Today I want to tell you more about this road I've been walking. Spoiler alert...I was wrong. Way wrong.
I shared with you all a small bit of my childhood trauma. I haven't shared how my response to that trauma wrecked me entirely for the next couple of decades in my life. Caught in this cyclical way of thinking and behaving that was as, if not more, destructive than the actual trauma itself, I repeatedly responded the same way to the same events, knowing full well what chaos and consequences each response would bring to my life. Each time I allowed myself to be used in any way, it got easier to place shame on the girl in the mirror. In doing so, somehow along the way my brain stopped telling me that it was abuse, but that it was required. If someone was inappropriately attracted to me, I must have done something to invite it and therefore must allow them to fulfill their needs in whatever way they saw fit. You can only imagine the deep levels of shame this brought into my spirit. I was doing things I knew were wrong, yet felt powerless to prevent. In an attempt to cope with the shame, I had learned to disconnect my brain from my body. Instead of feeling each event, I placed it in a box and put it aside and tried to continue living as though nothing had happened, never sharing most of what went into those boxes with anyone. As the boxes piled up, they eventually became walls that had separated me from my community. More and more walls were added until the halls were so long that the light showing me the way out was too far away to illuminate the path. Eventually, I accepted that this would be my permanent residence and this Hall of Shame became my comfort zone.
I know it sounds strange, but there was a great relief in hiding in this room. I knew who I was here. I could look at the pictures on the walls of boxes that reminded me that this is where I belong. God couldn't see me here. My community couldn't see me here. I had a cozy blanket and loads of coping tools that would allow me to forget to ever leave. These boxes of secrets kept me from feeling ugly consequences and as long as no one knew, no one could be disappointed in me. No one could judge me. Certainly no one could choose to hate me. So, wrapped up in the blanket and staring in the mirror, I reminded myself over and over that I belonged here. So much that I forgot who I was outside of this place. Every now and then, I'd emerge from the hall and try to force myself into the light and into life. The adjustment from dark to light got harder every time. I didn't trust myself or anyone else, so I would trot along, feeling like a fraud in every way, until I couldn't take it anymore. Before I knew it, I had retreated with an arm full of new boxes back into the darkness, into my home, and went on building and hiding.
Then God knocked on the door and asked me to come out.
If you are a parent, or have just been around children enough to witness one who is guilty or shameful and being called by a parent, you have seen this before. The father calls out to his child, "Come here to me." But the child is afraid of consequence, and so she hides at first. The father calls again, and the child knows she must respond, so she allows just a small tuft of hair and possibly an eyeball to become visible around the wall. "Come closer child." She enters the room and looks down at the ground. The father now points at the ground directly in front of him and says "Here. Stand where I can reach you." So again, knowing she must obey, she moves to the appointed X on the floor where her daddy is pointing, eyes still low, shoulders slumped, and moving at the pace of an elderly snail. And then what does he do? He places his finger on her chin, and says "look at me." As her eyes move up, her defenses begin to melt, and when that eye contact is made she is as clear as glass and her truth, her guilt, her shame; it's all visible to the father who loves her.
"Let me come in there with you."
I tried to say not today. I told Him I had to clean up first. I tried to say I was super busy.
"There are boxes everywhere and I don't want you to see them."
He reminded me that He already knew about the boxes and what secrets they contained. I wanted to let Him in. I wanted Him to free me from these walls. However, I was terrified that He would come in swinging a sledge hammer and my secrets would be spilled out for all to see. A friend prayed with me and told me that He just wanted to help me take them down, one at a time, to look inside together while holding my hand. What I shared with the world would be asked, not forced. And so began my healing journey. Each box that comes down sets me that much closer to freedom. Each wall that comes down allows light from the world and community around me to shine into my hall and surprisingly, people aren't running away. They come and sit with me and hold me and love me anyways. It's beautiful, this healing. Instagram worthy even.
