Imagine walking around with a broken leg for much of your life, or having a part of your insides rotting from the inside out. The most sinister thing about this sort of pain is that sometimes, you don’t even realize that you are walking around life like this. Instead, you simply see the by products of walking around on a broken leg through the deformity it causes. This is what happens when you harbor pain in your heart. It literally has the ability to eat you alive, or create a stagger in the way that you walk through life. Every time that I would tell my story to someone about things that happened in my past, I would zoom through the events that happened as if talking about them quickly would show that I had fully healed from them, and I truly thought that I had. I would speak about these events in a matter of fact sort of manner, yet in my heart I realized last month, that I still was holding on to some damage that they did.
I walked through my life resenting men, and not really respecting them or myself. A relationship that I was in, I managed to taint it because I for one, didn’t respect myself enough to know what to expect from it, let alone what to GIVE. Codependency became the middle name of that relationship, and mistrust became it’s first. Everything that I believed about myself that rooted from my past, grew even deeper, when I solidified these beliefs by digging holes for myself in this relationship. I made him my everything, while at the same time managed to sabotage the relationship due to a lack of understanding of what true love looks like. I thought I was a tarnished human being, and so subconsciously, I began doing things in this relationship, and just in life to prove this false belief right. I began acting out in a WAR with myself, and in the process, not only did I dig a hole deeper for my own self, I hurt him as well and dragged others into it. Now, this isn’t to say that the reason things didn’t work out were all my fault, we both were imperfect, and played a role in this. However, I can see now where the root of the unhealthy behaviors came from, and this was simply ONE example in my life of how it manifested. I was carrying a false sense of self around and imposing this belief on him, as well as to several others in my life. I was lost, and had very little self esteem or worth. My actions simply followed suit, and I began taking it out on those not deserving.
When confronted with this on the race, looking at why I am the way that I am, and why I struggle in the area of fearing people and needing their affirmation, I took a long and honest look at where this could have potentially begun. This hurt me, because it made me feel like I had been living in a false sense of “okay-ness” for the last 15 years of my life. Not to mention the plenty other years of damage done during that time. I actually was holding on to anger even towards God for allowing certain things to happen to me, or for allowing me to feel so stepped on and thrown out by some of the most important people in my life. One of my squad mentors suggested that I go through this process called an “inner healing” where I allow the Holy Spirit to guide me in my heart back to a time or times in my life that really scarred me so that he could show me where Jesus was in all of it. You might be wondering what time in my life I am talking about here, so.. I will tell you.
As my squad mentor Megan was explaining the process to me, she told me to just see what exact moment God wanted to take me back to. (sidenote- I really had no idea, because there were a lot of moments that could be “healing moments” from my past,) but I just went for it. I closed my eyes and started asking him what time he wanted to take me back to. I was truly curious, because a lot of me really thought that I had dealt with a lot of pain stemming from my life, and the hardship that I experienced. He took me back to one of these molding events in my life. He took me back being an 8 year old little girl in her father’s house, completely trusting in who he was. He took me back to the very room that my father first molested me in and began bringing up in detail some of the things that were done to me. I began crying out and my breathing quickened to the point of sheer terror. I could barely get myself to speak out loud what I was seeing to my squad mentor, simply because my heart hurt so much and I felt so much shame in what I was feeling. My stomach was turning inside out, and my heart burned in my chest as I frantically searched the room to see where Jesus was in all of this. It felt so real. Suddenly, I was no longer the 23 year old me in Swaziland, I was 8 years old again. As Jesus finally became clear to me, I saw him kneeling at the bed with me and just holding me. He was crying. He told me in this moment, that “I was hurting with you, my heart was breaking for you in this time because you are my beloved. You are NOT dirty”. Holding me, in that moment, and in my present moment, I felt him say in my spirit that “I am a God who keeps my word and I gave all of man free will. I could have gone in to stop him from doing this to you, but if I were to have done that in that moment, I would have taken my love from him and broken my word.” As he spoke these things to me, it just began to click.
He was with me, every step of the way. He never abandoned me, and never will, in spite of how horrible it made me feel, he was there through it all. My hatred and anger, my mistrust, all of it stems back to beginning in this moment. This is what needed to break. He wanted to change my PERSPECTIVE, and give me some clarity. The words “you aren’t dirty” stood out to me when he spoke them, because I felt a release. These things never happened to me because he wanted them to or allowed them to. My father simply was held captive in his soul by the evil that is in this world, and I happened to be at the other end of that. But he still loves him too. He is not the enemy, the darkness, the sin in him is. In this moment, my bitterness towards men melted, and my desire to be “enough”, yet the thought that I never could be, all simultaneously melted away from me. I felt myself being healed in this moment.
THIS is the answer to “If God loves people, then why does he allow bad things to happen to some?” It’s because he loves ALL of his children, even my father who molested me. He is just as much his child as I am. So often, we want to place the blame on God for MAKING bad things happen in the world, when in fact, it’s just that we live in a very hurting and broken world. I am learning more and more his heart for us, and that is that we live harmoniously with each other and in the knowledge of who he is, seeking to know his love for us. THAT’S how he intended for it to be. THAT’S what he wants. He hurts every time that we, as a result of the sin and darkness that is in this world hurt. The most valuable lesson that this showed me about his character, is that he truly is a merciful God, and that he loves ALL of us unconditionally. I am learning that it isn’t our job to love only those who “deserve it” by OUR standards. Because the hard truth is that none of us truly deserve the grace and the unconditional love that he offers. My heart has been being filled more and more every day by him and the simple knowledge of who he is. He is showing me in tangible ways that speak to me that he relentlessly pursues after my heart, and that he loves me so much more than I could possibly comprehend. The little girl inside of me who felt dirty, and who felt set apart to be thrown away because she was tarnished, and the young woman that cried out in desperation seeking with her entire might to feel loved and cherished when the people in her life failed her has finally discovered that I AM beautifully and wonderfully made. I AM worth fighting for, but also I am called to forgive those who I looked for to prove this to me, because it was never their job. I am simply called to love without always expecting it in return, and to live in the full understanding that I am truly loved by my creator, no matter what.
