The Wall

The Wall 

Have you ever felt it? It’s the thing you can’t quite name, the feeling that something is not right. It presses on your heart and mind. It wakes you at 3:00 AM. You find yourself desperate to distract from it. Anything will do. Reading, shopping, eating. The thing buzzes in your brain and reminds you that you are not enough.

What is this thing?

The thing is a wall; a barrier I have built over time to protect my soul from pain.
A dear friend in high school ditches me for a boy. I seal off a tiny part of my heart. Never again, I vow. I will never trust like that again. A man promises me a future and family. And then dumps me. After I gave him EVERYTHING. Never again, I promise my broken heart and body. I will never trust like that again.
A boss I revere gives me a pink slip. “It’s nothing personal,” she snips. “We are downsizing.” Never again, I resolve. Never will I invest so much of me into someone else. My child, the child I would die for, chooses drugs, or an abusive relationship, or perishes in a car wreck where speed and alcohol were involved. How could she? I wonder. After all I have done to make sure she doesn’t repeat my pain.

Pain.

We all experience it. Pain is unavoidable. Pain causes me to question everything I thought I knew. I become focused on avoiding it, and if I can’t avoid it, I want to at least understand it. I want to believe that there is some meaning in it. I have to believe there is a cure for it. All the while I continue building my wall around my wounded soul to prevent pain from entering. I need to control it.

It's Biblical. In Genesis, God cursed the ground and told Woman, that she would have pain in child~bearing. I don’t think He was talking about labor. I think He was talking about the particularly excruciating pain that comes from watching a beloved child try desperately to find Life in a world filled with Death.

I know that one more blow, and I will be finished.

Forever.

Instinctively I know that I am the underlying cause of my own pain. I am the reason for the rejection, the death, the sting. And this knowledge just makes my pain worse. It is all my fault. If only I had _______.(FILL IN THE BLANK)
But I can’t fix it. It’s too late.
Or that other person. That other person is the culprit. If they would just stop ____________ or start ____________, my pain would be less.

What if the pain in my soul is a gift?

What if the pain in my soul is an indication that I’m looking in the wrong place for my needs?

Pain distills life down to the very simple.

I just need to get through the next hour. I just need to survive the funeral. I just need to make itthrough Friday. I just need to survive.

I hunker down. I pull my prettiest sweater up around my ears and put on my best makeup, and fake it.

I pray for strength to get through the next week or day or moment. I remember to thank Him for themany blessings He has bestowed upon me. I fear that if I don’t thank Him, I’ll have even more pain. He’ll take something or someone else away.
I beg for forgiveness for whatever the thing is that I’ve done. I ask Him to show me His will so that I can do it. I bargain with Him, “I’ll do anything if You’ll take away the pain.”

Finally, I can’t do it anymore.
I stop hunkering down.
I no longer care to protect my inner self from pain. I press into the pain and beg Him to end it quickly.

I am happy to die.
I am happy to allow Him to dismantle my perfect wall.
And He does.

And suddenly I see what Life looks like beyond my wall.
Outside the wall is where Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Gentleness, Faithfulness,
Generosity and Self-control lives. Outside the shell of who I thought I was lives the real me. The crucified and resurrected me. The me who is cradled and carried by Him.
He is Life. He is the sufficient One. He is the One who saw, and sees, and sees what has yet to come. He has not only seen. He has made perfect provision for my beloved ones and for me.

What if my wall simply traps my pain, causing it to magnify, multiply and putrefy?
What if Jesus truly is enough? What if I chose to place my confidence in Him to meet my need for love. Would that make me free to love others, without the protective filter that is so easily offended?

What if Jesus truly is my Protector and Provider? What if He says that I am OK with Him?
And that my OK-ness is not dependent upon my sufficiency, but His.

I’m not perfect. That part happens later. When I finally get Home.

But all of the plates I have worked so hard to spin and protect are His. And He has them.
Truly. And really.
He is my Life.
Beautiful Brokenness ~ He has broken the wall.
Once and for all.
I’m just figuring out what that means.
Moment by moment.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me will find it.
Matthew 16:25 (NIV)