Let the gates swing wide...

I am sitting here knowing I want to open the flood gates and gush rivers...rivers of praise, rivers of tears, rivers of relief. I feel so pent up somehow and not sure how to blow off steam.

Since last Friday I have been elated, filled up, humbled, saddened and horrified. I spent some hours in the worst pit of fear not at all unlike the period of time when Laurie was missing. Yet, I look back and I know I masked the horror of what I was feeling to everyone around me. Why didn't I really let it out? Because I am the strong one. Blah, blah, blah. What a jerk! Worse, I was surrounded with people who love me and would have carried the burden with me. I think Greg's post about pretending about how we really are feeling has gotten to me. I am seeing that not revealing innermost fears/feelings is destructive. Guess what? That can kill you. It's what I am seeing revealed in layers about what Laurie was dealing with.

Last Saturday night Dr. Debbie Dunlap flew here from Florida to walk us through some urgently needed soul searching. She had never met us; she only knew us through the blogs. We basically knew her through her insightful comments here and there and then some emails she and I have shared. In my phone call to her, without hesitation, she offered to come here almost immediately. What in the world? And she insisted that due to an unexpected inheritance she had received, this visit was a gift. In the four days she was here, this angel spoke His wisdom into us, held me up, cried with me, guided several of us in pain through some Biblical principles. She reached out to Scott, Mandy, Heidi, Katie, Cheryl, almost all my grandkids, really all of us...From her counseling background and her own life stories but mostly from spiritual truths, she helped me understand more pieces of the Laurie puzzle. And right now I am not ready to put it out there except to say that Laurie had a faith unusually strong for one so young and then when she questioned some of those truths and challenged herself to find answers( normal, really for the average 20 year old) , she took a way wrong turn-wrong place, wrong time and hid the depth of her pain in making those turns until she saw no way back. Does that make sense?

So the roller coaster chugs on. Debbie, thank you. A thousand thank yous would not be enough. A pink blouse will have to do for now.