Childhood - #02

I don't actually have any childhood pictures of myself.  Not one.  There weren't many of me as a kid because camera film was so hard to come by in our country at that time but also my mom hasn't passed any down to me yet.  I vaguely remembered I had kept one of my mom's pics of me as a baby.  But after the move, I really couldn't think where it could be.  I felt panicked inside.  I didn't even know where I could start looking...  Long story short - I found my baby photo.  I would be devastated if I had lost this print.  I would really have no way of getting another copy.  Happy to say that this is now scanned in and saved on disc too.

For some or other reason this topic has evoked some deep emotions in me.  Maybe it has to do with my lost childhood, maybe lost dreams.  I feel a little detached from this baby girl and a part of me wishes I could know her and what was going through her mind.  I feel like I don't know her one bit.  I keep wondering if she was anything like my two girls were at this age.  It kind of lined up with a prophetic word that I got over 16 years ago which only started making sense to me in the last month or so.  So I guess in many ways, I have been ready to face this...  Whilst working through Walking in this World - I noticed I had trouble answering some of the questions about my childhood dreams and hopes.  And one of the questions I had been asking myself this year is why has my life seemed so {one dimensional}.  I seemed to lack direction, dreams and hopes and that pretty much just went with the flow of life and where others felt I should be going.   But never really choosing for myself.  A thread that has continued through my life.  Always looking to others to affirm my directions or who I am but never really knowing for certain for myself.  When was it exactly that I stopped hearing the call on my life. Or maybe was that I never felt worthy enough to be called to anything of value or was it that I was never really brave enough to respond to it.  Has fear ruled me through the years or has it been a kind of apathy because I felt I had no choices.  This has been my journey this year of self discovery. Discovering who I am and what my true dreams really are.  Choosing to be brave even when I don't feel particularly brave inside.  To stop hiding.  Hiding behind the past, hiding behind what life throws.  Choosing what I want to do rather than what I feel obligated to do.  But most of all... I have been listening... and trying to respond to what is calling me right now.