Ramblings about safe

     *There is going to be a lot of rambling in this post.  I hope any other survivors who read this will be able to relate and find some peace knowing they aren't alone.  I also hope that anyone who is walking alongside a survivor who reads this will find more understanding and patience and compassion as they walk with their friend.*

Safe.

     This word, this idea, this concept brings comfort to so many people.  Most people also use this word to offer comfort to others, to calm the fears of hurting hearts.  "I am safe."  "This is a safe place."  "You are safe here."  I think most people really think they mean what they say when offering such sentiment.  It sounds so helpful and so good.  It sounds like what comfort feels like...I think.

     For many people (maybe most people), safe does bring comfort.  Safe does alleviate fears.  Safe does welcome a hurting heart.  For many others, safe is scary.  Safe is where danger lurks unseen.  Safe is where hearts are hurt.  Safe isn't safe at all.  Despite what many people choose to believe, safe is where children are most often abused.  Is it any wonder, then, why there is hardly a place safe enough for survivors to speak?

Safe...family

Safe...friend

Safe...coach

Safe...teacher

Safe...pastor

Safe...church people

Safe...law enforcement

Safe.........I could go on.  Not all of those apply to me personally.  Some of those safe places were not dangerous for me, but I know others who found each of these safe places to actually be far from safe.  Some of these places I never gave the chance to be safe because of the fear and threats that lived in my first safe place.

Safe.

     This concept has been coming up a lot lately as I have been crushed by the weight of my own truth, unable and perhaps unwilling to accept it and work through it.  It has been something I have thought about a lot as it has come up, as people have tried to assure me I'm in a safe place.  I have found that when I hear the word "safe," I cower in fear on the inside and want to withdraw into myself.  I know the intention of those who say it are to ease my fears.  Instead, and I imagine much to their dismay or even disillusionment, it increases my fears exponentially.

     The perfect safe place I dream up in my head is a place where I can be honest, own my truth, speak the hard words, fall to pieces, be loved and cared for in the midst of it and never be hurt again...intentionally or unintentionally.  I know that place doesn't exist in real life, because this world is full of people...none of whom are perfect, and that most certainly includes me.

     Knowing the safe place of never being hurt doesn't exist on this earth means I have to learn to trust the few who want to be safe for me now.  Trust doesn't come easy to someone whose trust was so deeply betrayed though.  It is no easy task to sit with one who says they are safe and to speak through the fear that rises within me at such an invitation.

     I am certain that one or two of my "want to be safe" people know exactly what they are saying when they tell me I am safe with them.  They know they are asking me to put words to feelings I have no words for, to speak of the unspeakable, to utter words of truth that feel like they will kill me.
     There are also a few others who are learning what it means to walk with someone like me, and I fear they will find the darkness too cold and too desperate to stay with me as I find my way out.  I fully believe their intentions are good.  I know they care for me deeply.  But I struggle profoundly to trust them with the deepest, darkest parts of my heart.  I don't know where the line between healthy self-protection and unhealthy isolation falls, so I tend to default to isolation in an attempt to feel safe where safe doesn't exist.

Safe.

     The only place I know I am supposed to be fully safe in my perfect, never to be hurt again kind of way, is in the safety of God.  And yet I still struggle.  For so many years, God Himself wasn't safe to take my brokenness too...at least according to His people.  I was young, so I took what church leaders and church people said and did, and I thought they stood for God and what He thought about me and my past.  I thought He didn't care and couldn't help.  So I boxed up all the things I wasn't supposed to struggle with and buried it.  I kept God out of it.

     I'm learning now that God doesn't want me to bury it, He never did.  I am also finding it really hard to unbox that stuff...hard to let God in on it after all these years.  Of course, He already knows everything that is in the boxes I have hidden away.  He is kind and compassionate though, so He isn't forcing them open before He readies me to handle what is inside.

     It's still hard to feel safe though.  It's hard to unlearn all the wrong things I learned about God from those who represented His name but were afraid of truth like mine and were afraid to walk in it with me.  It was easier for them to make me go away rather than face an evil they wanted to pretend didn't exist.  I was taught about a "God" who was not safe, and now that I know He actually is, it's hard to push past the fear instilled in me for so many years and learn how to feel safe with Him.

Safe.

     It's a daily battle between what I knew and what I now know.  It's a battle between the automatic fear and withdrawal response and the desire for healing which means pushing through the fear with a select few people.  It's a daily battle to reconcile my past and my present in this one small (but feels so big) way.

     When you tell me you are safe and I recoil and hesitate and you see the fear in my eyes, please don't walk away.  Please understand that my fear at hearing that word has nothing to do with you and everything to do with those who came before you.  When you see me sitting in silence battling intense fear and the desire to speak, be patient.  I am begging you.  The cost to speak is great for me, and I have lost the price many times over.

     It's one thing to say you are safe.  It's an entirely different thing to show me you are.  Remind me that you are safe, and wait with me while I learn what a safe place really is.  Tell me as many times as I need that you are safe, and then sit with me as I find the courage to trust you just a little more than the last time we spoke.  Remind me that God is safe and He cares and He heals hearts as broken as mine.  Please be patient with me as I learn to trust Him also.  I am not trying to be difficult or rude or insinuate that you are not trustworthy.  I am working to deprogram years of learning that safe is where danger lives.  I am working at this...but this work takes time, the cost is high, and the pain is at times unbearable.

Safe...safe is scary, but I am not running.  Will you wait with me?

A mosaic of hope

     I have said things have been rough.  It's true.  I have been in a very dark place as of late.  Giving up has been all too tempting.  I've started walking away more than once.  I have to say I'm not sure how I am still hanging on.  I'm honestly hanging on by a thread and the grace of God...in fact the grace of God may be the thread I'm hanging on to.  I'm not sure.  I just know I'm dangling.
   
     In the middle of the darkest of the darkness, I had a conversation with a lady who has been walking with me through all of this.  She is amazing...really she is.  To be completely honest, in the depths of the darkness I have a hard time remembering things.  I forget much of a conversation minutes after it is over.  I agree to get a simple task done but don't realize I never did it until it is pointed out.  It's as if my  brain has so much pressure on it that new information, no matter how small, just doesn't stick.  Even the conversation I had with this woman who is very special to me is one I don't remember much of.  I wish I did.  I know I felt less...I'm not sure, frantic maybe, afterwards.  It was a profitable conversation.  I know that much.  Other than that, much of it is lost...except for one thing she said.
     I cannot remember the conversation leading up to her comment other than the fact that I said there were so many pieces...too many pieces.  In her response she said this...that God is in the business of picking up all those broken, scattered pieces and making them into a beautiful mosaic.  That was it.  It was a simple response.  She probably didn't expect that comment to stay with me, but it has.

     A mosaic.  I'm a thinker, and I have been thinking a lot about this word picture.  It is beautiful actually, and it changes how I think of this journey and the destination.  I have always viewed this journey as working towards being put back together.  I am broken and the pieces need to be fitted back together much like a puzzle.  When the puzzle is put together, I am whole again just like I was before.  The fractures are always there as the past cannot be undone, but at least I would be together again.  As a puzzle put back together, the person I once was would be whole again albeit always fractured.  She used the image of a mosaic rather than a puzzle though.
     A mosaic is a piece of art that is made of a lot of small, tiny, broken pieces.  Somehow, an artist looks at the chaos of broken shards and sees a beautiful picture.  The artist works with the chaotic, scattered pieces one by one, carefully placing them just so until they make a new picture...a beautiful piece of artwork to share with the world.  When you look at the whole, you see the beautiful picture the artist created.  If you look closer, you see each tiny, broken shard and the cracks between them where the glue holds them together.  They are not puzzle pieces that fit together snugly.  They are pieces of a mosaic that have breaks between them and a story in each piece that when seen as a whole is a beautiful picture put together by the mind of an artist.
     Just like the start of a mosaic, I am a chaotic, scattered, mess of broken shards.  Yet, God is an Artist who looks at the scattered pieces and sees a beautiful piece of artwork He wants to share with the world.  He patiently works with each tiny, broken shard of me one by one as He creates a new work of art in me.  He is not fitting me back together like a puzzle to be who I was before only with fractures where the pieces fit together.  No, He is making me NEW.
     A mosaic takes old, broken pieces of chaos and brings them together into a new, whole, beautiful work of art.  That is what God is doing.  He is taking the old, broken pieces of my chaos and creating with them a new, whole, beautiful work of art.  When the Artist is finished, others will see a beautiful, whole piece of artwork that He is sharing with the world.  Those who take the time to look closer will see each tiny, broken piece I will be made of.  Each piece holds a story.  Each piece is necessary to create the art He makes with my broken chaos.  The glue that holds all the pieces together, that shows in the tiny spaces and cracks between the pieces, will tell of His faithfulness and grace and mercy.
 
