Many of us walk through life with a heart not fully mended; a heart we’ve had to calcify over the years of not being loved well, received well or handled well in even the most smallest, yet significant moments. Sometimes, our heart becomes so hardened, we can’t even hear the whisper of our soul anymore, the whisper of God’s love; and we walk aimlessly filling our lives with what we think we want in order to keep the pain of our past quiet. We get so good at stacking these stones in our backpack, walking the same path back and forth each day until the one day we trip and all the stones fall out. We scatter attempting to put them all back into our packs, for no one else could carry them except ourselves, and it’s far too painful to reveal what we are carrying, right? Wrong.
When the stones fall out of the pack, which at some point every human will eventually allow them even if it’s on the final breaths of their death bed where their whole life washes over them with remorse and regrets, I urge you to see this as a gift that God is giving you. Sometimes God puts the stick in the path to wake us up to how much we are hiding, how much we are carrying and how much we do’t have to —- how much He wants to help us and lift the weight and burden off of us. But when we’ve been carrying these things for so long, they become us. We simply don’t know how to live without the part of us feeling some sort of belief, some sort of pattern, some sort of pain that is familiar and keeps us safely nestled into our circumstances. This is why even when we become aware of something that isn’t serving us, we can speak in circles and never really truly change. Change is hard, especially when the change is not one that can be validated by your current external circumstances, which that’s the ironic thing, in order to change, our external circumstances won’t fit us anymore. This loss of belonging for authenticity is the tension that we will grapple with all our lives.
The Power of Past Pain on Our Future
When you begin to heal, not only will you begin to see that our pain is not only our responsibility, but it becomes our responsibility to the future and the people around us. Often when we are very good at bypassing our pain by either distracting ourselves from it, creating a narrative that keeps us as the victim and the world or other person as the perpetrator, what we are actually doing is creating more dividing lines (more calcification) in our hearts. When really, the invitation is to be in acceptance of the loss of control, the betrayal or whatever the pain is revealing and grieving it so that it doesn’t become a mask you must where to protect yourself going forward. Often, and this is how we know someone who has sat with a degree of their own pain and suffering, is that people who are hurting work their pain out on the world around them — because internally, that’s what they are doing to themselves. This is not a blog where I am going to do into the depths on the differences between tolerance and compassion (because both have a double edge sword) but, it’s to provide context that until we learn to accept, surrender the control over to God, let ourselves feel through the pain by allowing our heart to “break open” we will continue to run the same self preservation patterns over and over again, except each time, the source of the belief system that keeps causing us pain is more subtle and harder for us to discern. This is why the same problems seem to come up in relationships, despite continuing to choose the next person. A part of us is attempting to heal and make understanding out of what happened, so we bring the stories forward of our past and attempt to find the remedy.
Now, I am not advocating that this isn’t a healthy part of relationship is that if we choose someone who is healthy, loving and has done their own work, they can have compassion that this is a natural part of relationship is getting to know our tender hearts, and learning how to trust one another with them. An unhealthy relationship, perpetuates the wounds by either making another person solely responsible for fixing them — whether that person is you (internalizing) or the person you keep putting your pain onto (externalizing). As we deepen our internal compassion and self understanding, so too can we extend that outward to others. When we learn to hold the voids within us, we learn to not fill them with things we think they are going to be fixed by. This “re-parenting” process is where God comes in. It’s when we hold our pain, struggles and suffering open to His love and grace, we find fulfillment. God invites us to pause, He gives us presence in the most deepest and darkest of places, and by allowing Him to be in our suffering, and in our healing, He frees us from the binds of the past that keep recreating the path before us. This is how I believe, He “paves the way”. It may have taken a stick in the road to get you to fall and offload the rocks, but He wants to pick up every rock with you, help you see it differently and ask if He can take it instead. And, this process is an invitation. God loves us so much that he preserves our will to choose. The question is, will you loosen your grip and allow Him to?
Our Immediate Response to the Reveal is Shame
In order to keep our painful pasts alive, and to shove them in the shadow of our psyche so we cannot see them, we have to make a transactional oath to do so. We have to cut off and sever a part of ourself in order to not look at it; yet, this part of ourself the “shadow” is what actually causes sabotage in our lives. It’s the part of ourselves we run and hide from, when all it wants it to be exposed to the light. Yet, we deprive it making it darker and in deeper need of consumption. It gets so hungry that we feed it with the wrong things. Things that temporarily satiate it, but do not actually feed it in a way that allows it to finally come to rest. Shame is often the thing that keeps us stuck in these loop holes. It can be so subtle how we attempt to suffocate ourselves in this way. Busyness, hustle, do better, grow more, self judgement, criticism, manipulation and many of the other things is how we not just hide, but give into the shame the moment we feel it. When we hook into the shame, instead of remain present enough to allow what is behind it to come forward, we miss our opportunity to bring the part of ourselves home that is screaming for our attention. We continue to turn the noise up on life, instead of lovingly observing the mess for what it is and how it has been trying to get our attention. This part of ourselves, actually needs love. It was deprived of love and acceptance somewhere along the line and is why it has built a preservation system that contributes to more chaos than good; to disconnection versus connection and engagement.
