I finally watched Forest Gump for the second time in my life. The first time was in 3rd or 4th grade when it was in the theaters. I remember seeing it with my friend and her mom, and I remember asking her mom afterward what she thought. She said, "I think there was a lot of stuff in it that you guys didn't understand." That stuck with me......and boy was she right. I watched it late Monday night when I came home from work, and for whatever reason, it just struck a chord with me. I was crying and crying and crying, and I even cried myself to sleep that night. I'm not sure what got stirred in me. I think it was a combination of a lot of things. Just the presentation of sexual abuse and the repercussions it has on people's lives was so real in that movie, and so true. It reminded me of how hurt we are from our pasts and how that so often affects our present choices. I think of friends I have that I know have been hurt and are living out that hurt every day. It doesn't even have to be sexual abuse. All kinds of things.....we bottle up these experiences and unknowingly allow them to affect our daily choices to sin because we'd rather sin than deal with the real issues. It was heart-breaking to see Jenny deteriorate before my eyes, lost in her sin of sexual promiscuity and drug abuse and in her feelings of aloneness, resulting from her troubled childhood and abusive father. Over and over she disrespected herself and her body by being in hurtful relationships because she didn't feel she was worth more than that.

Maybe watching this movie will help remind me where people come from and the hurt they are hiding from. Maybe it's to help me with my future in working at the women's center in Hamilton. Already, just during a couple hours of training at the center, I met a young girl who was pregnant who nonchalantly told us that she was raped at an earlier age. These things teach lessons of self-disrespect, self-hatred, self-worthlessness. Other things in our lives teach us we are not good enough, we are imperfect, we are stupid.....and then we deal with our emotions by doing drugs, being sexually active, seeking harmful relationships, eating, becoming reclusive.....whatever it might be. It hurts to hurt, so we run.

I guess where that leaves me is this: if we choose not to run, to face our pasts, our feelings, our emotions...everything that comes with it.....if we choose this, where do we go from there? What do we do with our feelings of rejection? This is where God intervenes, to heal and give hope. He allows us the room to cry and kick and scream and then offers His hand to comfort. I'm not sure what exactly that looks like, because it's different for everyone. But I know He offers healing from all these things. And then we get the chance to share our stories, our freedoms, with others. I, and everyone else, have an awesome God who loves beyond our understanding. All He asks is that we receive.

“Be with me.”