A song on repeat

     Recently, my family went on vacation.  We spent a lot of time driving through areas without radio on our way to various places.  When we'd hit a bigger city, we would scan through to see if there was anything we liked.  Often the cities, even the big ones, were pretty small and nothing was of interest.  However, near one city, we had a radio station come in just long enough to play one song in it's entirety.  I've had it on repeat ever since.  Listen before you continue reading.

     It's such an incredibly beautiful song, and it so perfectly puts words to the cry of my heart in my current season of healing.  Can you hear, in the lyrics, the tension where the lies rooted deep collide with radical truth?  That's how it is though.  Lies, somewhere along the way, get so deeply rooted in our hearts that when truth is spoken we think it can't possibly be as is true.  There must be a catch.  We want to believe what is true, what our Creator says about us, but those lies put up a fight, don't they.

     My favorite line is this...

"What if I traded this shame and self-hatred for a chance at believing You?"

     I feel so much shame.  I don't remember what it is like not to.  Self-hatred?  Well, there's too much there to dive into here.  I struggle profoundly with both.  Ellie Holcomb's words are so tender here.  Most women (and I'm sure men too) know shame and self-hatred.  You don't need to experience abuse to experience those feelings.  

     In my case, those feelings stem from what I endured at the hands of another, though.  When abuse quite literally pounds shame into you, and you hate yourself for oh so many reasons that seem to only make sense in the mixed up mind of a person trying to survive, believe God really does feel like taking a chance.  It's a tremendous and scary step of faith.  It's a daily reciting to yourself what God says, sometimes every moment, and deciding to land on the peg of what He says when everything in you is screaming it cannot be true because just look in the mirror.  Look at what you were part of.  

     On good days, you can quiet the scream of shame and self-hatred.  On bad days, you just try to keep breathing.  On most days, you know taking the chance is worth it, but you have to keep reminding yourself of that in the midst of overwhelming fear as you step out in faith despite the lies running through your head still.

     But there is this...

You search me and know me 

You know what I sit when I rise

So You must know the choices I've made

And the pain that I hide 

     He knows.  He really knows.  That never stops Him from declaring me wonderfully made.  So I cry out in prayer...

Help me believe it

Help me to see me 

Just like You see me 

Just like You made me 

Wonderfully made

The weight of worth

The Weight of Worth

I saw you field another question today

It's fine, it doesn't matter you replied

I see through the walls around your heart

I know the lies you've held tight to survive

I also know when you say "it"

You actually mean you don't matter

Since believing them when they say you're worthless

Makes the weight of abuse easier to bear

Beloved child, the danger's now gone

The lies will only keep you bound

Though I know the depths of pain it will bring

The truth is also where freedom is found

I created you in your mother's womb

With My very hands I knit you together

I marked you with My fingerprint

The seal of your worth forever

Every adult who kept secrets hidden

Leading you as a lamb to the slaughter

Though they tried every way they knew how

They could not break My seal on you, daughter

I know the one who depended on lies

The man who stripped you and shredded your soul

I see the wounds left deep under the surface

Those marks take the heaviest toll

With every cut he thought he removed

My fingerprint off of your person

But no one has the power, not even him

To strip you of the worth I have given

Every time he looked past the mark of your Maker

With every single wound that you bear

My holy heart breaks and I weep with grief

Yet remember your worth isn't found there

It is found in Me, the Worthy One

Who hung on a criminal's cross

Naked and clothed in shame for you
I know personally the depths of your loss

Yet I conquered the shame others heaped on Me

When they said I didn't matter

I rose victorious and now sit with you

Telling you truth and making lies scatter

You matter to me and you always have

I made you and guarantee your worth

You never deserved what they did to you

But I will bring redemption forth

Now quiet your heart and let the truth sink deep

I will stay close by your side

I'll hold you with the same hands that knit you together

As the weight of your worth overflows your eyes

On worth

Worth.  Value.  Goodness those are loaded words for an abuse survivor.  I've wrestled with them and all that's attached to them for more years than I can remember...and I still wrestle--hard. 

To someone outside my story, my worth and value must appear cut and dry, and my wrestling with it, unnecessary and hard to understand.  

I'm not alone in my wrestling, though, among others who have experienced similar traumas.  We may all have different reasons behind it, but I don't know of any survivor that hasn't wrestled hard with her worth.  So I want to take some time to explain my wrestling.  

I pray that whoever reading who has a story like mine will know they are not alone and not weird.  I pray that whoever reading who does not have a story like mine but surely knows someone who does will understand their friend better and be better able to support and walk alongside them.

If I were to put anyone else in my place in my exact same story, I would declare their worth, declare they never deserved what they went through, grieve over what was taken from them.  Yet, when I look at my story, I am certain I deserved it.  I'm convinced that there is something less in me that made me not worth protecting.  I hear again and again that we are all image bearers, made in God's image to reflect Him.  I believe that for everyone else, but then I don't see how that makes any difference for me.  

