Hope is the greatest expecation and I never learned how to give up

Over this last year I have turned a corner where I have learned to be joyful and at peace with pretty much everything in my life. I've never felt so strongly that God is taking care of me and the people I care about, it may not always be the way we want it, or as fast as we'd want it, or as easy as we want it, but He's taking care of us none the less. I can see Him working in our lives, sharing His truth, changing us, moving us closer to Him, and it's been a life altering thing to experience.
Things aren't perfect of course, stresses do still arise, but for the most part they get dealt with quickly or in prayer they become less stress. Lately I have felt so joyous and blessed for so many reasons.
God has been reaching out to me in so many ways lately, through Church, books, dreams, people, and I almost feel like I can't absorb and process it all sometimes because there is so much. I've never been flooded with His presence as much as I have these last few months, and it's wonderful.
Work is back to a tolerable stress level and there are even days I'm not stressed at all! Not to mention the wonderful vacation to Nashville we have coming up in 2 weeks, the nice relaxing break I've been needing after 4 crazy months at work. And Tennessee is where I am going to meet the author who has been a part of moving me closer to God.
I have such a great bunch of women in my life who I have been and will be getting to spend a lot of time with lately. I can talk to them about anything, and we are real enough that we can get stressed out with and even at each other but work it out. And even better, I can turn to them for prayer, and they know they can do the same with me. What's even more wonderful about them is that half of them are my family, I am so blessed to count my family among my best friends, and I LOVE any time I get to spend time with them!
And of course my wonderful husband. With the stress of moving last year (even as easy as God made it for us) it showed us some weaknesses in our relationship that we've done a pretty good job of patching up. Our communication has been a lot better, we've found compromises that are working for us in the areas we are very different, and I don't think we've ever been closer. Last week Sean was in Las Vegas for most of the week and although I was kept very busy with my quality "girl time" and "me time", I missed him a LOT. Every night we talked just made me look forward to him coming home more. It was almost like falling in love again, there was a lot of mushiness and giddiness and flirtatiousness. A lot of which got written all over Facebook, so yeah, a lot like teenagers in love.
There are many other great things in life to be excited about, like my sister's developing adoption from Ethiopia. I'm so excited to be an aunt to African children, they aren't even here yet but it feels so special already! And I'm so excited to wear the t-shirts I designed and be able to show to the world, maybe get some donations for them:) I'm still thrilled to be an aunt to 3 wonderful kids, and the last time I played with them at Mother's Day, I had the best time with them. They enrich my life every time I'm with them. Summer is just about here, I can go out walking outside again on a regular basis (and get in some quality girl time with anyone wanting to join me), which I'm really looking forward to. Keith Urban concert in a few months with my MIL. The possibility of getting a puppy sometime in the next few months. I've got joy and love and excitement and fulfillment and peace abounding! I'd be hard pressed to find something wrong with my life.

Except for something I had been ignoring.
An anxiousness.
A presence in my dreams.
I have been ignoring it, refusing to dwell on it, trying to push it out of my mind, believing it didn't need addressing. I thought I had succeeded, the thoughts would go away. But then they'd come back.
Thoughts about my ex, Richard.

I've been re-living our past in my dreams (not the good parts) more and more recently, causing me to think about him more and more during the day. Like every time I pass the corner near where he lives I wonder if we'll see each other. I'm anxious every time I pass that corner. I'm not sure why NOW, I pondered it a little in my abuse blog last Saturday, but I guess the main reason is there are emotions I didn't let myself deal with over the years. When I was hiding what was happening for all those years I would squash all feelings because I couldn't feel them AND hide them, and I was too ashamed to NOT hide them. When I found healing through telling everyone the truth 2 1/2 years ago, some of the emotions came to the surface and I thought, that was that. Apparently not.
Last Saturday, after waking from another dream/nightmare about Richard trying to make me suppress the truth, I woke up and HAD to find out what had been going on with him the last year. The last I'd heard from him was on Facebook (a conversation also documented on my other blog) and he was apparently dying and yet still manipulating me. The internet is a wonderful/dangerous thing and I managed to find out he was with another woman, possibly engaged to, whom he hooked up with while she was still married (common-law, not that that makes a difference). She had kids, and apparently she wasn't the only married one he'd tried to hook up with, and I freaked. I HAD to warn her about the Richard I knew. I just felt so strongly she was probably already waist deep in his manipulation. If I could just show her before it was too late and she was married to him.
I didn't think about anything other than trying to save her, I didn't think of how this would look to Sean, or how it might get back to Richard, I had BIG blinders on. I couldn't find her on Facebook but I found her ex and all I could see was that he was my only way to reach her. Yeah, I made the huge mistake of involving him. In that moment I couldn't see that I was talking to her 'enemy', I had dis-credited myself to her completely by going through him, and now he was freaking out about what I had to tell her. I don't know what came over me, I just couldn't think of anything but telling her the truth. I was the only one who could spare her the pain.
After many angry calls and FB chats, and Sean reasoning with me, I dropped the whole thing with them and apologized to them about acting so insane. I didn't apologize to Richard for wanting the truth out, but for how I went about it.
Now, after thinking about it all week, wondering how I could have been so blinded and impulsive, acting completely out of character, with no regard for my loving husband's feelings, and no regard for my own reputation, I have realized this is what happens when you 'take your eyes off the road' for even one second. I didn't deal with the emotions God was bringing up in me for a reason, they needed to be addressed and healed, but instead I avoided them. I hadn't spent as much time with God in the last two weeks as I should have and allowed myself enough distance from Him that I couldn't hear him yelling stop as I went full speed ahead into this mess. Now, I am not only flooded with all these emotions I've been avoiding, but on top of that I have guilt and anger towards myself for acting so recklessly.
I don't understand why, in a time things have been going so wonderfully, I would be so foolish. But I guess it started with fooling myself into thinking I had completely healed and dealt with my past. I don't know why I haven't sought help to deal with it before but it is obvious to me I need help now. Talking to friends and family and fellow bloggers about it HAS been healing, but it's not enough. It's painfully obvious it's not enough.
I'm now looking into talking to someone at Church, the same someone who participated in getting the ball rolling on my healing 2 1/2 years ago when he encouraged me to stop hiding it in the first place. Pray for me in the mean time, I'm hoping for a reprieve on being so full of emotions, it's a sensory overload. It's getting better day by day, but still sometimes I can't fully feel or deal with any one emotion because there are so many others fighting to be felt. I know God is here for me, wanting me to find healing by processing these feelings, I have to feel them for a reason.
The weird thing is, Richard was so concerned about me because of this, because it's not like me at all, and he said he's willing to talk about everything now. No back handed comments, no trying to make me feel bad, just straightforward, "we should talk about this in person". I want to make sure I've talked to a counsellor before that happens, and I've told him that, so that I'm not just replacing healing with closure, but I think there may be hope for finally having that truthful conversation with him.