Category Archives: Life Lessons

Life Lessons

Redeeming the day

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Yesterday, I ended my post with these words:

There was a time when I insisted to my therapist that my rape was so terrible, so dark and ugly, that there was nothing about it that God could possibly redeem. He proved me wrong…but that’s best left for future posts.

Almost immediately, the following came to mind. It’s something I wrote in 2009, after I’d been in therapy a few months. I’ve only done a few minor tweaks for readability, leaving the rest alone. It’s kinda raw. But it’s the raw and broken things that need redeeming, not the clean and pretty ones.

*****

During my therapy session today, Donny asked about the anniversary of the rape, and I told him I knew it was in August, but didn’t know the date. For some reason, after I got home, this started really bothering me. I went online to find an August 1981 calendar, and I started plugging different events into different days and finally, by process of elimination, I figured out that August 23 had to be the date.

And then I sat there, thinking, “Damn. I figured it out. But I don’t quite know what to think about it, or how to feel.” Then I realized that I was still being raped on August 24…the day that later became my wedding date. I regretted my figuring out the date, because I felt as if my wedding anniversary was now forever ruined for me. My imagination went into overdrive. I became convinced that, instead of celebrating our upcoming 25th anniversary, I’d be hiding in bed, having flashbacks, reliving that horrible day and the next day in awful, nightmarish detail.

So I posted to my online support group and Matt responded, “Well, think of this: for many years you did not know it was an anniversary. Which proves the date is not forever ruined, because you have had many August 23rd’s since your rape. And that endows you with a whole lot of post-rape August 23rd memories to recall, which are clean of any such traumatic triggers.”

That made sense.

I decided to quite whining to God, “How could you let me pick August 24 as my wedding date? And why didn’t the church let us have our first choice? Why? Why? Why?”

Then I thought, “What a coincidence…what are the chances that I would get married on that day?” But then it dawned on me — how cool, how redemptive, how absolutely victorious is it that, on the 3rd anniversary of my rape, I was having a rehearsal dinner with most of my favorite people in the world? The ugliness of the rape was the furthest thing from my mind that night. Three years after Lou and Carl finally stopped raping me, I was asleep in bed, dreaming happy dreams of marriage. Three years after that horrible shower, I was getting ready for my wedding day. Three years after sticking a gun in my mouth, feeling broken and ruined and filthy, I was walking down the aisle in a beautiful white dress that had been lovingly sewn for me. I remember that, during the wedding, I had kept thinking, “God is good”. I felt like I was basking in His love. And I actually felt beautiful.

God is good. I had no idea how good. He really did give me beauty for ashes, and the oil of joy for mourning. And He couldn’t have told me that in a more obvious way.

This August 24th will be my 25th wedding anniversary. It will also be the 28th anniversary of when they stopped raping me…the 28th anniversary of the day that I cleaned myself up and went to my first day at a new job, trying to pretend nothing had happened, the 28th anniversary of the day that I didn’t pull the trigger, the 28th anniversary of the day that I took my first steps towards being a survivor.

The “coincidence” of those dates, of forgetting the date of my rape until figuring it out all these years later — it all seems to me like a beautiful, redemptive story that God has made out of the ugliest days of my life. I feel as if He’s just given me the best 25th wedding anniversary I could think of getting.

*****

One of the things we, as survivors, often tell ourselves and each other is that the process of healing and recovery is not a smooth and constant one. There are setbacks along the way. That is the nature of healing in general, but I think that there can also be something else going on when it comes to recovery from sexual trauma. Based on what I have read, and my discussions with people experienced in the field of psychological trauma, I have come to believe that sexual trauma is unique in the damage it does to the human soul. Because of this, I also believe that the process of recovery is a sort of spiritual turf war being waged over one’s soul.

In retrospect, this seems obvious to me. 2009 was one of the most difficult years of my life. A tragedy brought me into therapy. At the same time, my husband almost died. Our entire family walked through some very deep waters. I experienced anguishing dark nights of the soul. All of that almost destroyed me.

In the midst of all that, God brought healing and moments of redemption. I wish I had trusted Him more and failed Him less. But despite my stumbling about, the fighting and wrestling I mentioned in my last post, and moments of absolute rebellion, He was faithful. He never gave up on me, his all-too-prone-to-wander prodigal daughter. No matter what, He always loves me back home again.

