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.