Digging up old wounds is never easy. Personally I would rather leave them buried where they are and never have to think about them again, never have to revisit them, never have to…
But the truth is I will, because these old wounds have played a part in molding the woman that I am today without me ever even realizing it. They have shaped the way that I interact with women, especially ones my age. Like a thief in the night these old wounds have snuck in through a basement window and stolen from me one of the very things that I as a woman have always craved, and was designed by our Creator to take part in. Sisterhood.
Backtrack to the other night….It is team time, I am on an all-women’s team this month, and it’s my girl Patty’s turn to lead. Patty is a writer and loves it, so for her team time she had all of us girls “create” a character based on ourselves as 1) a young girl 2) a teenager in high school, and 3) a woman 6 months before leaving on the race. I, hating homework, decided that I would just come to team time and wing it, no prep. Bad idea.
Shovel hits ground, and a foot pushes it into the somewhat soft soil just beneath the thick grassy green layer that is nicely maintained for everyone to see. I talk about the 7 year old Kylie. About how she is the only girl in the midst of boys. About how they moved around a lot. About how she was homeschooled. About how she didn’t really have any girl friends that were around. About how when she did the paper route that she and her brothers shared she would talk while she walked and have audible conversations with people that she made up, and just pretend that she was hanging out with a friend. She would speak for both sides because there was never anyone there to respond to her.
Jump ahead 8 or 9 years….shovel hits soil again, the rounded tip doesn’t sink in so easily as the initial dig. This layer is as hard as clay, much more difficult to pierce through, and this time when the foot hits the shovel it has to kick much harder to penetrate through the dense thickness. This kick brings pain, shooting pain that creates tears.
High school Kylie, no longer homeschooled, but somewhat socially retarded and unable to communicate with her peers. Desperate for friends, and like most 10th or 11th graders, longing to be popular and part of the in-crowd. She would make a friend or 2 and then she would meet someone just a little bit cooler and would ditch the first for what she thought was the better, always trying to climb the social ladder. She ends at “the top”, but stands on the outside, always hovering, never breaching the outer walls. She ends up alone, being mocked and teased by the popular crowd, and never really welcome in the crowds that she had left behind. She is lonely and alone, and multiple times she walks home to eat lunch with her grandfather, lying to her peers and saying that she had doctor appointments so as to not look like she has no friends. A victim of a world that she has created for herself. Sad, alone, broken, and friendless, no one to trust, all the women around her shunning her and closing doors in her face.
I should have come prepared; I never would have had to be vulnerable with these women that are my team. Never would have had to admit the woman that I used to be. Never would have had to feel the hurt that I had buried so long ago. But, then I never would have had the opportunity to be real, to have the opportunity to share with some women that maybe one of the things that I have always wanted has not been available to me because of deeply buried wounds that I have been holding onto. Over the years I have built some very tall walls, walls to keep the hurt from happening again, to keep women from rejecting me. And yeah, those walls keep the hurt from coming in, but they also keep the good stuff out as well. My beautiful and insightful friend Meredith and I were sitting under the stars the other night talking, and she said something that is really relevant to this blog and how I am feeling right now, she said, and I am paraphrasing, “ I know you think you need to, but you don’t always have to be strong.” There is strength in weakness, in getting vulnerable and letting down the walls that we have built to protect us. I have always wanted a sister, and a best friend, a tightly knit group of women that I could tell everything to. That I could bare my soul to, that I could get deep with and actually have heart conversations with. Relationships that go beyond the everyday surface stuff that so many people choose to waste so much time talking about instead of actually getting to know the heart of a person. But, I have also been really scared of getting hurt.
Psalm 55 is a plea to the Lord by King David to save him from treachery, not brought on by his enemy, but rather his closest friends. He writes in verses 12-14, “For it is not an enemy who reproaches me; Then I could bear it, Nor is it one who hates me who has exalted himself against me; Them I could hide from him. But it was you, a man my equal, my companion and my acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked to the house of God in the throng.” He does not at any point, however; say anything about building walls around your heart in order to protect yourself, instead, in verse 22 he says, “Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.” I need to not be so worried about what others are going to say or do, I just need to pursue and allow myself to be pursued and leave everything else to the Lord.
Slowly but surely the Lord is breaking down the walls that I have perfected and fortified over the years. It’s a little scary to think that the race will be over in 3 short months and that I will lose the day-to-day community that my squad has become. I just hope and pray that when I get home these kinds of relationships can be built with other women.
