I am a Survivor

It’s amazing how a phrase reminds you of the past.

A simple word, a song, a scent, and suddenly you’re back in that moment.

You’re filled with memories and every emotion you had at that moment.

Happiness, laughter, joy, sadness, pain, suffering.

It catches you while your guard is down, and you start to spiral until suddenly you’re crying in the produce section of the grocery store next to the Honey Crisp apples because once a year, you and your mom would get those as a special treat because they were so expensive.

Strange how your mind does that. It makes for a terrible rest of the day.

So you try to block those memories out. You try to pretend those things never happened. But they keep intruding. Why? Maybe because they want to be remembered.

They need to be remembered, so we don’t forget who we are or where we came from. So we don’t forget the suffering we’ve been through, the sadness, because they want us to know how God has delivered us.

How we’ve survived.

Survived abuse, hatred, loneliness. If we didn’t have those memories, would we remember who we are?

We need those memories to help us cope, to help us depend on God, to live.

I have a choice. To either cope with those memories, to trust God to continue delivering me, or to let them consume me. To let them control my life, to be thrown into despair, to become bitter. I don’t want to let that happen again.

I want to live my life free. Free from anger and bitterness.

There are days when I do not succeed. When I cannot succeed. There are days when I am angry and sad and depressed. But now I know to look at what I’ve been through, and how God has delivered me. How I survived. How I became stronger. Instead of believing these memories are a curse, think of it as a blessing. And sometimes I fail, but I know... I survived. That is who I am.

A survivor.