Why didn’t God stop them?

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I was overwhelmed with the love of God. It came completely out of the blue, with no explanation, no rhyme nor reason, just the awareness and certainty of God’s love filling me on that summer evening back in 1981 as never before. What I felt was not an impersonal love, or a love for all mankind: He loved me — me — after everything I had done, and everything I hadn’t done…despite my every sin and failing…He loved ME.

This amazing sense of His love overwhelmed me in a parking lot of all places. I leaned against my friend’s orange VW squareback, looked at her across the roof of her car, and tried to articulate this incredible epiphany I was having. And then we returned from our errand to have dinner at my neighbor’s apartment.

Only the dinner was a ruse.

After pre-dinner cocktails, my friend became suddenly and mysteriously so ill and light-headed that she went to my apartment to rest. I was urged to stay because, after all, the Italian meal had been fixed in my honor. My host seemed to think it tragic that someone who had been to Italy had never even eaten pasta fagiole, and he had supposedly been slaving over a hot stove for hours on my behalf.

So I stayed.

Later, when I asked them to let me leave, when I tried to convince them to let me go, when I begged and pleaded, they refused. Eventually I wanted to die. The next afternoon, I came as close to killing myself as I think it is possible to do and remain physically unscathed.

Almost 28 years later, I sat in a therapist’s office, finally telling the entire story of my rape for the first time, instead of the highly abbreviated one sentence version, or scattered bits and pieces. Before then, I had only shared on a “need to know” basis to very few people.

One of the things I told my therapist was that it was as if God ceased to exist during that whole nightmarish, seemingly endless ordeal. One moment I was being love-bombed by Him…the next I was utterly abandoned.

That’s what immediately came to mind when I saw this on Facebook this morning:

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Yes, I was 23 years old when I was raped, but when my daughter was that age, do you think I would have walked away and left her at the mercy of a serial rapist and his accomplice/trainee? Was I more merciful than God? More moral?

There is no easy way to deal with these questions. Flinging platitudes and Bible verses at my pain did nothing to ease it. I had many dark nights of the soul, some so dark they almost consumed and destroyed me. I wrestled with God, to the point that I thought Jacob in the Bible had nothing on me.

Those who are satisfied only with an intellectual approach to God, based on chapter and verse of the Bible, won’t find much, if anything, of value in what I’m about to write…well, except perhaps for the first part. But I don’t believe God has chosen to confine Himself to the pages of His book. He is far too mysterious and wild and great and marvelous for that…and far too personal and immediate and, dare I say it, loving.

Here is how I came to make peace with the questions that plagued me…

1. Donny looked eager to tell me something at the beginning of one therapy session. “I almost called you,” he said, “but I thought it would be better to tell you in person.” During his devotions, he was reading systematically through the Bible, and he encountered a verse he had never noticed before:

“Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbors, pouring it from the wineskin till they are drunk, so that he can gaze on their naked bodies!” Habakkuk 2:15 NIV

Amazingly enough, there was no accompanying verse saying, “Woe to naive and overly trusting stupid idiots who don’t have sense enough to refuse drinks from their sleazy neighbors, who shouldn’t even be drinking with men in the first place, and who sin by drinking too much — you get what you deserve.” Apparently that was my victim-blaming opinion, but not God’s, so I was left to ponder the question my therapist posed: if God hated it when a neighbor got someone drunk In order to look at their naked body, how much more must He hate what my rapists did?

But if that was true, why did God abandon me?

2. I don’t have chapter and verse for this next one. All I can say is that, after much arguing and wrestling with God, there came a time when I just knew that He was there that night. Even though it felt to me, during that terrible night, as if He had ceased to exist, He was there all along.

That was hugely comforting and an amazing breakthrough for me, but it left unanswered the question: why didn’t He stop my rapists?

3. Eventually I came to realize that God places a high value on our free will. (Yeah, I know — Calvinists, you might as well shoot me now.) He didn’t stop Adam and Eve from sinning — and their sin opened the door to all the evil, suffering, and death we must now endure. I don’t pretend to understand this. I don’t pretend to like it. But a God who would overrule free will to stop all child rape would have to do the same for all rape…and all abuse…and all violence…and all betrayal…and all selfish use of another person…and all unloving acts…and where would that stop until we were rendered robots, without free will, forced to love God and all people?

