Real Grace

I’ve talked in the past about a ministry/organization we started for women. It’s called REAL Grace for Women. We use a workbook by Open Hearts Ministry called “The Journey Guide”. We started back in September with our first small group. This past January, two new facilitators started a second group. At the end of December we were notified by Open Hearts that they would have a continuation to the Journey Guide available to order in January. This workbook is called “My Journey Continues”.
So, we had our first meeting last night with the second workbook, “My Journey Continues”. We had to draw or have drawn our body outlines. I choose to actually lay on a big piece of paper and have one of the other participants outline me. That was not easy but I felt it was what I needed to do in order to connect to this project. We then took them and, as part of our homework, we need to fill out seven 3×5 index cards with various information like our birth date, our siblings with a brief history, our parents birth date and brief history, events that happened like moving or cultural events . Inside the body outline we are to share the traumas, abuses, boundary violations, and events that we feel shaped and influenced us as a child and on to adulthood. Yeah, I think this is going to take me longer then one week. But, I’m going to do it because I think it will help me to stop minimizing how things effect and impact me today. When I step back and look at my story, it’s easy to ask the question “Why?”. Why, after so many years, are these traumas, abuses, boundary violations, etc still impacting me? I believe that this exercise will help me to see just how much was placed on my as a child and then I can stop asking “Why?”.