     I find this image one of hope.  It is an image of something new to come.  God is not simply putting me back together to be a fractured version of who I once was.  He is taking the fractured pieces that are laying on the ground a scattered mess and making me new.  When He is done, the fractures where the pieces don't fit perfectly together will not hold stories of where I broke.  No, those fractures will hold stories of how He put me back together.  The pieces that will be seen will not hold stories of who I used to be.  Instead the pieces of the mosaic of me will tell the story of how where I have walked will mold me into who I become.
     God is not putting me together like a puzzle which even when finished is always broken.  He is not simply a problem solver trying to figure out which pieces fit into the same old place.  He is masterfully putting me together into a new work of art that, though made with broken pieces, does not remain perpetually broken.  He is an Artist putting old, broken shards together into a new, beautiful piece of artwork.  You will see the broken pieces in the finished product because what has broken me can never be undone, but you will see how the brokenness will shape who I am made to be.
     There is no hope in being put back together into a fractured version of who I was much like a puzzle.  There is glorious hope in having my  broken pieces put together into a new work of art by an Artist who sees beauty I can't.  He sees the new masterpiece.  He has a vision that I can't see as He works with each shard of my brokenness.  He is putting me back together not into the old me but into someone new and beautiful made of the brokenness I am living now.

     Redemption is not finishing the puzzle.  Redemption is making a mosaic.  The broken will be redeemed as a new piece of art is made from the old.  This picture has been one tiny ray of light in the depths of this darkness.  This hope is helping me hang on as I dangle.  This is giving me a new perspective on where I am going.  This word picture, this idea of being a mosaic, has lifted me a little bit closer to the exit of this pit I've been stuck in.  I haven't gotten out, but I am not falling deeper anymore.  I can see a little bit of light.  That is enough for now.  That is something I needed.

     My precious sisters, broken and scattered, He is not putting the old you together.  He is not merely fitting pieces of an old puzzle back together so all can see where you broke.  He is taking all the broken pieces of who you used to be and artfully creating a new masterpiece telling a story of how you are being put back together...a story of how where you have walked will shape who you become.  Find one tiny thread of hope to cling to in knowing the old you is not being put together, but a new you is being made from what is broken now.  You, my dear sister, are not a puzzle to be fit back together into the old.  You are a mosaic being masterfully made new.

There is more to honest brokenness

     Lately, I've been struggling.  This time, I didn't fall...no, I was swallowed whole by the earth, left in a pit surrounded by darkness.  I did not simply lose my footing along the ground, I got lost in the ground.  It's been rough, and rough is really a vast understatement.  I'm not quite so far down in the pit as I was.  I am slowly finding my way out...sometimes climbing myself, other times being lifted up by those around me, and most certainly God fits in there too (though at times I'm really not sure how...it's like that sometimes...we know God is doing something but we can't see it until we're out of it...it's like that now).

     Not too long ago, I posted about what God had been teaching me about coming to Him openly, honestly, with my questions and the truth of my own brokenness.  As this amazing freedom hit me, I felt so much lighter.  I had a renewed strength to keep fighting this battle, to press on through the difficulty knowing I can take it all to Him.  Then I was swallowed by the earth into a pit of utter darkness.
     In the pit, I found myself giving up.  I was ready to quit and told those close to me I was done, it was over. This darkness was too much, this journey too difficult, this sacrifice not worth it.  Oh how much they spoke words of encouragement to me.  Their hope couldn't pierce my darkness though.  I'm not sure how I got to where I am now, still going, pressing on, surely being held up by the ones who pray for me and love me and hope for me when I can't find hope myself.  I'm here though.  I'm still fighting though with much less vigor.  I'm fragile and weak, but I'm still moving.
   
     I think sometimes there are lessons to be learned while in the dark.  God has been opening my eyes and heart to lessons about this whole honest brokenness thing while I have floundered these last weeks.  There is more to honest brokenness than simply coming before God and laying it at His feet while clinging to the hope and promise of redemption.
     There is someone who often stands in my way.  No that person is not the devil.  While he may want me to stay locked in the darkness, he does not and cannot hinder me from going before the throne of Grace.  The person who stands in the way of going honestly to God is............me.  Yes, you read that right...ME!  It turns out that in order to be honest with God about my brokenness, I must be honest with myself about my own brokenness first.  I cannot take brokenness to God that I am not willing to accept and own as, well, my own.
     I've mentioned this before.  I am apparently very good at minimizing the abuse I endured and the effects it has had in my life and in me as a person.  I never knew I was doing this.  It was how I survived, though.  I still frequently do not realize I'm doing it until it is pointed out to me.  It is what kept me hanging on to my sanity all these years when no one believed me and those very few I tried to get help from minimized it themselves.
     It makes sense if you think about it.  I told what happened a few years after it stopped but was not believed at all.  I was told I was making it worse in my head than it really was.  I was told it was my fault.  I was threatened with being kicked out of my church (all my very tiny group of friends were there and being kicked out would have meant losing them all...it was a really big deal) if I couldn't stop having panic attacks, flashbacks, episodes of losing time.  I was told I was a "new creation in Christ so the past didn't matter and shouldn't effect me anymore."  They were basically saying that my claim to have a relationship with Christ was false because of the effects of the abuse.  In order to keep my fragile world in order, my past had to not exist.  Of course that can't happen, so I had to find a way to live with it like it didn't happen and didn't matter.  So I made it nothing in my head.   But it is not nothing.

     When I was swallowed up by the earth, left in a pit of utter darkness, I came a little closer to seeing how broken I really am.  One little part of my brokenness stared me in the face in the depths of that pit, and though I wanted to run, I had nowhere to go (it was a pit after all).  I tried to ignore it by deciding to give up completely.  [Again, I'm not sure what or how I got out of that despairing, but I did.  I am weak and discouraged and scared, but I am not despairing.]  I realized I have been working hard to ignore just how broken I am.
     In the recent weeks as I've floundered and struggled, my brokenness has been so big, and I have been so frail and small in the face of it.  It seems too much to bear on my own, and indeed it is.  I was reminded as I read a blog I follow, that as I walk in the truth of my own brokenness, I have to remember Who Christ is in my brokenness.  He is in my brokenness with me, though it is quite easy to forget that when my brokenness feels so big and I so small.
     I cannot bear up under the weight of my brokenness, but Christ can bear it for me, with me, as I learn to be honest with myself about my own brokenness, so I can then take my brokenness, with brutal honestly, before the throne of Grace where I find grace and mercy in time of need.  He has promised to be with me, to be present with me, in my brokenness, just as He has promised to listen to the desperate pleas as I pour out my  brokenness honestly before Him.
   
     I'm not exactly sure what learning to be honest about my brokenness with myself will be like.  I'm quite terrified of what lies ahead actually.  But I have learned, in the middle of this recent darkness, that if I am going to find healing, I must first own the broken fully.  He has promised to be in the broken with me and lead me to healing as I go through it.  I'm sure it will be messy.  I know it will be difficult.  I will likely fall into a few more pits.  But I know that I will only get to healing after I walk through the broken.
     Making my way through the broken will hurt, but I will be going with the Healer.  There are also a few close and dear friends He has placed around me to remind me the Healer is with me in the broken when the hurt seems unbearable.  So, with fear, frailty and faith, I go...with the Healer through whatever hurt my brokenness will bring.
   

