteen months,  making him break away for several days at a time, deciding if he wanted to be a part of my life. I’d had more than enough of the indecision. I thought at last with his admission of loving me, we had  moved beyond the fears, beyond the uncertainty. I thought we were on our way to a life together. In no way did I ever imagine he would freak out in fear and end our relationship.

He called me on the phone, I could tell you exactly what I was doing, where I was standing, when he told me he’d decided to end it. He’d told me a few days before he was uncertain and wanted time to think about us. All of this after he told me he loved me and couldn’t imagine his life without me. I was shattered, it was a miracle I could pull myself out of bed everyday and function. I loved him so deeply, so completely. It had been a long time since I’d allowed myself to open my heart so completely. To have it end and to end in such a fashion was shattering.

We sat down a couple days later and talked.  He told me his reasons, which I learned later were lies. I hate to say that, because even today I think this man is a good man and great father. He told me he wanted to end it because he didn’t want to be in a relationship, he wanted to be alone and spend more time with his kids. It was devestating, yet I believed him. I could see his fear. I didn’t understand any of it. The entire time we’d shared our lives I’d bent over backwards to be inclusive to his two wonderful children, who I came to love and to his mother who became my friend.

Being a step child myself, I understood completely that his children  needed to have time alone with him and time to just be dad and son or dad and daughter. I knew how much I’d needed that in my own life with my father after he remarried and I worked  hard to make certain Rob  had the time alone to spend with his kids, without my presence.

If anyone had asked me to take bets on what happened next I wouldn’t have called any of it in a million years. Of course knowing this man as I did, maybe I should have realized by his fly by the seat of his pants way of living and spur of the moment decisions that he was one to do things no one could ever expect.

Within 35 days of ending our relationship he met someone, on Mother’s Day weekend. Fabulous for me, since my mom’s birthday and mother’ day are all on the same weekend and are a painful reminder of her passing. When he called me and told me he wanted to see me the Monday after Mother’s Day I wasn’t exactly in the most receptive mood to talk to him given the fact he hadn’t bothered to text or call me to say he gave a crap about the fact that it was a rough weekend for me. When we met and talked he told me about the woman he’d met and that he was going to start dating her. I felt like I’d been blindsided. What about the fact that he wanted to be alone? What about the fact he wanted more time with his kids? What about the fact he’d told me he loved me just weeks ago? I wanted to rip his face off. Miss Kindness and gentleness lost it, I called him every awful thing that came to my mind. It wasn’t one of my finest moments. So the reality wasn’t that he left me to be alone and spend more time with his kids. The reality was something quite different.

Part One of a series on Healing With Time.

“If you want to be loved, be loving.”

Dr. Norris Chumley

Hawaii is one of my favorite places on earth and the Big Island of Hawaii holds a special kind of magic for me. With worries the last couple days of Tsunami warnings my thoughts have been on Hawaii’s islands and my friends who live there. So this post is for each of you; may the islands remain safe and the spirit of Aloha surround each of you. 

kinsiekins photo flickr

Dad and I before I was three years old.

As I watched My Sister’s Keeper I was touched by the raw pain of Kate’s own struggle to make sense of the changes her family faced through her illness and the devestation  of her loss as they watched her die. At one point in the movie Kate’s sister asked the judge how it felt when her daughter died. I could answer immediately, having faced the loss of my daughter and my parents as well as others near and dear to me in the last decade.

For me their loss feels like life has ended. It feels like all the blood has drained from my heart; I’m standing, breathing, yet feel empty and dead. It feels like my life is over.

I was touched by the honesty of what this family faced and how they each handled it so differently, yet in the end when Kate passed they found a way to honor her memory with a yearly family vacation to a place she loved; the wide open spaces of Montana.  For each of us how we bear our grief and find our way through our pain differs. Yet honestly no matter who we are, what we do for a living or where we live we each feel the depth of our losses deep in our soul. No matter if we reach out or go within we must take steps, baby steps forward toward our healing.

Yes, our life as we knew it is over; the life we desired blown to bits and we’re left to take one tiny step at a time into a future  we really don’t understand or care for. Our loss is deep and lasting. With time and effort our healing will begin. I heard Nate Burkus say on Oprah recently that after his partners death he didn’t want to do much of anything for four months, that he was living but felt dead. He often thought, “what’s the point of it all.” He would often stay in bed grieving.

