*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.
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?
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