Believing in the midst of broken

     It's been a little while since I posed.  I've had plenty going on in my head and have written a good bit in my pencil and paper journal (there really is no substitute for pencil and paper...call me old fashioned but I love it).  I've just been busy with my family.

     I have a poem I want to share with you though.  If you follow my Facebook page, you saw a Scripture I shared yesterday.  It is a passage I go to often when I find it difficult to breathe.  A particular verse stood out as I read this familiar to me passage the other night fighting for breath.  

"Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful.

The Lord preserves the simple; when I was brought low, He saved me.

Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.

For You have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling;

I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.

I believed, even when I spoke: "I am greatly afflicted";

I said in my alarm, "All mankind are liars."

Psalm 116:5-11

     What stood out to me was verse 10 where the psalmist says "I believed, even when I spoke" and then goes on to speak of his struggles and afflictions.  This is exactly what God has been teaching me...that I can pour out my raw emotions (when I am able to feel them), my hard questions, and my deep struggles to Him.  As I do that, I will not be condemned, but rather, He listens and cares.  Even as the psalmist spoke of his great afflictions to God, he still believed God and His promises as expressed in the verses prior.  

     God allows me, even expects me in my humanness, to break and question and hurt while still believing.  My struggles to make peace with the reality of abuse I live with does not negate my faith.  My faith anchors me in the stormy waters of healing from such experiences.  As I continue to face my past and claim the truth of my past for the first time, I am breaking.  I am completely falling apart under the weight of wounds I have tried to ignore but will not go away...but as I break, I still believe.

Still I Believe

For so many years I have trembled behind

Walls of numb to protect the child inside

But as I press on now those walls are crumbling

Panic sets in though I run I am stumbling

My then and my now they begin to collide

But each way I turn there's no safe place to hide

I struggle to reconcile my past and my present

Fighting against my reality and wishing it wasn't

Crushed by the truth and the first sting of grief

Here I am broken, yet still I believe

For too long I've ignored the wounds deep within me

Invisible pain that no eye could ever see

But these are wounds that time cannot heal

And pretending they aren't there can't make them less real

I try to hold the pieces of me together in my hands

But the weight of these wounds is too heavy to withstand

The air becomes thick as my breath fails my lungs

Shattered pieces start falling as I come undone

The tears escaping my eyes they show my soul bleed

Here I am broken, yet still I believe

All this time spent ignoring my truth but it's still here

So I search for the courage to face what I most fear

But as I stare in the face such a past I can't make sense

Of the horrors that live in my memories and I'm spent

Confusion and chaos wreak havoc on my mind

As I frantically search for the answers I can't find

Questions abound in the cries of my frail heart

Unable to settle my soul where do I start

Heavy words flood my thoughts but my tongue just can't speak

Here I am broken, yet still I believe

And this I believe that my God You will not fail

You will hold to Your promises though in my heart doubt prevails

I believe that You see every tear that I cry

And even the tears I won't let leave my eye

I believe You gave everything to call me Your child

Though I give You nothing but a heart crushed and defiled

I believe that You're giving me hope for tomorrow

That Your love and redemption will heal even this sorrow

So I fall apart in Your arms knowing my wounds You see

Here I am broken, yet still I believe

Questions and honest brokenness

     Over the last six months or so, the idea of pouring out all the hurts I feel and the feelings I wrestle with and bringing all my hard questions to God has come up over and over.  I have struggled deeply with that concept.  It kept coming up though, so I have been thinking about it a lot.  I've been asking a couple of people who are wiser and have greater understanding than I questions about asking God questions.  It has not been easy.
     I learned, when I was younger, that asking God the hard questions shows a lack of faith and calls into questions whether I really know Him.  I was also taught that pouring out my struggles to Him was complaining, and of course, complaining is a sin.  Somehow, I got in my head there is a right way and a wrong way to pray, and I needed to get it right.  Asking questions and pouring out honest struggles to Him did not make the cut of what I was allowed to pray.  So I didn't.
     Over the last six months, as this has been hanging around, it has been pointed out that all over Scripture, and particularly in the psalms, people ask God hard questions.  They ask Him with boldness, and they pour out their hearts to God in shocking ways.  They don't gloss over their feelings or struggles to make them look more put together for Him.  My struggle came in trying to reconcile what I clearly saw in Scripture with what I had been taught when I was younger.

...then I wrote a poem...

A Daughter's Plea

Dear God what am I supposed to do

I'm too broken and ashamed to come to You

I'm hurting and scared, why can't You see

Where is the comfort that You've promised me

You brought me to this journey Yourself

Am I left to walk it alone without help

So one day You'll wipe every tear from my eye

But what about the tears I've locked deep inside

I plead and I pray every day without end

Where is the rescue You said You would send

I'm weary, tired, beaten down from the fight

I give up, I'm just pieces of a shattered life

My daughter, I see you when you can't see Me

I will lead you and love you and set you free

I know that it hurts as I tend to your wounds

But after the tending the healing comes soon

Though the journey is long I won't leave your side

And when the road's rough, in My arms you can hide

Yet when I feel far away and you think you're alone

I will send you a friend for My care to be shown

Precious child My heart breaks as I see all those tears

And each prayer, silent or spoken, fills up My ears

I see your worn soul, I'll carry you through the fight

Sweet daughter, I love you, I'm for you, I'm restoring your life

     The questions flowed out of me despite my belief that it's wrong to ask hard questions and pour out honest emotions.  I wrote this, and I hated it.  It felt wrong to even write, but the words filled my head and wouldn't let me rest until they were out.  

     I shared it with the only pastor who has ever believed my story, who has been patient, compassionate, and caring.  We talked back and forth about it over the course of a couple of days...and then it clicked!  He pointed out psalm 22.  

"My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?  Why are 

You so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?

O, my God, I cry by day, but You do not 

answer, and by night, but I find no rest.

Yet, You are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.

In You, our fathers trusted; they trusted and You delivered them

To You they cried and were rescued; in You they 

trusted, and were not put to shame."  (vs. 1-5)

  

     Those are some hard questions, and that is raw, honest emotion.  But in the midst of his questions, he remembers what is true about God.  The psalmist is brutally honest with his struggles, but even in the questions he rests in remembering Who God is and what is true.  

     My pastor pointed out that I had done the same.  I began with hard questions and raw, honest emotion.  Then I remembered what is true about God.  It doesn't answer the questions or heal the hurt or take away the raw emotions, but it does settle my heart on what I do know in the midst of what I don't know.  My pastor said this..."You are preaching to yourself what is true about God even while questioning.  That, my friend, is faith."  

     It all made sense.  It isn't a lack of faith to be honest with God...it is a step in faith to be honest with Him.  He sees my heart anyways and already knows my questions and struggles whether I bring them to Him or not.  God welcomes my honesty, and He listens whether I can put words to my prayers or not.  He says in psalm 34...

"The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, and His ears toward their cry...

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit"  (vs. 15, 18)

     I am counted righteous in His eyes because of Christ's completed work on the cross for me.  His ears are attentive to my cries...my difficult, hard questions about a life that doesn't make sense...my feelings that flood me and leave me drowning as I struggle to cope...my raw, bleeding wounds that time has not healed...He hears them all and He draws me nearer to Himself!  

     He welcomes my honest brokenness.  And as I let go of all the broken pieces I've spent years trying to hold together, as I pour out the agonies I can't escape, I can still find rest in what I know to be true about God.  I do not have to fear His condemnation for my questions and my hurts, for Christ was condemned in my place.  

     Now I can go to the the very throne of grace with my deepest hurts and my toughest questions with freedom and confidence and there find grace and mercy.  That alone takes a burden off my back.  I may hide my past from countless people this side of heaven, but I do not have to hide from God.  I can come out of the crumbling walls I've built up around me and fall apart, completely broken, yet shielded and hidden in His arms.  And there I wait for His healing...broken, bleeding, questioning, but trusting Him because I know Who He is.

