When You Tell Yourself You Are Ok And Realize You Are Not
When you are 5, and your world falls apart, your heart learns to protect itself. When your only sense of security shatters, you learn to calm the panic rising into your throat. When the hurt in the frailest parts of your soul scream in agony, you force it to stay inside. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter anyway. You are fine. You are strong. You can manage.
When your heart whimpers for comfort, you learn to distract it with other things. You learn ways to escape the pain. When you are 5, you turn to things that don’t destroy your life. When you are 5, you don’t see the intricate ways your Heavenly Father is caring for you, clearing a path for you to come to Him at the appropriate time.
When you are 37, it only takes a tone of voice, a word spoken, a smell, a sound to plunge you head first into the icy cold of familiar. And your heart comes to attention. It remembers the drill. It’s ok. Stay calm. You are fine. Blunt trauma to the heart early on leaves memory scars that you try and try to bury. Deep. You push and push determined you can keep them down. No matter how deep you bury, they will resurrect eventually.
You try to live your life relying on God. You try to see Him in every single moment. You try to keep relationships smooth. You try to find joy in the dailies of life. You Try. You hear His whisper. Stop trying. Stop everything. See me for all I am. Your everything. I am your everything.
You are 37. You see the God who loves you beyond any hurt that has ever come against you. You feel His tears wash over you as He reminds you that He will never hurt you. He will never leave you. He will always comfort you.
Your husband watches you dealing with hurts that others have brought into your life. He looks at you with eyes of compassion you’ve never seen like that before. And you see Jesus. And those tender spots created from early childhood trauma, they ache, and you are scared. But you see Jesus when you look into your husband’s eyes. And you hear Jesus through His words and in His voice. I’m sorry you have to deal with what you are dealing with. I’m sorry for the pain you feel.
And you think, “What pain? I’m fine.” And his eyes are filled with tears because he is feeling the pain you are shielding yourself from. He is taking it on when you are not. And he models Jesus to you, taking on suffering, taking on pain, taking on humiliation, for situations that have nothing to do with him. But he loves you so much, he takes it on himself.
My husband is not Jesus. Only Jesus is Jesus. My husband is not my god. I have but one God. But my husband allowed himself to be used by God to provide what God knew I needed and wasn’t allowing myself to receive. Comfort. Love. Acceptance. Healing.
Life can be brutally cruel. Thank God Almighty that life is more than this world. Thank God Almighty I have more than what this world gives me. Thank God I have a Savior.
We live in a dying, hurting world. We are surrounded by pain and suffering. And He is here. To be all the world can never be to us.
I have grieved over what I never had. I have grieved over parts of my life that I wish looked differently. I have grieved over losing relationships I once had. Life is full of grieving. But. There is always a but. God offers new life. God restores, rebuilds, heals. No matter what we grieve, there is always something to give thanks for. Sometimes the thanks hunting takes more energy than we have.
In my grief, I hear God speaking to me. When I stop. When I become still. You were never created to receive total fulfillment here.
There are parts of my life that I could have never created in my wildest dreams. Fulfilling parts of my world that give me more joy than I ever dreamed. And there are parts that have been taken away from me, and I’ve had to grieve what I lost. And there are parts of my life where I never had what I wanted. But that is life. And abundant life is here anyway. Right in the middle of mess, heartache, brokenness, and beauty.
I’m learning that I’m not ok. And that’s ok. Through Him I’m more than ok. He will meet all my needs.
Philippians 4:19 And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.
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