4. I have had to make peace — as much as one can make peace with such tragedy — with the terrible fact that we live in a fallen world, one filled with sin and suffering and death. Part of making peace with that is my belief that this world is not all there is. I cling to a future hope, when all will eventually be made right.

5. I have come to believe in redemption. One day, all will be redeemed. In the meantime, God keeps showing me glimpses of redemption. There was a time when I insisted to my therapist that my rape was so terrible, so dark and ugly, that there was nothing about it that God could possibly redeem. He proved me wrong…but that’s best left for future posts.

A rough day

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It was already, for various reasons, not the best day. Then evening came and a Facebook post I read, meant to be a helpful source of information for people leaving and healing from spiritually abusive churches, sent me into a tailspin. Actually the post did nothing of the sort — it was my own reactions to what it triggered inside me.

If you followed my previous blog, you may remember the series I wrote about my “fall to grace”. Let me emphasize that the church we ended up leaving was not spiritually abusive; they were dear, sweet brothers and sisters in Christ, and much tears were shed when we realized that serious doctrinal incompatibility made us no longer at home in that fellowship. The legalistic burden I had placed upon myself during the time we were members was far beyond any they would have placed on me.

So, when I read the Facebook post, I thought, escaping my legalistic prison was hard enough without having to exit a controlling church group.

But then I remembered the group I was involved in during my early teens. It was supposedly just a Bible Study — only we called it a “Bible Rap” because it was the early 70’s and the group had a real counter-cultural hippie flavor to it. There were no obvious older adult leaders that I could tell, just a bunch of young “Jesus People”, mostly new converts, and an older guy everyone held in awe, even though he was rarely there. They were a zealous and serious group of kids, but misguided.

Anyway, I remember being surrounded by older girls (I was probably the youngest kid, by at least a couple years, who attended) and they were demanding me to confess the SECRET SIN in my life, because there had to be some, it was obvious, or my spiritual experiences would match theirs exactly. I remember week after week of confessing everything that I could think of, “real sins” like the cigarette I had smoked with my brother, or my chronic sins like being “lazy” (undiagnosed inattentive ADHD) at school, having a “messy” room, etc., etc. I was far from perfect, but I was basically a good kid. However, the way I was being questioned, one would think I was a hardened, bank-robbing, murderous young harlot just pretending to be a junior high kid. Those weekly interrogation sessions were only one aspect of how controlling and pushy and borderline abusive they were.

My first thought at this memory was, What idiots they were. There was no secret sin! and then I suddenly remembered that there was “secret sin” in my life, only it was not my sin, but it was a secret I felt forced to keep.

That was what hit me: Aha, they were right. There was secret sin in my life. And, stupid as it sounds, I felt like collapsing in a heap on the floor, buried under an avalanche of decades worth of junk. Suddenly I doubted everything because they had, in my mind, been proven right…which meant the sin of others was my fault, which meant all sorts of other awful stuff was true after all…

I didn’t collapse, but I didn’t cope in the healthiest way either.

Now, in the light of day, I’m amazed that this ragtag group of ex-hippies could still have such power over me all these years later.

But, most of all, I’m saddened at my response to these confusing, disturbing memories. I don’t expect to be so “healed” that I have mental clarity over every memory, or that I won’t momentarily get sucked back in by the lies that tormented me for so long. I believe there is a turf war raging over my very soul — not because I’m so special but because there is a war raging over all of our souls.

I need to stop running away, and stop hiding.

Yes, it’s the only way I knew how to cope for years upon years, but I know better now. As long as I respond on auto-pilot, I will never form healthier habits. I am tired of being kicked around by my past.

It wasn’t until morning that I thought to pray about how I felt so beat up by the rabbit trails of false conclusions my mind went down the night before. It wasn’t until morning that I shared my struggle with my husband and my “tribe”. Those things need to become my first line of defense.

Pray. If need be, call in reinforcements.

It’s time I stopped trying to carry burdens I was never meant to carry. “Come unto me, all who are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest,” Jesus said. But I keep piling burdens on myself…guilt for things long ago forgiven, false guilt for the sins of others, shame I didn’t deserve, rules God never intended…and there are people who would hasten to add yet more. It’s time to lay all that down and ask for help when I need it.

