Strong.
I finally figured it out. The meaning behind my key. In case you weren’t aware, which I’m realizing many of you probably aren’t, I have been wearing a key around my neck all year that has the word strong on it. I was given this key at world race launch as a key for the journey. A cool guy named Austin prayed over ever single person that requested and payed for a key, and he printed on each key a word from the Lord. A word for the journey, for us to take with us and figure out and ask God to reveal the meaning behind. The goal is for us to wear this key with our word until we fully understand what it means to us, and then to give it away to someone!
I’m still praying for God to reveal to me the person I am supposed to give this key away to, but I feel like I finally understand the meaning behind my strong key.
Just this month the Lord revealed to me in a very casual moment during one of our nightly devotions with our CG boys (Children’s Garden, an awesome home/program for young men to come and have a second chance after a life on the streets).
So here it is, what strong means to me:
STRONG:
- to willingly press into pain and hardship with hope and faith in God that he will show you the beauty in it
- To acknowledge your brokenness and to choose to engage in the hurt from your past with confidence that the Lord will bring healing
- To press into the crap! The junk, & the really hard memories, and to begin the process of healing
A three part definition, a little extra I know, would you expect any different from me though?! I’m sure I’ll continually add onto it too!
I’ve learned that it takes a strong person to reopen wounds of their past and to ask the Lord to reveal what still hurts. I’ve been invited into doing that so many times on the race. And every single time I’ve done it, engaged in my pain and past wounds, I’ve felt so much peace and experienced so much healing from it. I really can’t explain it in words.
It sucks. I’m not gonna sugar coat that. Who actually wants to be reminded of the hard stuff thats happened to them or the memories that made them feel numb?! I used to not, but as odd as it sounds, now I asked Jesus to show me what hurts still, and to bring up those memories where I felt pain, or felt misunderstood, or disrespected, angry, lost, or hurt because I know he will bring healing through them and I know he has made me strong enough to engage in my hurt.
Its not because I’m this crazy strong person emotionally or whatever, its because I finally am confident that the peace that Jesus brings is greater than the hurt that lingers. The healing is better than the hurt. I know now with confidence that the Lord has made me strong enough to engage in my pain, because I trust him to bring me through it.
Its like the light at the end of the tunnel concept. I know its there as I enter into pain and hurt, that’s the difference now. I used to see inner healing as just entering into old memories, & just sitting in this place of hurt just like it did before and hoping that I have some sort of revelation that makes things better, & that I finally see things differently. Yikes. I now get the visual of ripping off the bandaids that I tried to slap on to cover my cuts, scrapes, and bruises and sitting there with an open wound, acknowledging that it does hurt, but also watching my wounds heal before my eyes as I let Jesus replace crappy memories with good ones, and lies with truth.
I identify an emotion (a wound), ask which memory of my life is associated with it, ask Jesus where he was in the room or in the situation, ask Jesus what lies I began to believe from this memory, then ask Jesus for the truth and ask him to replace the memory with the new one. Its as simple as that run on sentence. Its just a little exchange that yeah maybe just takes some courage to dive into.
Healing is good. And the hard stuff is good.
I know that to be strong, to me, means to engage in the hard stuff with complete hope and confidence that it is going to be good, and that the process is good.
Its hard, yeah, but I know that this world is full of strong people, and I think that this is just a new strength that I whole-heartedly believe the world needs more of. Its also a type of strong that if I learned I had within myself any earlier in my life things would be wildly different. But hey, nows a great time to. I don’t think there’s ever a bad time to become strong! 🙂
Just to keep the suspense up.. stay posted for what we’ve been doing this month with these awesome men! Its been a wild fun ride and we’re so sad to be leaving CG soon! 🙁 I promise to have a blog up NEXT WEEK with highlights and updates on what this month has looked like so far, so stay tuned!