     My dear, sweet sisters, I know you hurt too.  I know you have questions...really hard questions.  He welcomes your questions too.  He listens to you pour out your honest brokenness and hurts to Him.  He draws you nearer to Himself as He sees your broken heart.  You may not get answers right away.  The pain won't be gone in an instant.  But...He is turning His ear to your cry, and while you fall apart in His arms, there is still rest for your soul in your brokenness because of Who He is.  

     As you lay in His arms, broken and bleeding and questioning, I am there with you.  Together we will ask the hard questions...cry as our wounds bleed...trust Who He is and learn to trust Who He is...we will wait for healing together in honest brokenness and unanswered questions.  We will fall apart freely before Him while He shields us and hides us in Him.    

     

      

In the in between

     I've been in a strange place lately.  I'm not drowning in the torrents of anxiety and panic that leave me clamoring for the emergency exit of this part of my life.  I was a few weeks ago, but I'm not anymore having backed off of what triggered the storm in the first place.  But when that storm died down, I didn't find myself okay and living my version of normal again either.  Instead of going from one extreme to the other, I was dropped off in this strange in between place, and I'm not sure what it is or if I've been here before.
     Despite this being unknown, I think that I'm in a place that good will come out of, and I'm not afraid of this unknown.  In this in between place, I am finding myself able to acknowledge, in my head at least, thoughts and feelings I have been unable and, quite frankly, unwilling to acknowledge up to this point.  I feel a sense of resignation...resigned to the fact that I cannot erase the abuse in my past or how it has colored and impacted my life.  I am not resigned to never getting better and finding healing, but rather, I find myself resigned to the truth that it happened.  I have not come to accept it, but I'm not running away from it anymore.  It's like I'm looking at it, examining it, figuring out what to do with it.  I know I have to keep it, but I haven't found the courage to call it my own.

     In this in between of not my normal but not drowning either, I have been able to put a name to a feeling that almost never leaves me though the strength of its grip varies with circumstance and time.  It is a feeling I have lived with for the majority of my life now.  The part of my life that I did not feel it almost feels like it wasn't my life at all, it was so long ago.  I first felt it when I was 13, and with each passing year, the roots have not just buried themselves within me, they have become me.  This feeling isn't merely how I feel.  This feeling is inseparable from who I am.  This...is shame.
     Let me say a bit about this shame that has eaten into me for more years than I'd like to count.  Much of the time, I feel shame, but it is more like a garment.  I have it on all the time, and it's just part of me.  It's there, and it is on me though it fits around me without extra discomfort.  Then something will trigger it.  Most of the time, I don't see this coming.  Anything can trigger it...a look on someone's face (whether someone I know or a stranger), a sound, a smell, a memory that pops up out of nowhere, a touch, a comment (almost always unrelated to anything shame-worthy), sometimes I don't know what the trigger is.  After this trigger sets it off, it is no longer like a garment I'm wearing as I go about my daily life, it's more like a straight jacket being pulled tighter and tighter.  I can't move.  I can't breathe.  The only thing I can feel is shame.
     But feeling shame isn't simple, and it doesn't stay in one place.  Shame hurts.  It hurts inside, but it also hurts outside.  It physically hurts to feel it sometimes.  It will tighten its grip on me so much so that my skin actually literally hurts.  When shame is gripping me, gestures that normally bring comfort become weapons to my soul.  Being hugged by my husband or children or friends becomes excruciating.  I will have to brace myself for impact, and what is meant to be a gesture of love and compassion becomes jarring and leaves me feeling shattered.  When I am touched unexpectedly, say tapped on the shoulder as someone tries to get my attention, I break inside from the physical pain I feel from the emotional pain of shame that is too great for words to convey.
     It takes a long time for the grip of shame to lessen to that which I can deal with, to what I am accustomed to.  While I wait for the physical pain to lessen, my body screams at me to be rid of my skin, rid of the pain.  I typically hide how much it hurts well.  Most don't know how much a simple touch can hurt me.  I don't shy away from their hugs because I don't want people to know how I feel, so I brace myself for brokenness with a smile on my face.  I'm always glad when it lets up to normal again.  There is no trick to get there, I just have to wait for it.

     I say that shame is inseparable from me, and I know many would say that isn't true.  In an attempt to encourage me, they would tell me it is not my shame but my coach's.  While they are correct in saying my shame belongs to my coach, it is still very much embedded in me.  I know that God has carried my shame and taken it on Himself to the cross.  I know that God does not see shame when He looks at me.  I know that my identity is in Christ and His completed work on the cross on my behalf.  I know the Sunday school truths.
     I also know that as of now, my shame is very much part of who I am.  I ask that you please don't dismiss that.  Hear where I am and come alongside me in the ugliness.  I do have hope that God will remove this shame from me, but it doesn't happen with the snap of the fingers.  Meet me in my shame, and don't try to take it from me.  If you do, you'll be ripping me apart.  Only God is capable of the difficult and precise work that must be done to remove my shame from me.  I promise you, I have hope that He will do that as He takes me down this journey.  I only need you to walk with me and understand.  I know you want to take it from me, but I need you to believe God will take it from me in His time and let Him work in His perfect ways.
     This applies to anyone walking alongside a survivor walking the road to healing also.  We know shame is not who we are, but at the same time shame is part of who we are as we walk this journey.  We will shed the shame as God gently works His healing in our souls, but it only hurts us more if you try to take it before He takes it from us.  Please be patient with us.  We want our shame gone as much as you do.  It hurts.  We don't like it.  We long for the day God takes it from us.

Shame

I live every day

With the crushing weight of shame

That I am told is not my own

It burns deep inside

Putting out any light

Of hope that once dared to glow

It rises within

Without warning begins

Ripping me apart at the core

From the look of pity

In the eyes that don't get me

I drown in my shame once more

From all the remembering

While I try forgetting

It cuts hard though the knife isn't mine

The past begins to feel

Like the present it's so real

For shame knows not the boundaries of time

So weak I cannot stand

It breaks the very heart of who I am

Until I no longer have even a name

Yet He still looks at me

Says "My daughter I'll help you see

My love reaches past the depths of your shame"

     This in between place I'm in is where I found a name for the most difficult and painful feeling I struggle with.  I say that I think good will come from this unknown in between because even just having a name for shame has helped me.  It doesn't take away what I feel, but it lets me talk through what I'm struggling with better with those who are able to help me.  I'm still not sure what this place is.  I'm still not sure I like being here, but this in between has given me a word I desperately needed.  Shame.
     Maybe this in between is where I need to be.  Maybe in between is where God works best...where I'm not overwhelmed from drowning or comfortable in my normal.  Maybe in between is where I find the words I have been looking for, the ability to accept my past as mine, the courage to lay all the broken pieces at the foot of the cross.  Maybe when I leave the in between, I'll be a little less broken.

People, hope, and a room

     A couple of weeks ago, I was crumbling.  I was falling apart inside.  I wanted to fall apart outside.  I came way too close to walking away and giving up.  I just hurt all over, inside and out, and I couldn't see hope anywhere.  If this journey was going to hurt so much and require more courage than I have, I needed a hope I could not find no matter how hard I strained my eyes to see.  Hope that the hurt would heal and the courage would come and the crumbled pieces would be rebuilt was beyond my grasp.  It was too abstract and out there, so to speak.  If it was there, I was too weak to hold on to it.

     Then hope started to find me again but in a way I did not expect.  I was far too fragile to hold on to hope myself, so God sent hope to me in a very tangible way...hope came in the form of people.

     I have come into contact with a few different types of people since being able to tell someone what happened for the first time.  There are plenty of people who simply do not know my story or the journey I'm on.  My story and my journey are not for everyone to share with me.  Of the people who do know, there are three general categories they fit into.

