Sabrina, Aerial, McKenzie, Morgan and Mason (my five teenagers) address me as Mom aka Momma Storms with several adoptees. Over the years, my children have murmured a few other aliases in which I’m quite certain I have earned however, deemed inappropriate for public disclosure. To Steve, my husband, I am Andrea. Again, I’m certain I have earned additional names from him as well (some permissible and some not so beneficial). Extended family and friends call me Andi; any will suffice. I respond to many pronunciations. It’s nearing two years since I had lost the identity of who I am as me; not as a mom or wife, but as a woman with faith. My identity crisis was the product of loss in my reflection and by whose definition. The journey began and little did I realize the drive would be the ultimate road trip of my life.
I no longer recognized the woman I had become. On the surface, I had it all and did it all. Inside, I could not breathe. The silhouette of darkness suffocated my vocal chords while the intonation provoked a multitude of voices deliberating in my head. Confusion hindered my stride as I no longer could dance with rhythmic balance of truth; the lies had cadenced with harmony. I vanished into reverie at eighty miles an hour and sought a destination beyond the white picket fence of confinement. Metallic green blurs measured my vigorous effort to escape what felt to be death by submission. Silence screamed, “Let me out! Remember me?”
I was the renegade playing with fire and ice hoping the stiletto hadn’t pierced my heart beyond repair. Serenity was lost and my search for the state of euphoria became music to my ears. An open road and wheels driven by a free spirit with the accompaniment of a passenger of the highest power was the only place I found a hint of peace, a familiar place of solitude. As a child so many years ago the musical vibration would rest my dreary eyes as my body would melt with grace and submission to the well being of my soul, I could no longer hear the voices. In these moments I could feel me and love me. Unconditional love of my heart was unified and I could breathe. However, my vision held little relevance therefore the perception defined others often fogged my reflection and sent my free-spirited soul on many journeys beyond the parameters of what truth lay within my heart. Eventually, I became numb.
After several months facing remnants of traumatic events, the pain was too much for the masquerade of balls. I could no longer run, I could no longer hide and I certainly could no longer dance. The conviction was enough to remove the blinders of who I had been hiding. Although I could see, feel, breathe and walk, my voice had been tainted and the fear gave way for judgment. I was judged based on the unveiling mask of sins committed through years of battle. I lost my freedom and the right to appeal. The tongue can be a fire ready to devour any who cross the path of a woman scorned. My silence had been broken but not tamed; forgiveness is now the journey I seek.
A road of familiar paths traveled by my reflection, God’s perception, is the open road to forgiveness. Consideration of others perception is that of humility and unconditional love for not only me but for those who saw me when I did not. I am not deaf to truth nor am I blind to truth. Music may define the pace in which my heart beats but my eyes and ears are privy to one reflection of who I am. I am SAM and SAM I am. Sam is the acronym of Sabrina, Aerial, Morgan, Mason and McKenzie, the seeds God entrusted me to care for, fertilize and water. There will come a time when harvesting is the witness to fruits worthy of repentance. Repentance leads the path to forgiveness. The reflection of who I am is by the grace, mercy and most of all truth set forth and defined by God, my father. My children are seeds that I have bore, truth in God’s word is the fertilizer I shall raise them with, honor and love will prune their hearts and their flight will be the harvest in which fruits will be evidence of my repentance. I am forgiven daily, a hundred times over, according to the way in which I forgive those who have pierced by heart and strong held my chords. My passion falls within the grace and mercy I seek by giving praise to the One who has pulled me out of the pit when wreckage was the only vision I had. I will praise Him in every storm and take refuge in the music that feeds my heart. I may fall but I will not break. I am unbreakable, silence is not.
I am a woman who will play rough yet guide you through darkness with her eyes. I am a woman who loves to dance as if everyone is watching but cannot see. I am a woman of fire and ice. I am a woman who walks with the aroma of grace and breathes with a rhythmic fall to a bed of roses. I am a woman crippled by shattered dreams with an overwhelming fear of acceptance. I am a renegade on the journey to escape the law of conventional ways. Surrender or submission all begins within the heart, my heart has walls built with the mortar of pain and suffering however, by prayer I am a woman with wisdom by perseverance. I am a woman passionate after God’s heart, my reflection and not your perception.
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