But then came another knock. A sinister and evil knock. I knew who it was. I knew what it was. I want to say I thought I was ready for this, but the truth is I didn't plan on it coming. In my mind, in my Instagram frames, I never had pictured evil behind the door. I didn't have a quote for that one. I didn't have the right answer. In fact, I froze in panic and fear. I cracked the door and just stared out at my visitor for too long. I looked in the familiar eyes and breathed in and out slowly, filling my lungs with the stench of shame. And as quickly as my knees began to shake, I realized I was staring into the empty eyes of the girl in the mirror. A reflection of an old self that had come to wreck and remind and confuse. I knew in my heart that this was trickery and that this reflection was not of the me that stood staring, but of the one that comes to steal in the night. Yet the shame fell on me like a wet weighted blanket. I was embarrassed that I wasn't ready for this and filled with shame that I was questioning everything I had just overcome. Was it even real? How could this be happening? What did I do to invite this? I thought when I was healed, I wouldn't feel the pull of this habitual response that left me standing exposed at a door I wanted to close but couldn't. My journey had looked so great thus far. I must box this up. I must keep it secret. I summoned the courage to slam the door shut and went running back into the hall, seeking darkness and the comfort that I had found there once before. But, the room didn't fit anymore. It looked the same, the blanket was there, but it wasn't as warm as it used to be. My eyes couldn't adjust to the darkness the way they had for so many years and I felt blind and alone. And scared.
After wrestling with the anxiety and fear of being visited by the past, it became clear to me that this wasn't the way. That as comfortable as I used to be in the darkness, I no longer belonged there. My comfort had become the light. I no longer needed a blanket to hide from evil because I now wielded a sword and shield that cannot be overcome. I threw the box wide open and left it all in God's hands. It wasn't easy, and I had to really fight my brain to break the cycle of thinking that I'd been stuck in and remind myself that even though that knock on the door shook me and disrupted me for a moment, I still closed it. I was in fact healing, even though it didn't look exactly how I had pictured it. I was actually changing a mindset and habit that held me captive for too long.
As the light continued to shine down and bring out truths of what this really was, I found myself on a bicycle. Weird for me, but here I was at the end of the driveway and thought I'd go just a bit further. When I got to the end of the road, I felt pressed to keep going forward. With each turn of the pedal I felt myself letting go of more and more. Before I knew it, I was 4 miles from home, crying and yelling and cussing out loud at the devil. With every deep breath I told him I wasn't his. Get away from me. I hate you. You don't get to win. I am NOT what you say I am. I am a daughter of the one true God and he loves me and I am enough! It felt good. I'm not sure what the neighbors thought, but it felt good. That night I awoke to a raging wind storm that felt like it might take the house down. I studied the trees through a glass door, bending and twisting unnaturally as the wind threatened to rob them of their branches. God spoke into my heart clear as day as we watched together. "Look. The rage outside of this door isn't even a fraction of the rage the devil feels today as he realized he lost you. And just as the wind cannot touch you behind the safety of this closed door, his power is lost on you when you rest in the safety of who you are in Me."
I want you to know, if you are on a healing journey and you feel God calling you to a new life, don't get stuck on an idea of what it will look like. There is never going to be an award signifying the end of your road with "Congratulations! You're healed!" in some bold font at the top. Because healing isn't something you earn at the end of a job well done. Healing is something you learn and must fight for, and the job is never done. I thought the world would look different after I did the thing and took the class and admitted my junk and got my award. But while waiting for the award I realized that the world isn't healing just because I am. Evil is always going to come knocking at the door, and actually probably more than it did when it had you in the clutches of lies and despair. Because evil doesn't like to lose. Evil will always look the same, but my responses have changed. I am no longer a prisoner to a broken way of thinking that I must be responsible for who comes knocking, but I am free in the safety of One who stands on the inside of the door with me. And I do not have to open it anymore.
Keep going.
