This morning in my prayer closet (AKA, the shower), I had a remarkable conversation with God and I came to the realization that I needed to give myself permission to get better. Isn't that strange?
All this time I was praying for the odd combination of numbness and pain to cease, to have it taken from me so that I could get on with my life as I'd hoped it would be. Over the last few months my prayer changed from, "Help me! Take this pain away!" to, "Lord, take me through this," to, "Lord, have your way in me," to, simply, "Be glorified."
Thing is, I've been re-discovering how God uses the difficulties in my life to refine me as a Christian. Not just as a woman, or a daughter, or a mom, or Steve's wife (even though we've been inseparable for nearly 14 years), but as a child of God. God, as my refiner, turns up the heat now and then to burn off the junk he won't use. The fire hurts. It burns and blisters and I cry out in pain even as He re-creates who I am IN HIM. The Refiner holds me tightly in His grip even as I fight the process. I don't need my hang-ups, they can be burned away. I don't need past hurts lived over and over in my mind, nor do I need to let current trials define who I am in Christ. Fact is, I'm a blood-bought princess, a daughter of the Most High, not worthy to be saved but saved nonetheless. Mercy flows over old wounds and I'm healed. Love poured out red at the cross.
I know this might all seem like some weird code for those of you who are not in Christ, and maybe it is! But those of you who DO know Him know what I'm talking about: hope of healing is hope for what we haven't experienced yet, because the PROMISE of healing is all over the Bible. Not just my healing from depression, but from the hurt of disregard, from the pain of rejection and the bitterness of betrayal, to the deep throbbing ache that comes out of mourning. Healing comes. Not in my time, but in His time. And it comes over and over, even as we find we're bleeding afresh.
I think God allows heartbreak in this life so that He can re-shape us, re-work our hearts into vessels He will fill. If the heart is never broken, how can all the selfishness come out? How can we be rid of the junk we invest our hearts in, if they're locked tight against God? I've locked myself up inside for so long . . . and I really thought I was protecting myself, because depression is a self-focused thing.
The reality is, the only way for me to be free of the "me-ness" was for the lockbox I'd made my heart into to be gently chisled open by the wounded hands of Christ. Even as Jesus held me in my pain, I held the hammer that would drive the nails through his flesh and into the cross. MY sin (and yours) held him there. He died. He was buried and when He rose He bought for us new life.
I am humbled. I am brought low in the knowledge that the King of Heaven did this because He doesn't want to part with me, but to be with me for eternity.
I am undone, and yet made whole. A lock box may be whole, but it is locked.
A chipped, marred, uneven and imperfect vessel is more useful than a locked box without a key.
Fill me up and pour me out, Jesus, as imperfect a vessel as I am. I have no need for locks any longer.
You bought my freedom. Please help me not to waste it.
No comments:
Post a Comment