You see, one of the deeply ingrained ways I coped with what was going on was to minimize everything.  If you talk to me long enough, you'll hear it.  I make it smaller.  I can handle it that way.  It hurts less when it isn't that big of a deal.  I can protect those around me when it's small enough for me to handle, at least that's how it seems to me.

How could I make something so horrific so small, you might ask?  I reduce my worth.  I see myself as less valuable than everyone else.  I convince myself I deserved it because somehow I image-bear the wrong way.  I see myself as the problem, the defective one.  I own that I wasn't worthy like all the other kids were.

You see, if I have just as much worth and value simply for being made in the image of God just like the rest of humanity, it makes the reality of how I was treated too big to make small.  

To believe I have worth yet look back and see the adults at USAG with all the power at their disposal hear warnings of the dangers of the man who would later abuse me yet ignore it all, hide the warnings in a secret file, and renew his membership in good standing...

To believe I have value yet look back and remember all the horrifying details of what my coach did and how many people he manipulated in order to do it...

To believe I am an image-bearer which comes with inherent dignity and value and worth and see how adults meant to protect and care for me just trampled over it all...

It makes it too big, too heavy, too real.  I can't minimize that.  I can't lessen that pain or grasp that level of violation.  That reality brings tears I can't hold back, and that makes a mess I can't keep from hurting those around me.

When I wrestle with my worth, I'm wrestling with decades of coping the only way I knew how, coping that let me live and blend in so much so that almost no one knew my secret.  I'm wrestling with decades of hurt I have done everything possible not to feel, and I'm desperately trying to not hurt those around me with the wounds inflicted on me.  

When I wrestle with my worth, I'm wrestling with a good God in the face of unspeakable evil.  This good God isn't afraid to wrestle either.  Jacob wrestled with God centuries before I found myself in the same place, and just like Jacob, I'm sure to walk away with a limp.  Abuse has a way of doing that.

So when I or another survivor friend of yours winces at the reminder of her worth, of her image-bearer-ness, of her value, remember she's wrestling something much too large for mere words.  Remind her of her worth, that isn't wrong or bad, but even more than that, wrestle with her in prayer.  You may leave limping too, but it will be tangible evidence you really do believe she's worthy.  

It's been too long

     It's been almost 2 years since I last wrote here.  The work has been deep and hard.  Life has had big events, and a break was necessary.  Yet out of all that has taken place during my hiatus, I find myself wanting to write again.  This time, though, my world has expanded.

     My family grew via adoption last year, and that has me on the other side of trauma.  There is no such thing as adoption without trauma, and while I don't know all that my little one endured during her earliest years, I know she's experienced various forms of trauma.  That's put me on the caretaker side as well as on the healing side.  My daughter has taught me so much about facing hard things.

     So as I pick this up again, there are some changes.  First, along with changing up the look a bit, I have renamed the blog.  It was My Voice My Story Redeemed.  However, all of our stories are intertwined with the stories of others.  Mine is no different.  Sharing my story will touch the stories of those around me.  I am not alone in this, and I never was.  I just couldn't see that before.

     This is still my voice, being redeemed, as God redeems my story and the stories of those around me.  I'm still watching Him make beauty from the ashes of abuse, but I'm watching Him redeem more than just my story.  The title doesn't quite fit.  But one thing I've learned is that He makes mosaics out of our ashes.  He makes them from everyone's stories.  So here, as I write, I'm offering you hope as you watch Him make mosaics.  For a bit more understanding, you can read this post.  I can put those thoughts into better words now, but I want the original words to stand.  I wrote those almost 4 years ago.  Now "mosaic" is tattooed on my wrist.  Making Mosaics is God's redemptive work in all of us.

     Second, the focus will be broadened.  God is teaching me in so many ways that I never anticipated.  I've seen how trauma, no matter what kind, unites those who walk this road.  In my own family, we have multiple people healing from multiple kinds of traumas.  God shows up in all of it, and He is growing me.  The focus will expand to abuse, adoption, trauma in general...all ashes God sees, picks up, cleans, and makes beautiful mosaics out of.  My world has expanded, so the blog will follow.

     Third, and lastly, while I will keep the names of other people (my family included) private and will not share pictures here for the sake of privacy, I am no longer keeping myself private.  When I started this blog, I was ready to be heard.  Now, I am ready to be seen too.  My story isn't private at all anymore, but I have still tried to hide as best I could.  However, I don't want to keep hiding.  My story is known on a national level to some extent.  Though shame sticks and smothers still, I am taking one small step to take away it's control.  So...

Hi.  My name is Kelly.  I survived childhood sexual abuse at the hands of my gymnastics coach.  Now God is redeeming these ashes and making me a new mosaic.  I pray you find hope here in the midst of whatever hard you are walking, because we all have our own hard.