• people who hurt
• people who help but give up
• people who help and refuse to leave

     I don't lump people into the first two categories to be mean, and I hold no grudges against them.  I honestly believe that those who have hurt me once they knew were really trying their best to help.  I simply came to them with wounds they did not understand, and in their lack of understanding, they unintentionally caused more hurt.  Those who helped but gave up I also believe were just trying to help but found themselves in waters they could not navigate.  But each time someone said "that's enough, let's move on," it still cut a little deeper and left me more hopeless.

     The third group of people is by far the smallest group.  I only found people in that group within the last year or so of my life even.  While the abundance of people in the first two groups crushed what hope I had with every additional hurt and every walking away, the third group of people are living for me what hope is.  

     I am finding that when hope becomes abstract and too hard to hold onto, hope becomes tangible in the people who aren't walking away.  I'm finding that when hope is there but I'm too frail to cling to it, I see and hear and feel hope in the people who are walking this difficult journey with me.  Hope finds me in people because the people who are hope for me are overflowing with the care and love that comes from the only true Hope Giver.  They can be hope for me because they know the One who gives us hope.  When they love me as God loves me, His hope finds me in the middle of my crumbling, panicked, hurting soul that is drowning in hope-killing doubt.  He gives me hope in the people He sends to walk with me.

    

     The poem I am sharing with you now is what hope is like for me right now.  I have been trapped and chained by my past, and I liken that to being stuck in a dark room.  Hope was impossible until an actual person...someone I could see, talk to, listen to, touch...came into my room and sat down with me...gentle, loving, unafraid and unwilling to leave the room without me.  

     There are a few people who are the "someone" in the poem.  I am grateful for each one of them.  They are physical examples of a hope I find too abstract.  They are hope seen, heard, touched, and felt.  My dark room is still very dark, but slowly, one day at a time, it is getting lighter.  One day, with those who live out His hope before me, I will walk out of my room.  That day is not yet here, but His hope lived out in His people steady me on rocky ground and help me trust that day will come no matter how long it takes.

The Room

Chained alone in a room where horrors prevailed

The darkness has swallowed the truth of her tales

Though years have passed and the danger is gone

Trapped and haunted by memories, she can't move on

Countless people walk by but none of them see

The depths of her darkness or the room she can't leave

As life moves on despite her desperate hope quickly fades

She's stuck in a corner resigned to this place

She used to cry out hoping someone would care

Though she soon found out that no one would dare

To venture into her darkness hardly seemed worth the risk

Silence drowning her out, she's forgotten in the pit

Then one day someone comes and sits down beside her

Seeing past all her shame to the value inside her

Unafraid of her pain and brave in her dark

Gently, with love, this someone tends to her hurts

Persistent and patient, fighting her lies with truth

Bit by bit this someone shines light into her dark room

Time moves on as someone lives what hope, what love is

Being for her, for the first time, the hands and feet of Jesus

This someone remains and will not leave her until

She has strength to stand up and, together, she'll walk out healed

A gift I can't yet accept

     In the last year, I have had more compassion and love freely given to me, spoken to me, poured out over me than I have in probably my entire life.  What has been even stranger to me than the fact that people are showing me kindness like I've never known is the fact that most of them were strangers just a year ago.  These are people who did not know me at all until they knew the worst thing about me...and they reacted with compassion.  I, on the other hand, panicked.
     I found myself curious about what I was hearing but desperately wanting to pull back at the same time.  I kept asking questions, though, and conversations took turns I never expected until I found myself on a journey I wasn't looking for.  In fact, I was pretty sure this journey didn't even exist.
     Now, a year later, the same people are still freely bestowing compassion and care over me.  You would think that after a full year of pouring out kindness and refusing to walk away even in the most difficult of valley's would be enough to convince me that I could accept this gift of care being offered.  At times I have reached out to touch it, curious about what it is.  However, even when I have refused to take it or even look at it, they haven't ever pulled it away from me.  They have left it in front of me...waiting for me to receive what they are already giving.
     As time goes on and I follow the twists and turns of this road, I find myself more and more curious about this gift before me.  I think more and more about touching it, holding it, looking at it, and maybe even accepting it.  But I'm still quick to push people away and wonder when they'll give up.  I wait for them to withdraw the gift as I battle the push and pull in my head.  I question how long they will hold out before giving up like everyone else.
     But they keep holding it out for me, leaving it in front of me, inching it closer to me the more I push against them, still waiting for the day I take hold of what they say is mine.  I hear the gentle, loving words they speak to me, and it stings.  They say things like:

"You are welcome here."
"I care about you."
"You are safe here."
"I will do all I can to protect you."
"You are free to tell your story."
"I will listen."
"I want to listen."
"I am not going anywhere."
"I am committed to walking with you with Jesus."
"I want to understand."
"It was not your fault."
"You are loved."

     Such words should bring peace and comfort, but instead they bring doubt and confusion.  I scoff to myself, certain the words I'm hearing are not genuine, pushing the gift away.  But the longer the people saying these things stick with me, the more I start to wonder if they are true.  My curiosity over this gift starts to grow again.  I think this curiosity might be the hope I keep hearing about stirring within me, though I'm not yet certain about that.

     As I consider the gift before me, I realize that somehow, somewhere along the line, I built walls of stone around myself.  I'm in the middle of them with all the pieces of my broken and bleeding heart.  Beyond the walls, there is a layer of ice around my heart to preserve what's left.  Fear won't let me tear the walls down and shame won't let the ice melt.
     Over the years, people have come along who I thought I might let in, who seemed like they would help.  Then they picked up a hammer and began to beat the stone walls around me.  The harsh sound of each blow led me to strengthen my walls instead of help bring them down.  It never took long for those people to give up on me and walk away.  I wasn't worth their time or effort.  Each time they left, I sat shaking in the middle of my prison, adding more stone to my walls and ice around my heart glad they left but more broken than before they came.
     I think of all that as I consider this gift of love and care and compassion that is before me now and has been before me for the last year.  But the givers of this gift did not pick up just a hammer and begin swinging when they reached my walls.  They picked up a small chisel too to set to the tedious and time consuming task of chipping away at my walls rather than blasting them with horrifying blows.
     They remain persistent and steady in their work, which they seem to not see as work at all but as an overflow of the love and compassion of Christ in them.  If that is the case, I never knew God was so compassionate over broken hearts...at least not hearts broken by abuse.
     The gentle clink of the chisel to stone is somehow comforting as I sit wondering what I should do.  Then I look around and see myself covered in blood and the pieces of my heart I can't put back together, and I panic.  I know they are getting closer to me.  I know they will reach me one day if they maintain their persist work, and I panic as I see my own disaster.  I frantically try to rebuild what they have worked so hard to chip away.
     With each day they keep on the tiresome work of chiseling away at my walls in hopes of one day reaching my heart, the curiosity inside me grows.  I think of this gift before me again and somehow the ice that has preserved the pieces of my heart begin to soften and water drips from them.  There is something in that gift that warms and melts away what is frozen.
     Then as I see my brokenness and panic, I push it away and try to harden the ice again and build the walls stronger.  Yet they keep working and the gift keeps taunting me.  I settle a little quicker and the portions I attempted to rebuild come down easier than the rest of the wall, for those pieces had not hardened in place yet.
     As I dance this back and forth inside the little prison I created with my walls, I find the gift harder and harder to push away.  I hear the people outside chiseling away little by little with a persistence that baffles me.  I take time to sit and wonder what will happen if they reach the end of my walls and enter the small circle inside where I am, where my heart is.
     I know what they will find when they get here.  That is what makes it so hard to accept this gift.  I wonder if they will walk away after all that work once they see the mess inside.  Certainly they have an idea of what awaits them, but they can't see the entirety of the mess like I do.  But they keep pressing on with compassion which frightens me.  Compassion is so unknown to me.  I'm afraid compassion will hurt just as much as it hurt to be crushed so many years ago, so between the push and pull, I cower and wait for them to leave...but they haven't.
     I try to fortify my stone walls and thicken the ice preserving my heart in an attempt to discourage them.  It's not because I'm hardened and beyond hope.  It is because I'm afraid of the hope those hands offer.  I know it is exhausting working to reach my heart.  I know because it's exhausting for me to keep trying to protect it.
     I know those who are trying to get there are doing so out of love.  I just don't know how to accept that...but I can't seem to push this gift away.  There is something about it that draws me to it but also something that repels me fiercely.  Push and pull...hope and fear...I wonder how it will end.