I don’t have the answers but I’m gonna celebrate anyway

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A discussion today made me ponder the question, am I happy?

First, some definitions I found via Google:…

•feeling or showing pleasure or contentment
•delighted, pleased, or glad, as over a particular thing: to be happy to see a person.
•characterized by or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy: a happy mood; a happy frame of mind.

•Definition: in high spirits; satisfied
•Synonyms: blessed, blest, blissful, blithe, can’t complain, captivated, cheerful, chipper, chirpy, content, contented, convivial, delighted, ecstatic, elated, exultant, flying high, gay, glad, gleeful, gratified, intoxicated, jolly, joyful, joyous, jubilant, laughing, light, lively, looking good, merry, mirthful, on cloud nine, overjoyed, peaceful, peppy, perky, playful, pleasant, pleased, sparkling, sunny, thrilled, tickled, tickled pink, up, upbeat, walking on air
•Antonyms: depressed, discouraged, dissatisfied, miserable, morose, pained, sad, sorrowful, unhappy

•Happy is a feeling of joy, pleasure, or good fortune — exactly how you’d feel if you learned that you won the lottery or got accepted into your number one choice of colleges.

•Happy hails from the Middle English word hap, meaning “good luck.” Many of the early European words for happy actually referred to good luck, rather than a feeling of joy. On its own, happy means an enjoyable or satisfied state of being.

I also found this online:

This devotional is based on Kay Warren’s new book, “Choose Joy: Because Happiness Isn’t Enough.”

Finding joy is a challenge for me. I’m not naturally an upbeat person; I’m more of a melancholy. When I talk about joy, I’m not doing so from the perspective of a generally peppy person who never has a bad day. In fact, it’s because of my own inability to live with joy that led me to explore why my experiences didn’t line up with Scripture.

My problem was my definition of joy. I thought joy meant feeling good all the time. That’s impossible! Even for those who are naturally upbeat and optimistic, that’s impossible. We have to start somewhere more realistic — and close to Scripture.

So here’s the definition I’ve come up with from studying Scripture:

Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright, and the determined choice to praise God in every situation.

You’ll find nothing in that definition about happy feelings, because, as we all know, happiness is fleeting and temporary.

We tend to think that life comes in hills and valleys. In reality, it’s much more like train tracks. Every day of your life, wonderful, good things happen that bring pleasure and contentment and beauty to you. At the exact same time, painful things happen to you or those you love that disappoint you, hurt you, and fill you with sorrow. These two tracks — both joy and sorrow — run parallel to each other every single moment of your life.

That’s why, when you’re in the midst of an amazing experience, you have a nagging realization that it’s not perfect. And while you’re experiencing something painful, there’s the glorious realization that there is still beauty and loveliness to be found. They’re inseparable.

If you look down train tracks into the brightness of the horizon, the tracks become one. You can’t distinguish them as two separate tracks. That’s how it will be for us, too. One day, our parallel tracks of joy and sorrow will merge into one. The day we meet Jesus Christ in person and see the brightness of who he is, it will all come together for us. Then it will all make complete sense.

I like this analogy! It makes a lot of sense to me.

——————————-

Maybe it’s just my temperament…after all, God made me to be that 3 year old who could skip happily through the house singing my made-up song of “Life is miserable!”…or maybe it’s my oblivious non-attention to detail that keeps me from seeing every imperfection and flaw…or maybe it’s being raised by parents who modeled gratitude rather than whiny complaining…or maybe it’s because so much of my early childhood was idyllic and happy…or maybe it’s because a friend once encouraged me to look for a blessing every day…or maybe it’s because I’ve never grown up enough to completely lose my childish sense of wonder…or maybe it’s because I need joy and beauty so much, almost as much as I need food and water…but it takes a lot — as in a LOT — for me to remain in a constant state of unhappiness for very long.

Yes, it seems contradictory. After all, I am no stranger to grief or sorrow. I am the same person who once penned reams of poetry with lines like, “melancholy has stolen my heart”, and who described myself as a “child of sorrow” in a never ending gloomy rain. I’ve experienced clinical depression so severe that it made me overcome my extreme aversion to antidepressants. Despair has almost killed me. Literally.

