Remembering with Purpose: A Path to Healing
Mar 09, 2019
My Dearest Sisters in Christ,
I come before you with a heart full of gratitude and vulnerability as I embark on this journey through the pages of "Normal for Me," the book I am launching in April. Writing this book has been a labor of love, and I am deeply grateful that you have chosen to walk this path with me.
As I penned these words, I was often asked to delve deeper, to share more intimate details of the trials that have marked my journey. It was a task that led me to moments of uncertainty, where I confessed to my husband, "I honestly don't remember." It's a phenomenon we may all be familiar with, especially when it concerns painful and harrowing experiences – repression. My mind had locked away those memories, buried them deep within, and discarded the key. You see, I was in survival mode, just as some of you might have been or may currently find yourselves. And years later, all I could recall was that I had made it through, without understanding the "how."
So, I had to turn to my journals, those fragments of my past, the only breadcrumbs left to retrace my steps. Reading those words was like opening a door to the battlefield of my life – a place I had not dared to revisit. I didn't want to remember. The horrors and hardships were etched in every line, and I had buried them for a reason. But, dear sisters, I did remember. I remembered and I wrote it down with one simple hope – that my journey might offer someone out there, fighting through life's storms, a flicker of hope.
In the midst of your struggles, you are not alone. Someone has navigated a similar tempest before and emerged victorious. These pages hold my heart, a testament to the fact that you too can survive, you too can make it through one more day, and then the next. You can lean on God during the darkest of times, and He will guide you through it. This was my lifeline. Sometimes it was one minute at a time, one day at a time, eventually adding up to a month, then a year. Just like you, I reached a point where I couldn't fathom how I had endured that soul-wrenching experience, and I forgot the details, but I remember the agony, the hardness of it all.
I must confess that in the process of remembering, my heart overflows with gratitude to our Heavenly Father for carrying me through. It is this gratitude that compels me to share this story with you all. I wish I could present myself as a hero, as someone who emerged from every battle unscathed, but that would not be true. I was, and still am, a work in progress. There were moments when I was weak, times when anger, exhaustion, and numbness threatened to consume me.
Please forgive me for not being perfect, for being imperfect just like you. This is a journey of raw, authentic, and unapologetic faith. It is a testament that even in our imperfections, God's grace and strength are more than sufficient. I invite you to join me as we dive into the pages of "Normal for Me" – a story that I had once tried to forget but now see as a story worth sharing after all.
With love and gratitude,
Tamara K. Anderson
