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.

In my Father's keeping

     Like many people, I am moved by beautiful imagery captured on film or on canvas.  The palette of God is unmatched, and there are no words to adequately express what is seen by way of hearing.  But no matter how captivating an image can be, I find the images created among the black and white words of a page to be more vivid than anything I have ever seen with my own eyes.  That is simply how God has created me.  I also do not have an eye for capturing beauty with a camera or a paint brush, but I feel quite at ease stringing words together to paint images just as lovely.
     As I was reading tonight, God allowed the words I was reading to paint a beautiful image of Him in my mind.  It's quite late here where I am, but when I find words, I just can't seem to rest until I get them out.  In light of that, let me share with these black and white words on a screen the image painted in my mind by black and white words on a page earlier this evening.  I pray the image is as powerful for you as it is for me.

     I recently picked up the book "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom.  She was a Christian who hid Jewish people during the Holocaust.  She was caught but survived her time in a concentration camp.  The book is her story.
     I was reading the second chapter which spoke of some memories of hers when she was a little girl, decades before Hitler rose to power.  She mentioned one particular time she had with her father.  Her father would take her regularly on a train to Amsterdam.  She often used the time to have a chance to talk with her father without her siblings and extended family there.  It was just a time with her father she treasured.  This particular time she was about ten or eleven.  She had read something in school and didn't know what it meant.  She took the time to ask her father, hoping for an answer which none had been willing to provide before him.  Like most kids, she was curious about topics that were well beyond her years.  Her question was a hard one and the answer was equally difficult.  Her father's response was incredibly wise.
     Her father took down his travel case and asked her to carry it off the train for him.  When she couldn't, she told him it was too heavy for her as it was filled with watch parts and clock parts (her father did clock and watch repairs for his living).  Here are the following paragraphs.

"Yes," he said.  "And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his

little girl to carry such a load.  It's the same way, Corrie, with knowledge.

Some knowledge is too heavy for children.  When you are older and stronger

you can bear it.  For now you must trust me to carry it for you."

And I was satisfied.  More than satisfied--wonderfully at peace.  

There were answers to this and all my hard questions--for 

now I was content to leave them in my father's keeping.

     What a beautiful picture of a father's love and care and protection of his daughter.  She had asked a question in which the answer was beyond her little years and more than her little heart would have been able to bear.  Her father knew that one day the knowledge she sought would be given, but he understood that the particular moment they were in was not the right time.  He explained she would know one day, but at that time, the answer would be too heavy.  He asked her to trust him to carry the knowledge that was too much for her to carry on her own until she was strong enough to bear the weight when her maturity caught up with her curiosity.  In her childlike wonder with her innocence still intact, she was at peace leaving the answers to her hard questions safely in her father's keeping.

     Oh how much more does my Father in heaven love and care and protect me, His daughter, than Corrie's father could love, care and protect her!  The gentle and patient love and protection of Corrie's father is just a small glimpse of God's fatherly love and protection of His children.  With this picture, my heavenly Father is gently reminding me to trust Him to carry the knowledge that is too heavy for me on this journey right now.  I am spurred on to rest in the same peace young Corrie found as I leave the answers I am not ready for safely in my Father's keeping.

     So often, I find myself frustrated with the journey.  I want to snap my fingers and somehow deal with all the hurt all at once, so I can get to the healing faster.  I don't want to move slowly through each memory that feels more present than past, each lie I don't know how to let go of, each truth that brings with it the need to face feelings I have long sought to pretend never even existed.  I want to get it all over with, but God is calling me to a different journey than the one I want.  It is slow.  It often times hurts.  Frequently I feel like healing is more of a dream than a promise I'll see fulfilled one day.  It is a path through my own brokenness that I keep trying to hold together even when He's calling me to lay it down in His loving care.  Many days it feels more like a battle than a path I'm walking, and I reach the end of the day beaten and bruised and exhausted.  

     He is only giving me little bits of knowledge at a time on this beaten road, and He is asking me to trust Him with the knowledge He knows is too heavy for me to carry right now.  He is reminding me of His perfect care for me.  I struggle to find peace in not knowing the answers even though I know they rest safely in my Father's care.  Unlike young Corrie, my innocence is gone.  Finding solace in such an answer is not an easy request for me.  But the picture of how my Father cares for me, loves me, protects me, is one I will not soon forget.  