But joy always broke through.

Always.

The darkest of nights has always, eventually, been followed by a morning when joy came. The “eventually” may have taken excruciatingly long. Sometimes it was a somber joy. Sometimes that “determined choice to praise God in every situation”, as Kay Warren describes it, involved some initial teeth-gritting and an amazement that such great sorrow, and such heights and depths of joy, could exist in the same heart and mind in the very same instance.

But maybe it’s not me at all. Because the bottom line is that I can’t praise God for very long — I mean really praise Him rather than mouthing words — without remembering what kind of God He is. I find my perspective changing from “woe is me” to realizing that, even in the most horrific of circumstances, I have reasons for thanksgiving, even if I can’t think of one beyond, “Heaven will be better than this nightmarish horror.”

But then I remember Jesus. And He melts me. And He opens my eyes. Gratitude comes trickling into my spirit as I begin remembering Scripture passages that speak to my pain. It may not happen quickly enough for me, but it is the gratitude that re-orients my thoughts and feelings. Maybe I am just unusually blessed, but it is rare (impossible?) for me to sit in God’s presence for very long without feeling enormously thankful for His extravagant, scandalous grace and generosity towards me.

Eventually more of my feelings follow. There have been valleys in my life, despite the truth of the train track analogy. But, as Corrie ten Boom loved to remind us, there is no pit so deep that Jesus’ love is not deeper still.

Today, incredible as it seems even to me, I thank God for the pits that threatened to consume me, because God’s love won out, every time. Even when I doubted or denied Him, He never gave up. Besides, for every pit there have been mountaintops — a few times, I have felt joy so overwhelming, so extreme, so powerful, so beyond description, that I thought if it lasted any longer with such intensity, my heart would give out and I would die. Seriously.

Because I choose to be grateful, today I choose joy. Today I choose happiness. Today I reach out with trembling, fearful, overly-inhibited, weak and puny little hands towards the abundant life God keeps showering on me. How can I walk with Him, talk with Him, and listen to Him without — once in a while — experiencing a joy that spills over into a happiness that at least borders on giddiness?

A dear friend of mine promised me that, when I first recognized my true freedom in Christ, I would feel almost giddy about it. He was right; I still remember the moment it hit me and I wrote him an email that ended with, “Excuse me while I go out and dance in the streets.”

I know, I know. Happiness should not be our goal. It is a fleeting emotion. In many circumstances, it would be completely inappropriate to feel happy. We should seek holiness, die to self, etc., etc.

But today I choose to celebrate. I won’t dance in the streets, because I’m still too shy and inhibited, but I’m not going to pretend that it’s somehow more spiritual to ignore all of God’s present blessings and put on a serious face just because I’m not in Heaven yet.

Little 3 year old me had it right. Life is miserable. But that’s no reason not to sing and dance at least some of the time — because God is good.

———-

Note: I don’t know why, but I’ve had to edit this umpteen times. The formatting got scrambled. Entire sentences and paragraphs disappeared. And I kept getting interrupted by life. Very frustrating! I’m no longer feeling quite as celebratory. Haha.

Prayer as therapy

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After all the years I’ve spent as a Christian, all the hours I’ve spent reading and studying the Bible, and a lifetime in the church — I should have most of the answers, right? But knowing about God is not the same as knowing, really knowing Him. He remains a Mystery, too vast for my puny, human mind to comprehend. Sometimes, in His Presence, I’m reduced to the little girl who went forward years ago at a Billy Graham crusade.  

Some days, I have more questions than answers. Some days, I struggle. But my earthly father has always assured me that God can handle all our questions, even the messy ones.
 
This is raw. It’s not neat and tidy. But it’s true. And it’s where I am today.

“Thanks for not being a traditional therapist.”

That’s what I said to Donny as I hugged him goodbye at the end of one of our sessions months ago. After that, I wrote the following in my journal, slightly edited here for clarity: 

Earlier, I’d expressed pretty much the same sentiment at the beginning of my prayer — only the words I’d chosen then were more vulnerable in some ways, and more expressive of how deeply thankful I am that my therapist has always been far more concerned about pleasing God and serving Him than he has been about living up to human standards and expectations. Of course there have been times over the past five years that I have been less than thrilled with the guy, and wished he was more of the feel-good kind who wanted me to leave the office smiling after every session, one who wouldn’t ever stoop to “imposing his values” on me. Once I even jumped on him for something I now don’t remember — I thought he was wrong to “make me feel guilty” — and he let me know quietly but firmly just Whom he was serving. (In case anyone wonders, it wasn’t me.)

