Sometimes when I think about my childhood I get the warm fuzzies. I think about special dates with my dad to Sweet Tomatoes where he let me eat dessert and we talked about Anne of Green Gables and her life story for hours. I fondly remember shopping with my mom and spending time looking at everything and eating olives and sushi.
On hot summer days, I’d sit on the floor at my Aunt Donna’s house and listen as she played the piano and wrote music or go to my grandma’s house to spend the night, and wake up to the pungent scent of Folgers in the morning.
But then another part of me thinks about the hard stuff:
My Aunt Donna dying when I was seven, figuring out things related to my parents’ divorce, wondering why my birth-father left me when I was a baby yet also forgiving him when I was 18, or the hardness and repercussions of growing up being so involved in cult-ish religious organizations and cult-like churches.
I recall many of the people I’ve loved going through painful divorces, church splits, abuse, abandonment, loss, and more.
I remember all the spiritual abuse and erroneous teaching embedded in my thought process and legalism as the backdrop to my convictions; holding all of my pain inside because I was supposed to wear a “ministry smile” and bury my true feelings.
It’s like the heavy chains that Jacob Marley wears when he (as a ghost) visits his old miserly friend Ebenezer Scrooge to beseech him to change before it’s too late.
How do you get past all that? How do you forgive and move on and realize that some things will never be resolved, while other things have been redeemed and restored? How do you reprogram yourself and everything you know to make sure it’s actually theologically correct instead of manipulated and distorted by corrupt men?
I’m always thinking about how God never promised us that we would have easy, pain-free lives. No amount of good that we do will make our lives perfect.
But I also talk to Jesus and ask Him questions about the hard stuff and why I have to suffer.
And He listens.
He may not take away all the grief and pain, but He sits with me. It always makes me feel safe knowing He is there in any season and can handle hearing my joy, my grief, my anger, and my questions.
How are you living today? Are you working for your salvation? Are you striving for the good opinion of men over what God thinks about you? Have you found healing in your pain? Or are you still wondering why?
There is only one answer…
Jesus.
Jesus knows.
Jesus understands.
Jesus listens.
Jesus restores.
Jesus heals.
“The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”
~ Psalm 34:18