Don't...but what if

     My last post was more open and honest and revealing of the ugly truth of what it's like to fight for hope and healing after abuse.  I've been encouraged to keep writing from that place.  That isn't an easy thing to do, and the person who encouraged me to do that knows very well the weight of what she was saying.  Had her words come from almost anyone else, I would have quickly scoffed the idea away, but maybe she knows what she's talking about.

     I've been thinking a lot about being honest, truly honest, about it all...with myself, with those who God has placed on this road with me, with God Himself.  I'm very good at making it all seem like it wasn't so bad and doesn't effect me that much.  I've learned that is called minimizing.  I've been doing that for many years now, long before I knew it had a name.  

     I have found it really difficult *not* to minimize and instead to be brutally honest about everything...how bad the abuse was, how deeply it hurts both then and now, how tight a grip it has on my daily life even in the present, how I struggle, the emotions I fight against.  I'm working on it, because I know that being painfully open about all of that will be good in the long run and is actually moving towards healing (even though the intense pain of it all makes it seem like a really bad idea and something to run from...I mean haven't I been dealt enough pain, why would I purposely face more?).  But it is HARD!  Hard isn't even a strong enough word, but I can't seem to find a word that is.

     I have two poems to share today.  The first one I wrote a few months back.  I wasn't in a bad place when I wrote it.  When I was done, I was actually kind of in shock at what had just come out of my head, maybe also my heart.  It is not a pretty piece of writing.  There is nothing beautiful or palatable about it.  Then again, there is nothing beautiful or palatable about abuse either.  

     This poem is a combination of voices I have heard over the years...the many, long years.  The combination of voices meshed into one really loud voice over time.  This voice I hear every day.  

Don't

Hush don't speak

Close your eyes so you don't see

Don't touch so you won't feel

The hurt so deep your life it steals

Don't move so you don't break

Don't forget your life is at stake

Don't stop listening so you always hear

The silence surrounding you proving nobody cares

Don't trust and don't fight

Don't hope there is no light

Don't run there's nowhere to go

Don't tell they don't want to know

If you think they'll help they really won't

You're all alone, on your own, so just don't

     Those words are harsh, hopeless, and cold, but they are very powerful and loud.  I am afraid many who have lived through abuse hear much of the same message in their own heads after hearing it in real life for so long.  I am still stuck with "DON'T" being yelled at me though no one else can hear.  I know in my head that everything "DON'T" says to me isn't true, but he speaks loud and clear and over anyone or anything else.  It is so hard to fight against him, but I know that I must.

--I'm offered hope from a pastor who genuinely cares..."DON'T, he's a pastor...remember what happened with the last pastor?"  "DON'T, you know hope is a lie...don't you remember the last time you believed hope was real?"

--Someone says "I'm here, I want to listen"..."DON'T believe that someone cares...listen to the silence of everyone else who doesn't care."

--Someone tells me they are not walking away..."DON'T fall for that lie again...remember the last person who said that?"

--Someone says "I want to hear your story"..."DON'T listen to their empty promises...they will run when they hear what you have to say."

--Someone says "I care about you"..."DON'T even go there again...you know you are worthless and no one would ever care; you've walked to that dead end before."

     But somewhere deep down, there is something that won't let me walk away.  For all the screaming "DON'T", somewhere there is a tiny whisper that spurs me on when "DON'T" tells me to give up.  This is where the second poem comes in.  I wrote this just today as I've been contemplating this post.

What If

What if this time isn't the same

What if this hope is different

What if good really does comes from this pain

What if this hurt is well spent

What if this hand reaching out to me now

Really will not let me go

What if this hand steadies me somehow

When I stumble and the going is slow

What if the smile I see in those eyes

Refuses to look away and frown

When the storm catches me by surprise

And the water rises as I drown

What if this woman who tells me she cares

Will really stand with me unafraid

What if she truly wants my burden to share

What if she really will not walk away

What if I'm really not alone anymore

What if she'll sit with me when I can't get up

What if she'll help me keep pushing forward

What if I take just one more small step

--What if this hope is different?

--What if they really do want to listen?

--What if they will be the first one who really won't walk away, who will really see me through this?

--What if they really do want to hear my story to help me walk through it?

--What if they really do care?

     "What if" speaks so gently while "DON'T" screams at me with a harshness I'm sure I deserve.  Many days "DON'T" drowns out "What if" with his fear and brutality.  "What if" doesn't give up though.  She gently whispers the possibility that what "DON'T" screams is wrong.  Even when I can't hear "What if," I feel her.  "DON'T" fights, but "What if" doesn't fight back.  She simply stands her ground with confidence...a confidence I wish I had.  

     My thoughts are pulled in two different directions.  I go back and forth between what "DON'T" screams, which is what I believe to be true, and what "What if" whispers softly, which is what I want to believe.  "DON'T" scares me into sticking with him, but "What if" speaks with a care and love I long for.  I want "What if" to win the war raging in my heart and mind, but "DON'T" strikes a fear in me that I can't seem to break free from.

     Do you feel the tension?  I can't escape it.  "DON'T" but "What if" but "DON'T" but "What if" but "DON'T"...and on it goes, every day.

"DON'T"......but "What if?"...but......"What...if?"

      

It all seems so backwards

     When I decided to start a blog, part of the reason was to maybe let even one person who is living in the aftermath of sexual abuse know that she is not alone, someone else really does understand.  I remember how much it meant to me when I finally realized I really wasn't the only one.  I knew that, statistically speaking, there were others out there, but when it became real and I had a real person to attach to the statistics I was part of, my heart broke for the person who understood but I found great encouragement and strength knowing I really wasn't alone...I really wasn't crazy in my struggles or doomed for the future because of my past.  I want others to know that they are not alone.  I want to encourage, but I want to be honest too.
     I find it easy to wrap up my writing in a pretty bow, though, which makes it very easy for someone who does not know me or where I am in my journey to get the idea that I am struggling a lot less than I really am.  It is easy to read what I have written and leave with the idea that I realize something once, and instantly I am changed because of it and better off than I was before.  Even writing anonymously, I am tempted to hide just how ugly and broken and messy and hard this journey is.
     While there are certainly things I would never share publicly (anonymous or not some things just don't need to be shared), I want others to see the struggle between what I know to be true and how I feel.  I want others to see the struggle between my past and my present and my future.  I want others to see the struggle between what I know God says about me and Him and what I think about me and Him.  I want others to see God work in the struggle, and one day I hope others will have this blog to read through and see how God relieves the struggle.  I want His healing and hope to be seen in the struggle and how it plays out.
     I live every day with a tension about this journey.  Every step I'm supposed to take feels like the opposite of what my entire mind and body are screaming at me.  Everything seems backwards.  I want to move forward, but to do that, I have to turn around and walk through my past.  I want to find healing, but to step towards healing means walking through all the hurt first.  I want to get to light, but I must first tread through the darkness to get there.  I keep hearing people say I am strong and courageous, yet with every step I feel smaller and more broken and fear paralyzes me.  Every step in front of me seems harder than the one before.  Every fiber of my being screams at me to stop, that this is not right, that it should not hurt this much or be this hard.  I struggle between what I want this journey to be and what it really is.
     I wrote this poem in pieces over many months time.  With each section I finished, I knew it wasn't done.  It just didn't feel complete.  The sections aren't even in the order I wrote them, but they are the way they should be.  I want you to know, if you are living in the same aftermath as I am, the struggle is normal.  The tension is just there.  I don't know how to make it go away.  You are not alone, and you are not crazy.  I do believe that it will get better.  I'm not exactly sure how that plays out and often times feel like I'm just being tossed around on a crazy ride with no rhyme or reason.  Even in that, I know God is bigger than the sin done against me and against you.  Some days that truth brings comfort and other days that is just knowledge in my head that seems to mean nothing even though I know it should mean everything.  That is part of the struggle too.  I wish there could be more encouragement in this.  I only hope that you find encouragement in reading about the struggle that wages war inside me daily.  I hope it is encouraging to know you are not the only one who feels it.