So how do we learn to not use past pain to fuel our future, and instead to use it to fuel our healing for a hopeful, loving one? I wish the answer was a simple one, but it’s not. We are all unique beings with our own make up and stories. And yet, if we retrace the story of our past, and we presently and lovingly listen to ourselves we can often hear where we have been drawing assumptions and conclusions that are limiting us from truly receiving the love and life we yearn for and deserve deep down. This can be accomplished through journaling, therapy, prayer and other modalities that allow us to express what sometimes feels inexpressible — or how we think that everyone else feels the same not realizing that thought form is completely individual to us and our experience. Getting to know our “why” behind things (our beliefs, our actions) is a powerful tool. Like a curious toddler who asks why, if you show up to life with enough curiosity, God will show you. God will teach you. God will heal you. And, the hard part of today’s day and age is that healing and moving at a pace that allows our soul to remain intact, is wildly inconvenient. Acceptance makes us face things in our past that we would rather not. With a plethora of distractions, and things to keep us running from our past, when healing comes it comes with an invitation of seeing how much of our life has been a pain-ridden manuscript that we are just attempting to do our best to cope from.
Choosing love, compassion, and forgiveness in the midst of our pain is choosing a path of surrender and grace
This is foreign to us when we have had to do our best to survive. It’s wild how many people in the world, even externally look like they are thriving, but that is a symptom of their pain within; making an identity that self reliance and carrying those rocks for “just a little while longer” will somehow free them from what they fear most. The answer is never in the transaction we tell ourselves ie “if I just had more of this, then this will happen”. That’s often the justification to run from what is calling us; from accepting what is right now and taking action from the now. Sometimes, if we were to allow the love in that we never received, we would realize how much we have allowed other people to harm us. How much time we lost running towards the wrong things instead of the right ones. How much pain could have been prevented if we just “knew” this earlier, trusted our gut, followed our friend’s wise words. Again, that’s our shame talking. And, it’s such an icky, yet necessary part of our healing. My reminder to you is that it is normal to feel it, but it is not ideal to use it to fuel our actions. Until we transform that pain and shame into love, our actions will continue to cultivate more of what we don’t want than what we do. And yet, as I sit here and write this, I know that this is all a part of the journey of our hearts — we will learn these lessons over and over again until it completes; until we’ve examined every edge of it to fully come out of it with our hearts softened in grace, our understanding changed and most importantly no longer needing to chase things that pulls us further away from who we truly are and who God made us to be.
The Power of What If..
What if everything from your past wasn’t wrong, rather was there to prepare you for the life you’re destined for?
What if you trying to question, contemplate and find the “bad” before it happens is keeping you from the experiencing the fullness in life and all that He’s offering? That just maybe, these are the very things the Lord needs you to experience, to feel, both highs and lows, to pull you closer to Him, if only you would surrender and trust that He’s there behind it all, waiting to catch you, that you actually could never fall?
What if your feelings of unworthiness are actually Him showing you that you are? What if those are guides beckoning your heart into awareness of the limitations you’ve placed on your heart, foreboding His love and provision for you? What if you allowed Him to give you good things and not question it? Not strive and make a case for it?
What if you said yes more to the things that scare you, sought understanding in the things you didn’t, and humbled yourself that everything you’re engaged with right now is meant for you — even if it’s for a season, a reason or a fleeting moment. What if you cherished it for what is now and not what it could be?
What if you let His love lead? What if you gave yourself grace for not knowing, not accepting or acting on things sooner? What if you trusted that He only reveals what you need to know, see and experience for your good?
What if this moment is the medicine your heart needs? That your faith stretching is a sign of Him working? Your heart softening and humbling is a sign of your trust in Him integrating?
What if you return to your center, allow your heart to breath open even the smallest bit more beyond it current capacity, trusting Him as your pulse? What if you took one of the deepest life giving inhales into your heart knowing He has you? What if you made a practice out of prayerfully acting from this place?
What if you allowed everything that was untrue burn to the ground? What if you laughed at the moment you realize you’ve been contributing to keeping the illusion alive? What if you lovingly let yourself become free by allowing Him to remove things that aren’t for the greater good?
I pray you allow yourself to heal without shame; to soften your hands and allow God to hold you; to allow Him to crack your heart open into greater acceptance of the truth He’s trying to show you; to let him break whatever narrative down so He can uplift you. I hope you allow yourself to be filled and nourished with His grace, His kindness, His generosity and most importantly, His everlasting love. For that is how we heal; when we stop holding onto what is alive in our minds that keeps us fractured and perpetually separated from Him, and instead, recognize He always invites us back into our wholeness. And, we must soften the walls of self preservation we’ve built in order to do so; for those walls we built around our hearts because of pain, also keep Him out, too.
The part we don’t talk about is that when we truly let God into our hearts, there is an inevitable identity shed that comes with it.
God wakes us up to where our past pain has fractured us, keeping us shackled to a narrative of separation and brokenness. God wakes the parts of us up that perpetuates our disconnection from Him.
Intimacy, to be known and to know Him is what we yearn for. And yet, so many of us fight the one thing we must do — lean in and become vulnerable. It’s not fun to be vulnerable when it’s messy and not perfectly packaged. Vulnerability comes when we put ourselves out on an edge and we truly don’t know what the outcome will be.
When we talk about how God loves our desperation, it’s more about how willing we are to be vulnerable and invite Him into that vulnerability. The vulnerability is how we open the gates to the void that we have been hiding deep inside and protecting ourselves from; vulnerability is the way we give it over to Him to make whole; to heal; and to prove to us that we no longer have to separate that part of ourselves in order to survive.
He loves us, despite of.
Always.
When these moments arise, I pray that you don’t allow the shame and pain to put that story back in the box. Instead, I hope you choose to see through the eyes of Him; and let Him breathe life back into where it hurts the most. To soften the edges of your heart so that you may see clearly again – how He sees you and whats in store.
Rooting for your heart’s battle,
