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.