Paradox

I took off running
I won't turn around
I keep on searching
Looking for safe ground
But no matter where I go
And no matter how fast
I just can't escape
The grip of my past
I'm weak and exhausted
But keep running somehow
Until a gentle hand stops me
Says let me walk with you now
I want to keep going
But I'm stopped in my tracks
If I want to move forward
I will have to look back

I'm curled on the sofa
I'm trembling with fear
Trying to hide under blankets
Even so I am still here
They say I am brave
They tell me I'm strong
But they don't know me
I know they are wrong
They've said it takes courage
For my story to be shared
If this is courage
Why am I so scared

I turn my head
So no one can see
The hot bitter tears
Rolling down my cheeks
They burn like fire
As they fall to the ground
My heart breaking
Without making a sound
Each tear that falls
Brings life to my wounds
Once hidden in darkness
Now in the light shown
The pain seems too much
Deep anguish prevails
As I open my mouth
To speak the truth of my tales
Before it gets better
I'm told it gets worse
Because this road to healing
Has been paved with hurt

For days when the battle seems lost

     I have talked about this season in my life being a journey...a long, difficult walk out of darkness towards light, out of hurt and towards healing.  That description is certainly accurate, but this is more than just a journey, it is a battle.  In this battle, I am fighting for hope, fighting for truth, fighting for rest.  The battle is, at times, completely and utterly exhausting.  Some days I wake up still weary and worn from the battle the day before, and I can't see how I can keep going.  The battle rages long and hard, and I feel like I'm losing.

     Recently, the battle got fierce.  I was in a store to pick up a couple of things when something triggered a flood of memories and panic began to take over.  I was paralyzed yet desperate to leave the aisle I was stuck in.  The battle, in that moment, raged hard.  The memories came so quickly and unexpectedly.  They were like a tidal wave over me.  One moment I was standing on solid ground and the next I was completely under water.
     I managed to get out of the store okay and got home.  That evening, when the house was quiet and I was alone with my thoughts, the memories just kept flooding my mind, and nothing I did would make them go away.  I have felt the suffocating effects of being stuck under water ever since until the water left my eyes in a wave of tears I wish I could get back because crying is something I hate and feel ashamed of.  The tears rid my lungs of the water I was drowning on until I found my way back to numb and stable.  In the drowning, I was certain I was losing the battle.  Hope was inconceivable, truth so tangled in the lies I couldn't find it, rest just a dream I kept wishing I could have.
     I don't remember why, but I went to a familiar passage of Scripture as the drowning turned to tears and tears washed me back into numb.

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

    and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you."  Isaiah 43:2

     All over Scripture, trials are spoken of in terms of "when" rather than "if." They are coming. Struggles and suffering and pain are part of life on this side of heaven. The types of trials and suffering and struggles are different for everyone, but everyone faces them. This battle of a journey is one of mine.
     The struggles and suffering of life are likened to water and fire in many parts of Scripture including in this verse. The water and fire are upon me, but I am not alone. God promises that I will not be overwhelmed or consumed. I can tell you, it doesn't feel like that often. This journey feels like a never ending cycle of feeling that turns into falling that lands me back into numb until I feel something again to start the cycle over. In the feeling and falling, I feel very overwhelmed and consumed. He promises I won't be though. My feelings can lie to me, and the truth is, I will not be utterly consumed or overwhelmed. When I don't feel that way, I have to take Him at His Word. I don't have that down, but He is teaching me, slowly but surely.
     The nerd in me came out again as I pondered this truth trying to fight the lie that I can't keep going and giving up is the only way to not be consumed and overwhelmed. I looked up "overwhelm" in Strong's concordance. That word also means "to conquer." What a promise! The water and fire will not conquer me, no matter what my feelings say. God is with me in the water and the fire, and He will not allow them to conquer me regardless of how far under I go or how hot the flames feel. Rather...

"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors 
through Him who loved us."  Romans 8:37

     Not only will God not allow the water and fire of struggles and suffering to conquer me, He has already conquered them for me. He says I am more than a conqueror through Christ who conquered it all on the cross because He knew I could not conquer any of it on my own.

     I said one part of this battle is fighting for truth. The lie I believe is that I am consumed and overwhelmed to the point of no return, that I am completely and utterly overtaken and left without hope. While I may not feel much like a conqueror when I feel like the battle is lost, the God of truth says He has already conquered the battle I think I'm losing for me. The truth is that I will not be conquered, for Christ has conquered for me that which I could not conquer myself.

Remember, daughters of the King, He has conquered the 

battle you feel like you are losing right now. You feel like the 

fight is too much, the battle too far gone for you to be victorious, 

but God says you will not be conquered, for He has already 

conquered it. You are more than a conqueror through the

One Who has conquered every battle on your behalf.

My delight is in her

     Today is a Monday.  Monday can be a refreshing start to a new week, or  it can be a nagging reminder of the drudgery that life can be sometimes.  This morning, God refreshed me, and I want to share it with you.  This morning, God settled my recently anxious heart with His declaration of how He cares for me.  This declaration covers all His children, and I pray you find encouragement in it too.

     I was looking for a cross reference this morning when I came upon these verses.  The cross reference has fed my soul more than what I was initially studying.  Isaiah 62:4-5 says this:

You shall no more be termed "Forsaken," and your land 

shall no more be termed "Desolate," but you shall be 

called "My Delight Is in Her," and your land "Married;" 

for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. 

For as a young man marries a young 

woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as 

the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, 

so shall your God rejoice over you.

     What sweet, precious words from our Heavenly Father!  

     As a child in the midst of abuse, I was forsaken.  Those who could have helped me had no clue what was going on, and the one adult who ever questioned me about my coach hurting me took my assurance he was not at face value and did nothing despite her gut telling her something was off (why else would she ask).  

     After it was over and I found the ability to tell someone, I have had more people walk away than I care to count.  Over and over people I thought could help, would help, saw my mess and my brokenness and with their actions called me "Forsaken."  Time and again it was clear...I was termed "Forsaken" even by God's people.

     Maybe, unfortunately it's likely, you have been termed "Forsaken" just like me.  That name is more than a name, and it stings.  It cuts deep, and it isn't easily forgotten or replaced.

But God calls me and you "My Delight Is in Her!"

     I'm a bit of a nerd, so I looked up the word "delight" used here in the Strong's concordance.  It is defined as "a valuable thing, acceptable, delight, matter."  Dear sister, while others have called you and me "Forsaken" and deemed our broken mess not worth their time or effort, our Father in heaven says we are valuable to Him.  We are acceptable, brokenness and shame and hurt and all, to Him.  We are a delight to Him.  We *matter* to Him.  As the psalmist says, such truth is too wonderful for me.  This is a truth I will have to think on and remind myself daily as I don't believe this most days, but He says it.  He says it, so it is true.  He has renamed us.  No longer our we named "Forsaken."  We now have the precious name of "My Delight Is in Her."  

     

     The end of verse 5 is sweet balm to my soul too.  "so shall your God rejoice over you."  I will never forget the look on my husband's face as I walked down the aisle at our wedding.  The joy was inexpressible with words, but his face said enough.  That was just a small, imperfect glimpse of the joy God pours over me.  His delight in you and me leads Him to rejoice over us.  He treasures us even when others are not willing to walk this hard road with us for the sake of their own comfort.  God calls us "My Delight Is in Her," and He shows it by rejoicing over us!

