The first time I heard the song “King of my Heart,” it made me uncomfortable. I was at Vespers in the midst of my crazy final semester, so I shrugged it off as not my style and waited for the next song to start. It wasn’t until training camp that I discovered the source of my uneasiness.
“We’re going to sing ‘King of my Heart’ this morning, but before we do, I want to tell you guys something.” Our worship leader took a deep breath as she said, “I noticed the last time we sang this song, I was singing it with a sort of aggression, and I couldn’t figure out why that was. I don’t know if you guys have realized how my voice changes when this song comes on, but I scream it. Then I figured out that I was singing it with aggression because I was singing it against the lies in my life that are trying to convince me that God is not good. I don’t know what all of you are going through, but I bet that there’s an area of your life that you’re struggling to proclaim the goodness of God over. So we’re going to do that very thing this morning. As we sing this song, proclaim that God is good and that he will NEVER let you down in that area of your life.”
The music started and I was singing with the rest of my squadmates when I realized that I had given up on God in a part of my life. I had faced a pattern of rejection since early high school and just when I thought it was over and done, it happened again. Every time it would happen, I found a way to convince myself that I did something to screw it up, and that maybe if I loved God more or did more for him, it would go the way I wanted. I had been holding on to this lie for at least 8 years, and standing in the training room at camp, I came face to face with that hurt. By the end of the song, I was crying and scream-singing that God was good and that he would never let me down. As we declared truth over the lies, I felt freedom wash me. Yet there was still pain.
So it was fitting that Carly took that stage and talked about emotions and processing through pain. I remember frantically writing notes, hoping she would give me some sort of fix to my pain so that I could be done with it and move on to new things. Yet she encouraged us to lean into our pain. The devil would like us to believe that we can do it ourselves, because then it would change our view of God. We wouldn’t need him anymore. The longer I listened to Carly, the more I left God calling me to stop running, and to instead sit in the pain with him, to offer it to him for his miraculous healing instead of my quick-fix band-aid. I’ve come to understand it like this:
It’s like sitting in chains for years and then having someone take them off. Freedom, though it is delightfully beautiful, involves flexing muscles that have stayed still for so long. It takes your body time to adjust to movement without the restraint that has held you back for so long. You can’t always run right away. Sometimes, all you can do is take a pain filled step, trusting that the hand that’s holding you up is leading you in the right direction, to a place where you can run and dance in the beautiful freedom that’s been offered.
So that’s where I’m at right now. I’ve been back from training camp for two weeks, and the pain hasn’t gotten much easier. In fact, there’s been a lot to challenge my freedom and chain me back to the lies I’ve been a slave to before. Still, God keeps reaching his hand out, offering me support as I take those painful steps toward the fullness of the freedom that he offers. It’s a slow process, but he is good and will never let me down.
“Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.” Psalm 116:7
