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There are times when words we hear seem to arrive at the exact time we need them most, as did the words of my friend as I mentioned them in my earlier post, +WORDS FROM A FRIEND in which I found great comfort.  I needed to remember that questing is a natural inclination of being alive.

The questing that sometimes feels intensely uncomfortable to me is no different than what a newborn colt does as it asserts its powers to stand on its own four feet, or that a plant does as it begins to open the walls of its seed so it can quest for the sunlight.

Yet as survivors of severe chronic traumatic stress caused by malevolent treatment by our earliest caregivers, it seems common that many natural events and processes required for ongoing living get tangled up in so-called ‘negative emotions’ in the present.  Those emotions are NOT negative.  They are survival emotions that have always held special powers to help us stay alive.  They can SEEM negative when they are out of balance inside of us, thus masking our ability to FIND and to FEEL what we think of as our more ‘positive’ emotions.

Questing, by itself, is a wonderful process that I deeply know is directly tied to what I call the life of my soul.

As I have carefully and meticulously examined my own self in the midst of the horrors of my infancy and childhood of abuse, I have consistently found that there I was, right in the middle of those experiences of hell created by my mother (and allowed to happen by my father), shining shining shining!

I was consistently and brutally attacked in so many ways from the time I was born — but those attacks NEVER changed who I was then — who is exactly who I am now.

As I have recently mentioned, the continuously falling heaps of rubble that crashed into MY life — did not belong to me!  Yes, the experiences of trauma impacted and injured me greatly.  They changed how my physical body had to develop as I survived in the midst of that hell.

But in the center of that storm created by my mother’s terrible mental illness (most probably severe Borderline Personality Disorder with psychosis that centered on me), I stood as an amazing person as I walked through every moment of that abuse in GOODNESS!

I continued through those horrible and horrifying 18 years always carrying inside of me my own self — intact, amazing — and according to these new words that appeared to me this morning — MORE THAN PERFECT!!

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However I acquired my powers to quest forward into my life every moment of my early years, I do not know.  Through the grace and mercy provided by God, is my best guest.  I was gifted.  In many many ways.

My problem today is that I so often forget to remember this reality — MY REALITY.

Because of the continual severe abuse and trauma of my early, formative years, all of my movements through my childhood were mixed up.  The darkness of evil was so obvious that it has only been in these last few years of searching, questing for healing that I am able to begin to see that PERFECT goodness existed inside that maelstrom of troubles.

Goodness was ALWAYS present — because I was there — in my own life.

Just as I am now.

I have always been questing for a better me, for a better life.

It seems to be when I forget that goodness and am left only with the anguish of feeling that surviving is ALL that I do — that I have always done — that I lose track of my connection to my ability to feel great inner JOY.

I had that ability from the time I was born.  Standing inside my own body, intact with my own soul, my own self, I never lost the natural ability to hope that I was born with.  I never lost my ability to notice beauty in my world.  I never lost my ability to try, to the best of my ability, to make the right choice every time I possibly could.

I never lost my desire to hurt no one.

I never lost my desire to make my life a better one in all ways I could find that mattered.

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My soul has the ability, has always had the ability, to know right from wrong, truth from error, good from bad.  I didn’t know how to use those powers when I was very young, so I just CARRIED them with me as they carried me — forward, always forward.

I just carried the right, the truth, and the good along with me.  I didn’t lose these abilities.  I just tend to lose track of the part of me that knows that I know!!

I have, in fact, always been looking for deep, abiding joy — a spiritual joy that lies within and apart from the external events that life brings to everyone.

This kind of joy is, I think, not a temporary passage through momentary happiness.  It is a joy that is vastly connected to the ability to feel both compassion and awe.  This joy comes directly from God’s grace and mercy that surpasses any ability humans have to make mistakes.

Humans are born MORE THAN PERFECT because God gave us a most special gift to be able to know love because we have been made to know God.  As a little person struggling every moment to stay alive and to make it through a long, long tunnel of infancy and childhood that was so unbelievably dark, I never left the state of grace and mercy that God provided to me at the instant I was conceived and God created my soul.

I am learning to pray in ways I never had before because I know in the essence of who I am — that this connection to God, to divine questing for the good, that this connection prayer provides me to walk in the best way I possibly can through this life — is a uniquely human experience.

God’s forgiveness and guidance is what I seek.  In that seeking there is anguish and there is joy.  I am nothing like a ‘religious fanatic’ of any kind.  I just happened to notice along life’s way that this Unknowable Essence happens to be the source for all goodness in creation.  Probably even this ability to notice this is a divine gift in itself.

I would be NOWHERE, alone and completely lost, without it.

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abuse, adult attachment disorders, anxiety disorders, borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse, depersonalization, depression, derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder, dissociation, dissociative identity disorder, infant abuse, music therapy, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, peritrauma, posttraumatic stress disorder, PTSD, reactive attachment disorder, trauma altered development TAD