More of the story from Rich Dixon

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I recall Pete’s trademark Hawaiian shirts, but not much else about our conversations.

Therapy isn’t logical or linear. In steps so small they can be perceived only while retracing the path, as Pete listened and guided, I exposed and confronted struggles old and new.

Gradually, as weeks passed into months, darkness began to fade.

When light and dark collide, light always wins. Even the smallest glimmer of hope penetrates total blackness and encourages exploration. Each small forward step forces darkness to recede and casts light into formerly fearsome recesses. Darkness only prevails where light is ignored.

I finally stopped running from the light of hope. Each ray of hope defeated another small corner previously ruled by fear.

This new cycle pointed toward life and growth, the opposite of the death spiral in which I had been trapped for so long.

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Pete encouraged me to begin a journal. I resisted, of course, but finally the words poured onto my keyboard as years of pain and loss flooded my heart.

I thought I was simply vomiting a rambling, confused tangle of pain, frustration, and hopelessness. I’d arrive at each session with page after page of rambling, circular, incoherent thoughts and feelings, artifacts of an existence in obvious turmoil even before the injury plunged me into crisis. Each week Pete patiently waded through this muddled attempt to explain the confusion. Then he smiled that ambiguous smile and encouraged me to continue writing.

I originally immersed myself in writing because of its cathartic nature. I poured pain and fear onto the pages until it seemed I had dumped the trash of my soul. Going nowhere, pointless, apparently accomplishing nothing, until there was no more to dump and for a short time the clanging in my head was silenced.

God had a bigger plan.

To be continued…