I’ll be honest with you. I don’t want to write this post and I really don’t want to publish this post. I’ve fought it for a week now but it will not leave me alone. “Write me, publish me,” it beckons. So I grit my teeth and write.
My goal with this blog, as I’ve recently discovered, is to escape all the things that scare me about this world we live in. Beauty, stillness, mystery and peacefulness make me feel safe so I try to surround myself with them. I miss those sacred moments in childhood when I felt totally safe and creating beautiful mysterious dwellings for my dolls to enjoy and have adventures in was my only priority. I’ve tried to recreate those feelings in this blog shutting out the fact that shootings, child abuse, starvation and so many innumerable horrors exist in the real world. But we live in this world and it is impossible (and probably rather unhealthy) to shut it completely out. So I’m letting a little darkness tinged reality slip in my safe place.
One morning last week I was doing my usual morning routine when a set of images popped into my head. These images were of a collection of paintings I did about ten years ago and they were very much unwelcome in my remembrance. The actual paintings themselves have been shoved in the back of my closet sentenced to collect dust and to be forgotten. I do not like to look at them anymore because when I do all the fear, pain, shame and unworthiness I felt when I painted them comes flooding back into my heart and knocks the air out of my lungs. That time, ten years ago, isn’t something I talk much about anymore because I’m healing now and the relationships involved are healing. (Here are the paintings. Please keep reading after them 🙂 )
A Plea to Listen
Silence
Silence Detail
Fragments of a Life Loved
Acceptance
There is a saying floating around out there and maybe it’s in the Bible too but the gist of it is that you can’t move forward when you’re constantly looking back. I’ve accepted that these things happened, that they have impacted who I am today and that I have control as to whether I let their impact ruin my life or to somehow use it to better my life. I’m choosing to look forward.
But this choosing has not been easy. Let me tell you. It feels safe to dwell in what we know even if what we know is misery and fear. That’s the part I don’t get. We just keep going back to it like a dog and its vomit. I know I did. But there is so much more out there, so much good that we didn’t know we could or were worthy enough to live in ourselves. So much beauty and hope, so much joy and contentment I never thought I would experience. But I am experiencing it now and I did not get here on my own.
Okay, now this part terrifies me to share with you…I’m a Christian. I believe in Jesus Christ and I love Him. Why does this terrify me? Because I hate confrontation and being a Christian isn’t really the most popular thing to be, especially now. I really don’t want to make anyone mad. I read all the comments people write about there being no God or how He couldn’t possibly be a good God when He lets all these bad things happen and I get scared. I don’t have the answers. I know that the ultimate cause of all this crap is sin but I still don’t know why He lets the crap happen. I don’t know why He let bad things happen to me. I don’t know why He let some of my friends be abused. I don’t know why He let my grandpa die in a car crash when my mom was 18 and my grandma had 8 kids to raise and provide for. I just don’t know. But I know that He is real and that He is good and that He loves every single person on this planet. I know that the sin that courses through each one of us keeps us from Him. I know that He loved each one of us so much that He made a way for us to be with Him, He gave Jesus’ life for ours.
Let me share a dream I had that might help you to see through my eyes. I was in an empty room somewhere sitting at a table. Everything was white like a hospital. Across from me sat a man. I couldn’t see his face but I knew this man and loved him with everything in me. I ached just to be near him, to kiss his face and breath his air. Something was happening but I was in some kind of a daze. He was hooking up a tube that went from his arm to mine. I tried to move but couldn’t and realized I was dying. The tube that was in his arm was draining his blood into my body and I knew that it would take every drop he had to bring me back to life. I tried to scream at him to stop, to keep his life because it meant so much more than mine. He just kept on. I struggled to move my arms but they were totally lifeless. He began to convulse and turn white and all I could do was sob and beg him to stop. His last drop left his body and he fell on the table, he was gone. At that moment I looked up at a clock on the wall. It read 12:00 and there was a noise so horrible I haven’t heard it on this earth before. It sounded like every soul that has existed since the beginning of time was screaming and it would not stop. The pounding of my heart woke me up and it took a second for me to catch my breath again.
That dream is exactly what He did for me. That dream is what He did for you.
I guess what I want to say is to beg you not to give up hope. If something so horrible has happened to you to make you believe there is no God or that He is evil and doesn’t care about you I am so sorry. I’m so sorry that you have felt pain that deep. I’m sorry if your heart has heard that it is not worth anything. It is a lie. You are so much more valuable than you will know. Your heart matters, your feelings matter, you matter. You are worth dying for. Please don’t give up hope, please don’t give up God. I promise, He is faithful.
Much love to each of you.
Summer Under the Lemon Tree 