     For too many years there was no one who cared for me, loved me, protected me.  I always wanted someone who would, but that person never came.  Now He is here, and He is calling me to entrust into His keeping the answers, the memories, the truths, the feelings that are too heavy for me to carry right now.  He will carry them for me until I am strong enough to carry them myself.  He knows when that will be, and He will be ready to guide me through that time of learning what I cannot handle now.  The knowledge is never easy when it is given, but He knows when best to give it.  He is saying to me now "Some knowledge is too heavy for [you now.]  When you are older and stronger you can bear it.  For now you must trust Me to carry it for you."  And I pray "[Father help me be] content to leave them in [Your] keeping."

When the light in the darkness hurts

     It's no secret that abuse is dark.  If you speak to anyone who has been abused or walked with someone who was even without experiencing it personally, you will hear the imagery of darkness and light a lot.  From the moment abuse starts, a darkness unlike any other sets in, but when the abuse stops, the darkness does not lift.  It sticks around.  It suffocates.  It traps.  It also somehow feels safe.  It protects.  It comforts in the most uncomfortable of ways.  As the years add up and the darkness only grows, it somehow becomes familiar.  The darkness hides secrets.  It hides hurts.  It hides pain.
     Those secrets, hurts and pains are ones that I want to wish away.  I don't want to know they are there.  I don't want to feel them or acknowledge them, and the darkness is just enough of a band aid to dull the secrets, hurts and pain ever so slightly to allow me to function and live.  The darkness is an invisible cloak that offers me a feeling of safety and a hiding place, but the very darkness that feels like it is protecting me from my own pain and secrets suffocates and overwhelms me.  Over time, the darkness I have fought so hard to hide behind started to warp into a burden I can't stand up under.  My darkness is both my place of safety and of suffering.
     When I began to walk this path towards healing, I unknowingly started walking out of the darkness I hate yet cherish.  God is light, and He shines His light into the darkness, exposing it for what it is.  His light shatters the darkness of lies and the light of truth takes its place.  Light is, of course, better than darkness.  Truth is, most certainly, better than lies.  However, the light can bring with it excruciating pain.
     To explain this better, allow me to make a comparison.  Think of a time when you were in a dark place.  Maybe you were in the shade of a large tree, or inside a house with all the lights turned off and windows covered.  Have you ever left this dark, shaded place and stepped into the brightness of the sun?  When you do, you turn your eyes away.  The brightness of the sun's light hurts your eyes and sometimes even your entire head.  You must give your eyes time to adjust before you can lift your head and see the world around you, including the gorgeous day illuminated by the once excruciating sunlight.  You may have only come out from under a shady tree, but the stark contrast of the sunlight is still enough to be blinding and quite painful until your eyes adjust, and you can finally enjoy the beautiful day you find yourself in.  This is very much what it is like each time God shines a new ray of light into the darkness that has allowed me to feel safe and protected for so many years.
     Even though I have begun to walk away from the depths of darkness and towards light, the darkness still feels safe, like a shield protecting me from myself and others.  God has been gracious to shine His light little by little as I move forward.  With each new ray of light, I find myself begging for the darkness once more to feel relief from the pain brought about by the light.  The pain is intense and deep and inescapable despite all my efforts to get away.  Though the light is the way forward, the way towards healing, it is terrifying and hurts more than I can put words to.  I have to adjust to the truth God is teaching me as I learn to let go of the lie the truth is replacing.  The adjustment is hard.  It's uncomfortable.  It's scary.  It's necessary though.
     Recently, God shone a single ray of light into my darkness to replace a lie with His truth.  The lie He was overturning was the lie that I am at fault for what happened, that I caused the abuse I went through.  It is a lie that was fed by people who were supposed to help when I first told what happened.  I have held on to this lie for well over a decade.  God used many different things converging all at once to shine His light and allow me to see what others had been telling me for the last year.  It wasn't my fault.  I did not cause myself to be abused.  It was my coach's fault.  It was his sin.  I did not do anything to invite it.  I am not responsible for his actions.  All these years later, the light allowed me to see that it really wasn't my fault.
     It would seem that this would be a good realization to come to.  In my head, I know it is good to know that.  The pain from that little bit of light breaking into my darkness crippled me.  I found myself barely able to function at times.  I could hardly breathe, and keeping my head above the proverbial waters seemed impossible.  I wanted to go back to believing the lie to be fully true.  I wanted it to be my fault.  I knew how to live with that heavy burden.  I knew how to feel safe in that darkness.  Dark and light can't coexist though, and you cannot unsee something.  I already knew.  The light had already shown me the truth.  I had to adjust.
     It's been a slow process.  I am to the point where I can acknowledge that the abuse was not my fault.  I still struggle to accept it though.  My head is above the water again and breathing is easier than it was when the light first pierced through and temporarily blinded me.  I still find myself longing for the darkness though at times, wanting the safety I felt even though I know it wasn't really as safe as it seemed.  I'm still adjusting, but the light isn't crippling anymore.  It is still quite harsh, but it is softer than it was at first.
     I know more light is up ahead somewhere.  I don't know where yet, or what lie it will attack.  I often times don't know what lies I believe and hold fast to until the light rips through the dark.  With each bit of light, more pain will come...more hurt will have to be faced.  Each time, I will have to allow time to adjust my vision as God works in my heart one moment at a time.  As I adjust, the light will no longer seem so harsh.  I haven't experienced the beautiful day illuminated by the light yet, but I have to believe one day I will as the light softens and darkness isn't so terrifyingly comfortable.  Without that hope, I cannot face the light coming my way.  Thankfully, God is a God of hope, and He has promised that His light will shine in the darkness to bring joy and peace and hope realized.