It’s true, in the depth of our loss many of us have those times , I certainly had them. I had days when dying felt easier than living, when my mother’s loss felt like the end of my life. How do we move beyond the loss that devestates us? We take small steps. We find support whether it be a therapist, our family or friends or a healthy combination of all three. Maybe we talk to a minister or we take comfort in silent prayer. The important thing is to take a step. Each small step will lead to a bigger step when we’re ready, until we reach a place where we can take a breath again without feeling pain.

With many small steps we will reach a day when we wake up and feel a smile cross our face; when for so long there was nothing to smile about. There is no magic that will heal us. Somehow, with time after living in our pain we realize we can honor the memory and love of the one’s we’ve lost better by living joyfully. As many, myself included can attest, when a loved one is dying they usually express their desire for us to live fully. They want our happiness. They don’t want us living daily in pain or living empty lives, wishing for them. For me the best way to honor my loved ones is to touch other lives and show people through my example that there’s a way through the pain and loss.

My life looks different than I expected. I’m actually laughing as I write that statement. It’s as if a bulldozer destroyed my life and one block at a time, through a sea of tears I began to rebuild it. Did I want this life? Not so much really, but clearly God did. I now focus my life on writing, maintaining a website that supports and inspires others in grief or loss and I treasure those I love deeply. I’ve learned life is short, pain is very real and we are best served living life with as much joy as our hearts can hold. It happens one step at a time. Take that first step with me.

Encourage others.  Believe in them.  Appreciate them.  See God in everyone.

Dr. Norris Chumley

Happiness

is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Mohandas Gandhi Indian Leader

This  youtube video is from Shawn Gallaway, my collegue Reba shared it with me. She writes the Yin Yang Spirit blog on this site. Check out this wonderful video about choosing love in our lives.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMOMgQCRAqM

kinsiekins photo flickr

We all make mistakes and make choices or decisions that take us away from our center occasionally. We ruminate over our mistakes and we beat ourselves up for them much too much, when we are far better served to use our energy toward creating healing in our life  and improved choices in our future. At times we do the very best we can and we still make mistakes, that’s natural, we are human. We sometimes make mistakes out of fear, out of impulsiveness and sometimes just an error in judgement when we couldn’t read a situation clearly.

Mistakes are moments, we can’t always change the direct impact of our mistake but we can certainly take another positive route from that place. We can create good from mistakes, what we learn from we use in future situations and at times our own mistakes allow us to understand another better. There are moments of forgiveness of self and of others for each of us. When we hurt another or another hurts us it isn’t always easy to reach a place of forgiveness, though it’s best for our own healing when we reach out for that place of peace and release ourselves from that pain. Forgiveness allows us to move forward with an open and healed heart.

On most occasions people hurt us without really realizing how deeply their behavior or their actions impact us. They are seeing situations through their own eyes, not ours. Many times it’s in hind sight that they begin to realize the real impact their actions had on us. I work hard to forgive the actions of others, that have impacted and damaged my spirit and heart. At times it’s not easy, at times I”ve wanted to lash out like anyone in my moments of deepest pain and grief. At times I have been physically sick from the pain of loss and the hurt caused by another. There is a time of healing, of mending of the spirit, a time when only the love of God can work within us to help us to move through the pain and reach the other side to understand the fear or the pain or the frustration or inconsideration that drove their actions in the first place.

It doesn’t make their action right. Healing simply brings is a sense of understanding that they were  in pain or uncertainty and their choices were self defeating and that we must simply step back and allow them to live through their choices and find their own way. We can request God watch over them, we can ask that they be surrounded and supported in their lives. From there we step away and release them, forgiving them and beginning  to find our own sense of calm, knowing we did all we could do within the situation.

I find many times that things come full circle. We are given opportunities and moments to bring peace to relationships, families, and friendships when we keep our hearts open and we allow the space for others to step forward in their own way and make peace. Forgiving and making peace, doesn’t mean forgetting or allowing ourselves to be stepped on again. It means allowing the love of God to work through us, in it’s own way and beginning anew, remembering what we experienced, learning from it, and creating a new bond one day at a time, one word at a time, one message at a time. It’s allowing God to heal us, to heal a situation, to heal a heart. It’s remaining open even when we don’t understand fully what God’s plan is. It’s trusting God to lead us, to guide our life and to guide our heart peacefully so that something broken can be rebuilt.