The irony is that this “odd” approach of serving God instead of the person he’s supposed to be serving — as in me, his all-important client, the one he is being paid to make feel better — turns out to have been the most healing thing for me. Then again, that’s hardly ironic; God has always had my best interests at heart.

So it was that we started our New Adventure in Therapy: praying through my past. I felt a little apprehensive and self-conscious at first. Part of me was afraid that I hadn’t quite communicated what I meant when I originally brought up my idea, and that Donny would suddenly put on the brakes once he realized what I really meant. Then I worried that he would want to structure or stifle it somehow…but all those fears were laid to rest after my first introductory sentence or two. (All that seems unrealistic and silly now. I thought I’d gotten over my fear that Donny will unexpectedly morph into a Completely Different Sort of Therapist, one that is Frightening and Sinister…or just one I no longer like.)

At that point, my nervousness was about the prayer itself. Other than a few desperate phrases here and there, and I mean truly desperate, I’ve only prayed out loud with him once, and that was before his last mission trip. I could tell that I was possibly using some delaying tactics, and was about to start using said tactics in a big way, so I forced myself to…gulp…just get started.

I ended up covering my life from the beginning — in utero — up until we moved when I was 5. The starting point was what I’d already planned, but I’d not given much thought to where I’d wrap things up for today.

As I’d anticipated and warned Donny, I cried pretty much the whole time. It wasn’t some big huge sob-fest — not at all an “ugly cry” — but what seemed like a fairly steady stream of tears and no small amount of sniffling. Next time I need to remember the Kleenex box conveniently located on the end table, so I won’t be reduced to using the cuffs of my sweatshirtish jacket.

There were lots of good memories in there, and they probably caused the most tears. I thanked God for so many things, and I felt as if He kept bringing really special pictures, thoughts, feelings, events, and people to my mind. I was truly blessed during those early years, and it’s no wonder that I remember myself as mostly happy, and feeling right in my own skin — even if I was an unusually fearful child.

Yes, and I’m glad I have a therapist who doesn’t pooh-pooh the idea of being impacted by maternal emotions while in the womb…or my wacky ideas about early attachment…or any of that stuff.

Towards the end, I thanked God for the personality and temperament He gave me. Some babies would have been a wreck not to be held “constantly”. I didn’t spend hours weeping or screaming in my crib, nor did I shut down. God spared me that, and He spared Mums that. After all, she didn’t choose to be ill, weak and exhausted.

So I left, feeling wonderful. Sat in the car, jotted down some notes, and started writing this. Dropped off two bags of bedroom junk and clothes for Goodwill. Drove to Laguna Lake and practically raced into the bathroom — a result of all that water and coffee. It was then that I felt a sudden wave of anxiety. Uh, oh. Not good. It was wrong to pray like that in therapy. It was bad — bad — and not therapeutic at all. That’s why I’ve never heard of any reputable therapist — or even a disreputable one — conducting “therapy” in such a manner.

For a looooong moment there, I was convinced it wasn’t just wrong; it was dangerous. I felt that familiar panic — yeah, that one, the one I haven’t missed having around at all — and I got the desperate urge to call Donny before I fell apart in a completely hysterical shambles.

But…!

Before the panic mounted up into the stratosphere, I suddenly thought, “Huh? What could possibly be wrong or dangerous in praying about my past?” I’d like to take credit for that sensible thought, but I’m convinced it was a God thing. And, just as soon as I thought it, my panic vanished — poof! — and seemed laughably ridiculous. Oh, yeah, praying is so dangerous — to whom? (I really did think that last part with correct grammar. Yet another miracle. Haha.)

It seemed such an obvious ploy of the Enemy. All too often, I had fallen for that sort of thing; in fact, there had been an almost uncanny pattern of:

  • an Especially Good Session — a significant breakthrough —
  • followed by Suddenly Being Convinced the Session was Really THE BIGGEST MISTAKE EVER —
  • followed by anxiety, panic, desperation…and sometimes tequila.