     I say all this for a reason.  I have a small group of people walking this journey with me.  They each walk with me in different ways, but I need each one of them.  All of them can see the lies I believe.  All of them have a clarity that I don't.  They spent a year telling me the abuse was not my fault and watching me fight against that with every ounce of strength I could muster.  Then at long last they watched me understand the truth they had seen so clearly and fall to the blinding light.  Something good left me reeling in agony and unable to move forward.  Truth that they each saw as good for me to get and understand left me crippled.  I imagine that has been very difficult for them to see.  I know they each care for me deeply.  I would guess that watching me "get" a truth they have wanted me to get for so long and falling down under the weight of it was painful for them too.  I could see how they may not understand such a reaction or know how to walk with me through that.
     I want to explain why the truth is so hard, why light in the darkness is so painful.  I want to say that if you are walking with someone who has been abused, the light can be crippling.  When the light hurts, please don't walk away.  I know it seems like the truth and the light are good.  They are.  They hurt at first though.  Be patient.  Keep speaking encouragement to the one you care for while they adjust to a new truth and ray of light that shatters a darkness that felt like the only safety in the world.  I'm sure it is hard to see.  I'm sure it hurts you to see someone you care for hurting more.  Hold their hand while the light blinds them.  Their eyes will adjust, but it will take time.  In that time, your patience means everything.  When you stay by their side, even when they aren't moving forward and are stuck, you say more than your words ever could and give them just a little more strength to take one more step.  Even when you don't understand it, just stay with them.  Even when the light hurts, wait with them while the harshness of new light subsides.  It is a very scary place to step out of darkness.  When you stay with them while the light hurts, you are offering comfort beyond what you can know.
     If you are like me and are walking this road to healing, from dark to light, know that it's normal for the light to hurt.  It's okay to be scared as the light pierces your safety net of darkness.  You are not alone.  The hurt and harshness of the light that strike in you fear and panic will subside.  The light will soften and opening your eyes won't be so hard.  Each ray of light your eyes adjust to is one step closer to a beautiful day of healing that is coming.  I know it hurts to step out of the darkness.  I feel your pain.  Light hurts, and adjusting takes time I don't want to wait for.  I'm waiting with you though.  It will hurt, but it will not last forever.  The hurt will be replaced with joy when we are fully in the light with our vision adjusted.  The light will be softened, and we will see the glorious day illuminated by the very light that cripples us now.  Keep pressing on my dear sister.  The truth and light may be hard and may hurt, but it will bring about a freedom we don't yet comprehend.  We may only see ashes right now, but in the light, those ashes will be beautiful.