Write, she says, you have to keep writing. To write is to go to war. Go to war with who I am and who I was and who I’m supposed to be. But who am I supposed to be? Am I supposed to be anyone or am I supposed to be me? In a resistance to find me I avoid the process to get there. To write is to be fully me. To sink into the depth and let myself just be. But I don’t want to be when I don’t know who is me. What will happen when I get there? How will I enter without staying under? The waves crash over and it’s easier to flee. To avoid any effort in finding the real me.
I find it hard to go back and speak into the little girl because admitting that it happened is admitting the loss. Admitting the things done against me means it was real. Taking a bandage off and going into surgery means less pain later on but more right now. The Band-Aid didn’t hurt, so why must we rip it off and dive in and re cut the wound and go deep in and clean it out? As we clean it out we only find more. More damage. It looks worse than we originally thought. The damage didn’t have to be so bad but we waited too long to be treated. The sin birthed a natural recovery. A man-made Band-Aid to cover the sin. Isn’t that funny how we literally have a wound done to us by sin and the remedy we believe in is a Band-Aid? A Band-Aid isn’t going to heal the sin. It may alleviate the pain; it may cover it up. If you keep it on long enough the wound will feel normal. The pain, you’ll get used to — and eventually, it will hurt worse to rip the Band-Aid off than it would to just keep it there.
I want all of it and none of it. Some of it but none.
To feel numb is to be full of comfort, but in my case, also full of lies.
Full of lies of promises to the dominion of darkness. Full of lies to the enemy saying I’m yours. I am not his. He is not mine. He is not welcome here. No longer will he hold me. No longer will he enslave me. No longer will his sneaky tricks and prancing and stalking work on me. His games are not good. They are pure evil. With evil intention he prowls like a lion, waiting for me to fall off course and fall into him. With evil eyes he looks to me and stalks me. He knows he can’t destroy me. So he tries to distract. Distract me from believing that I can return to the girl I once was. “Too far gone. Too messed up. You’ll never get there. Ruining your happiness to go there. Will never come out of the pit. Secrets too dirty. Self too scary. I’ll traumatize you again if you go there,” he says — as I reach for the Band-Aid.
I’m not playing your games.
You’re not knocking me off course.
You don’t flatter me,
You don’t entertain me.
You aren’t worthy of my attention.
You are beneath my feet,
I stomp on you.
I partner with Jesus and we slay.
Conquered you once and He does it again.
This time,
He entangles Himself to me.
We stomp.
The beating,
the batter,
the torn,
the thorn — you thought once and for all the darkness would come.
But not on my watch,
not to my King — through the beating
He has set me free.
Isaiah 53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
To deny the depth is to deny who God is. The very essence of what He did is the most excruciating pain a man could bear.
His wounds meant death. His death triggered life. What would it be like for me to take the bandages off, to go into the wounds, clean them out, and allow the blood of Jesus — His death — to cover them. His death, to heal them. His death, to trigger my life, here and now. Eternity isn’t something we have to wait for. Heaven can come now. But it isn’t just a prayer that Heaven would come. Prayer changes us and we change things. So we go. We enter into the sin. We enter into the pain. We allow the hurt to come to the surface.
Undone. Open. Wounded.
We find who we are, who we were, and who we’re supposed to be.
Michelle is a determined dreamer fueled by coffee and is relentlessly ambitious. She loves the rich and the poor, the abused and the abuser, the seen and the unseen. Located in Northern Colorado, Michelle is on a journey of discovering what it means to be human in God’s eyes. She’s a hiker, a lover, a romantic. Goal: to live in a way that inspires others every single day.
I love this last line “We find who we are, who we were, and who we’re supposed to be.” SO MUCH YES! The pain, the rawness of the wounds, that is where we find the Man of Sorrows tending us with precision, patience, and care. You write beautifully, Michelle, thank you for sharing your work with us here.
Thank you, Kelsi. You are exactly right, in the depth of it all we find the comfort of God. Blessings to you!