My dear, beloved sisters, you are a delight to the 

One who created you!  You are valuable to Him.

He accepts you with all your wounds and delights

in you because you matter to Him!  He rejoices 

over you now and forever.  No longer are you 

"Forsaken."  You are now "My Delight Is in Her."

He fights for me

     When I was younger,  I had to fight a monster.  He put a face to evil and intruded where he was not welcome.  I was a rather naive middle schooler when the abuse began, and I was forced into a battle I could never win.  It was a battle I was much to young to fight in, but I had no one to fight for me.  With no one to fight on my behalf, I fought as best as my little mind and body could against an evil larger than life.  In fighting that battle, I was also fighting just to stay alive.  There were multiple times I feared I would lose that battle either at his hands or my own, but by nothing short of a miracle, I am still alive...but I'm also still fighting even though the abuse itself is long over.
     Through the years everything was happening, I don't remember wanting anyone to fight for me.  I was simply numb.  I just wanted to make it to another day still breathing.  I was more afraid of what would happen if anyone who had the ability to fight for me found out.  I was certain his threats would all prove true, and that fear was more powerful than my desire to be protected as someone else more equipped than myself engaged in battle.
     The years after it all ended were years of silence and denial, then one day, the weight was too much, and I "confessed" what I thought were my own unforgivable sins.  It was in the years following that very first disclosure that I longed for someone to fight for me...to fight for truth, to fight for hope, to fight for healing...because I couldn't hold up in battle any longer.  The years of fighting as such a young girl had left me broken and battered beyond recognition inside.
     My battle was no longer against the evil waiting for me every day to take more of what was not his.  That battle had past, and I did not win; fighting on my own, I never had a chance to.  Now my battle was for myself.  I was fighting to live again.  I was fighting for truth.  I was fighting for hope.  I was fighting for redemption and healing.  But I had no more fight left in me, and once again, I found there was no one to fight for me...not even in the church--in fact, especially not in the church.  It seemed there was no reason to fight at all, so I stopped.
     God is an incredible God though.  He knew what I needed even when I didn't.  He moved my family (which I was not happy about), and we started our new life in a new state where we knew pretty much no one.  I figured that at the very least, I could finally ignore my past for good and no one had to know.  I could safely hide in our new hometown, because there was no one there who knew what I was hiding from.  God had my past waiting for me when we got there though, and after years and years of giving up the fight, God sent someone to tell me that God was fighting for me.  God was *for* me.
     To say I was skeptical of such a bold statement would be a vast understatement, but hearing that stirred within me that long lost hope that someone would fight for me.  I may have given up, but I still wanted someone to care enough to stand up for me against the lies and fight for truth and hope and healing.  Despite how much I did not believe what I was being told, I stuck around to hear more from this person, who also happened to be a pastor (and in my experience, pastors were dangerous...I had steered clear of my story in a pastors care for ten years).  I kept asking questions.  He kept offering patient and gentle answers, even to the same questions over and over again.  He never wavered in telling me that God was for me, that God was fighting for me.  It was nice to hear, but words alone meant nothing.  I needed to see it.  I needed God to make that real.
     A number of months after I first was told God was for me and fighting for me, I found myself learning to study His Word for myself in psalm 18.  It's been a long, ongoing, and very profound study for me.  That psalm has quite literally changed my life and is being used by God both as an anchor to steady me on this rough journey and a guide as I continue along it with Him.  It is a psalm written by David after God delivered him from the hand of Saul after many, many years of running for his life in the wilderness.  If anyone can understand fighting for your own life, it would be David.  My fight and David's fight were different in nature, but for both of us, our lives were at stake.  That similarity alone helped this passage resonate with me as I read and studied it.
     While looking at individual truths the verses of this chapter contain has been quite beneficial, and I continue to keep at it, reading the psalm as a whole proved much more profitable than I could have anticipated.  I could write for hours about what I have learned, but I will condense it for the sake of this (already lengthy) post.  I highly recommend taking the time to read psalm 18 as well.  It is 50 verses that are well worth your time.  I will start with verse 6 though.
     In verse 6, David cried out to God in the midst of his distress.  Remember, this distress David is in is a fight for his very life.  His cries to God are ones of desperation for help and deliverance.  He takes comfort in knowing God hears him, but he cries out nonetheless.  What I found remarkable, though, was that God answered him in a mighty way in the very next verse.

"Then the earth reeled and rocked;

the foundations also of the mountains trembled

and quaked, because He was angry." Ps. 18:7

     David cried out to God, and God answered.  God was angry at the plight David's enemies had His precious son in.  God heard David's prayers, and He moved the earth and mountains to come to the rescue of His child and fight for David.  In verses 8-19, God comes down to rescue David from enemies that were too strong and mighty for him, to support David when his foes rose up against him, to fight for David in a battle David could not fight on his own, and all because God delighted in David.  He came down from heaven to fight for His child, and He fights with a power none can match.  God does not fall to the power of any man.  When God fights, God always reigns victorious.

     Later in the psalm, David finds himself preparing for battle again, but this battle God has ordained for him to fight himself.  Thankfully, he is not left to fight in his own strength.

"He trains my hands for war,

so that my arms can bend a bow of 

bronze...For You equipped me with strength 

for the battle; You made those who 

rise against me sink under me."  Ps. 18:34, 39

     When God wanted David to fight, He provided the training and the strength to David that was necessary to win the battle.  God equipped David for the fight he would face.  David was not left to his own strength to fight the enemy.  God trained and equipped him from the inside out.  He gave David strength inside to withstand the mental toll a battle takes, and He also gave David the physical strength it would take to be victorious against those who came against God's child.  David was victorious, because God fought through David.

     How amazing it was to see that God fought for David by rescuing him when the battle was for God to fight on David's behalf and by fighting through David when David was to rely on His strength and training for the fight he was facing.  The most amazing part of it all is that God is unchanging.  He is the same God now as He was when He fought for David.  If He fought for David because He delighted in His child, He fights for me because I, too, am His child.  

     At times, He will fight by rescuing me out of the battle when my enemy is too strong and I too weak.  He will, at those times, wrap me in His protection while He fights the battle I cannot withstand.  Other times, He will call me to stand tall and enter the battle myself.  He does not leave me alone in those battles though.  He trains and equips me with all the strength I need to fight the battle...both inner strength and outward strength.  He will fight for me, but in those times, His fighting for me will be Him fighting through me.  

     I spent years just waiting for someone to fight for me, to stand up for me as I couldn't stand on my own broken feet.  I needed someone to fight for the truth I cannot see in the middle of the tangled web of lies that has made its home in my head.  I needed someone to fight for the hope I don't always see.  I needed someone to fight for the redemption and healing I struggle to believe is waiting for me.  I needed someone to care enough to fight for me...for my life...someone to say it wasn't right and I did not deserve it.  

     I had no clue that there was Someone with me, fighting for me all along.  I needed someone to show me God was fighting for me, caring for me, saying it wasn't right and I didn't deserve it.  God is fighting for me, but He is also placing other people in the battle with me and Him.  I cannot always see how He is fighting for me, and at times, I still fall prey to the lie that He doesn't care and isn't fighting for me.  Each time, He gently reminds me, in one way or another, that He is for me in every step of this fight...this journey to healing I am on.

     My dear, sweet sisters, He is *for* YOU!  He is fighting for truth in the middle of your tangled web of lies.  He is fighting for hope when you think it's gone.  He is fighting for redemption and healing when you think that is just for fairy tales.  He is fighting for you!  He cares for you enough to fight for you!  Just like He did for David, He will shake the earth and mountains to fight for you because He delights in you, His daughter.  He is standing up to say it was not right and you did not deserve it.  He cares enough to fight for you.  Some days, that means He fights for you while you just try to breathe.  Other days, He will give you a strength you did not know you had to fight in ways you did not know you could.  Those days He is fighting for you by fighting through you.  Each day the battle will look different and the same, but no matter what the day brings, HE FIGHTS FOR YOU!  And He fights for me too.