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.