That is, unless I took a Xanax or two first, or ended up in the hospital (which happened only once…my panic attack that tried to disguise itself as a heart attack). But this time…well, I was going to say “God intervened”, but I bet He did the same all those previous times. Only this time I listened.

God is good.

It’s as if I’m just spreading everything all out in front of Him, asking Him to clean it up, free me from it, and redeem it — and seeing what He chooses to do. But what about putting it at the foot of the Cross — that’s where it really needs to go, isn’t it? What more redemptive place is there?

And now? What about these months later?

I’ve hit a wall. It took me a while to realize it, because I kept coming up with excuses to put “praying through my life” on hold while dealing with supposedly more pressing current life issues. Last week I let Donny know that’s what I was doing, although I suspect he already knew. We spent that session trying to figure out what exactly I was avoiding, and why I didn’t want to pray about 10 to 11 year old me. It’s not like something horrid happened to me at that age; in fact, those were good years, full of wonderful memories. It was during that time that I encountered a very personal God in some very real ways, and I treasure those memories beyond words.

No real answers for my avoidance. I left, feeling still stuck.

And kinda silly about the whole thing.

A week later, today I was in his office again, trying to will myself to just start praying. I mean, really, how hard could it be? It’s not as if God and I had never talked about any of this stuff before!

I couldn’t. Finally I figured out that I wasn’t so much avoiding praying through those good years as I was dreading praying through the years that followed. I decided this whole “prayer therapy” was ridiculous anyway. It was stressing me out. Here I was, after sitting mostly adult-like in therapy for months upon months, suddenly reduced to taking off my shoes so I could adopt my childish couch-huddle, hiding behind my knees, chewing on my fingers, playing with my hair, and hugging myself. Even worse, my legs started trembling. Ugh.

We tried to talk about it. Finally it dawned on me why I was so afraid: what if God “fussed” at me for some of the things I did during my teens? What if He turned out not to be as compassionate, tender, and forgiving as I hoped? What if I ended up feeling as I did then? My voice no longer sounded like an adult as I said the words that described those long ago feelings: “Dirty…small…insignificant…dirty…”

Then another, stronger fear hit me. What if God turned out to be as loving and compassionate as I am beginning to hope and believe He is? How will I survive such love without feeling completely undone? vulnerable? naked?

“I think I’d prefer a somewhat impersonal God,” I said, feeling like a doubting, rebellious heretic for even voicing such a thing. Then I cried because how could I doubt the extravagant love of God after all He has done for me? How often must He demonstrate it to me?

As Donny talked about leaps of faith and jumping off cliffs, and I told him my high-dive story and said that this felt like jumping into a foggy abyss without knowing if there was even a swimming pool there, I kept picturing myself standing on a mountain top, yelling up at the sky, “Who are You, God? Who are You?”

…and being afraid of the answer, even while demanding it.

“Why does God have to be so complicated?” I cried, only to laugh at how ridiculous that sounded. I answered myself, “Duh, because He’s God.”

This is not a mature, adult faith. It’s a mess, a broken jumble of confusion. But I’m posting it here because it’s real. Jacob wrestled with God. David asked Him tough questions, and lamented and wailed. The Bible is full of people struggling with God, people who didn’t have neat and tidy answers, people that we would feel uncomfortable having around if they showed up at our next small group meeting.

Way back when I was 11 years old, I threw two troubling questions at God, and He answered. Now I feel as if that wasn’t a lifetime ago, as if I’m still Little Me, all childish and earnest and troubled, desperate to believe and trust, desperate for answers that satisfy.

He’s the same God Who answered a crying little girl…the same God Who brought peace to a little girl who needed to cling to hope and beauty…He’s that personal, intimate God…Abba…Daddy…

It scares me. He scares me. Because I know that encountering His love never leaves me unscathed. Never. I will be undone. My heart will be broken…in the most beautiful and healing way. Who will I turn out to be, when I see myself through the loving eyes of my Creator?

I want to run…far far away from a God I cannot escape, at the same time that I want to throw myself into His everlasting arms.

So I stand on what feels like a mountain top, yelling to the Heavens, “Who am I? And You — who are You? What kind of God could possibly love me? And how will I survive Your unfathomable, wild, fierce, tender love?”