Photo Credit: Lisa Overman

We all have moments, weeks and years in our lives when pain, grief and loss overcome us. We move through our losses at the pace our hearts allow. For some healing comes more quickly than for others, there is no right or wrong when a heart is healing. The statement “Time Heals” was on my mom’s nurse tee shirt and I have found that to be true in my own life, with my own losses.

At times there is nothing we can to do help another heal besides offer our love and support. At times our love and support will be turned away, as our friends or loved ones grapple with their pain, loss and scars in their own way. I can attest that it is frustrating beyond belief to watch someone you love turn away from your love and your support because they are in pain and can’t open their hearts fully. 

In those times there is nothing more to do than step back and allow God to touch their life and help them to heal. There is only so much any of us can offer and if we are turned away then we release them, knowing we did everything we could. We gave our support and our love freely and there is nothing more to be done. In their deepest pain only God can guide our friends and loved ones who need to heal.

Healing takes place as each person is ready for it. For some it’s a dark, scary, painful, path. I know, I’ve walked that path several times over in losing my parents, my daughter and so many friends and relatives to death. I walked it as my marriage ended. There is no easy way down that path, it is a path that we walk with God, without even knowing it. We are supported and loved even in our darkest pain and deepest grief, even when we don’t feel it, and long for support. The hardest part of having walked that path is knowing I can’t take away another’s pain or fear. Those are things that have to happen within each of us, we have to willingly open our heart again and take a chance to love, even when we feel our lives have been destroyed by the pain love caused.

There is no easy path through the pain of watching your marriage end, watching the one you love walk away and go to another. I know, I watched it happen in my own life. I watched my husband walk away six months after our daughter died, moving in with another woman. In that same time period my grandfather whom I adored died and just months later my aunt was killed by a drunk driver.
It was truly the year from hell. I don’t know how my family and I made it through that darkness; but we did.

I went on to love again, to love more deeply and to love more passionately because then I understood how quickly loss can come and how precious each day with those we love is. Life can end in a instant and goodbyes don’t always come. I know that first hand. So now I live generously, with passion and with a grateful heart for everyone in my life. It isn’t always easy and sometimes I get slapped with pain and loss again, but I know God is always there and I will always be supported and guided.

There is nothing we can do but share our hearts with love, with those we treasure. When those we love walk away, as they sometimes do we can only pray that if they are meant to be a part of our lives that God will heal their hearts and heal ours too. Healing comes as we are ready to accept it. Sometimes we fight it, we struggle in every way to go against it because we are so deeply in pain and fear. In those darkest times, I pray that God’s support will be felt by those I love, and by those you love too. All we can do is pray that healing comes on angels wings and those we love find joy, peace and love again. There is nothing more we can ask. Love heals

Beach Photo Credit: Lisa Overman

Life is joy, love, challenge, choices and change. We all want to feel loved, cherished and desired. It’s part of the nature of our soul to need love. We want to feel the warmth, closeness and the delight of loving and being loved. Relationships are a gift and a challenge to walk each day. No matter what relationship you choose you will find moments that transform you with the depth of their love, the fear, the frustration and the sheer joy and commitment of loving another soul. This is no easy walk, it’s a baptism of fire. No matter who we are, who we love, who we feel drawn to in our life the fact remains we are changed and challenged by commitment in the best and worst ways. For certain life will become about WE rather than me. It will feel at times like a series of compromises, which challenge your very being. We all think we are flexible until we’re faced with the needs and desires of another soul. Then we come to realize maybe we aren’t as easy and flexible as we imagined.

Passion comes from the depth of our being. Passion moves us, makes our soul dance and sing. We live our lives passionately: wanting to do good with our life and our love. We believe passionately and sometimes our challenges fill us with the conviction of peace and the reality of compromise. No relationship will be easy or painless, but the depth of our love and passion will make it worthwhile and make us willing to walk the walk with hope, love and joy. These after all are the gifts of life and love.

Wowzone.com

Today I came across this website, through a Gratitude email I receive each day. I thought it was beautiful and wanted to share it. Enjoy and check out the website at the link above.

WOW: Wish Only Well
WOW is living in your highest ideals and believing in yourself. It’s appreciating and respecting the diversity and magnificence of life, realizing that you are a link in the chain of life. The chain will be as weak or as strong as you.

Believe in the power of faith, hope and love. Contribute to life in your own special way and celebrate the renaissance of the human spirit!

Be a messenger of hope! Give WOW a new meaning: Wish Only Well.

Say WOW, smile…and pass it on!