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