A God of Restoration

When you find yourself in the darkness, when the pain is your only companion behind the walls you have built around your heart, and when you are so angry you've forgotten what it means to love, where do you go? Where can you possibly take your life that will make a difference? Who could ever help you find your way back to joy or freedom? Those are the questions that drove my life for years. You've now had a look into the journey that brought me to that point. There are many people living their lives with these same questions. So many of us, unfortunately, never find a way out of that darkness. The enemy convinces us that we are safe in those self-imprisoning walls we build. The problem is, those walls keep everything out that is good for us. They keep out Jesus and his healing light. They keep out those The Lord places in our lives to help us along our journey. They keep all joy, peace, and strength at a "safe" distance from our wounded hearts. The good news is that, once you allow the light into your heart, that stagnant darkness must leave. Satan and his army are powerless to God's great name.

The special people God put in my life to help me.

My road to healing was not an easy one. I did not always stay on the path. I would constantly veer off because it got too hard or scary. Healing does not mean instant peace. It does not mean that overnight you will no longer have to wrestle with your demons. Most of the time, we do not know what the journey is going to look like. The one thing I can promise you is that the outcome is good. Jesus's plans are always good. So today I am going to talk to you about Jesus healing my relationship with Him. I am starting here because it is that relationship that is the most important and pivotal to my entire story. There would be no story if I hadn't found Jesus again. I would still be in my darkness, hard and miserable with my hate. 

When I woke up the morning after "T" raped me, I was not the same girl I was the night before. There was a fracture in my very being. The most profound change though was my complete loss of faith in Jesus. I had spent my entire life up to that point believing in Him, following His word, and doing exactly what I was taught to do in church. What I didn't know at that point was that my faith was actually my parent's faith. I had never discovered for my own heart who Jesus is. I had never deepened my faith. It had never been tested, so I lived in an ignorant bliss. That morning, however, the very fiber of my being was tested. I'd like to say my relationship with God was real and strong enough to get me through, but instead, it came unraveled altogether. 

I didn't know who Jesus really was before that terrible night. Because of this, Satan immediately planted a lie in my heart that took a deep hold. Since I had no vision of who Jesus was, the enemy gave me one. He replayed the night before in my head. This time, I saw God in the room. When I was screaming for help as T violated me, He just stood there. When I begged for mercy from my torture, He was cold and distant. When I cried for comfort and shelter for my nakedness, He turned His back on me. And the next morning when I woke up, the devil convinced me that Jesus was just gone. He had left me because I was dirty and unlovable. He had abandoned me. What kind of "Father" would allow that to happen to his child? What kind of God would allow that kind of evil? In that moment, I made an inner vow that would hurt me far beyond what T ever did to me. I vowed that I would never rely on or trust anyone again. I would never follow or love a God that turned His back on me. 

Over the next few years, there was a drastic change in my character. I became hard. I became cruel. I became selfish and self-sufficient. I needed nothing and no one. If I allowed someone to "get close" it meant that I was using them to maintain control. All the while, I did everything to avoid God. I say avoid because there were constant occasions that would draw me to Him. It could be a family member or friend asking me to church. It could be seeing a Facebook post about His love. It could be something as simple seeing a family pray at a restaurant. You see, that's the thing about Jesus. You may try to run away from Him, but He never leaves us. He is faithful. He is ever-present. This continued for years. At times, my pain would get so overwhelming, that I would actually pray. When this happened though, it ended with me being angry and telling God I hated Him for leaving me. I hated that I had ever believed He loved me. After these times, I would push everyone even farther away and work to gain control again. 

This all continued until the day I found out about my son. If there was a ever a moment in my life where I felt I had finally hit rock bottom, that was it. I was finally not able to maintain my control. I lost what little stability I thought I had gained on my own. I didn't realize it at that moment, but Kody, as a little dot on that sonogram machine, saved my life. The instrumental part that Kody played in my life at that point, was that he forced me to love someone. I could no longer be selfish and self-centered because it wasn't just me anymore. It took the life changing event of becoming a mother for me to begin taking down my walls. Very VERY slowly, I removed bricks. When you have a life altering awakening, it is uncomfortable. When I realized that I could no longer rely on myself, I was scared. I didn't know who I was supposed to rely on, I just knew I had to figure it out soon for my son's sake. 

I finally decided that I would give God one year to prove if He was real. (I'm sure God was just cracking up at this point.) I told Him that I would read the Bible every night for a year, and if He really loved me, He would show me. At this point, I was actually going to counseling with an amazing woman. She kept telling me that God had never left me. She kept saying that Jesus was a God of redemption and mercy. I still couldn't believe her though. I had been heart broken for so long. How could anyone understand? That night I read Psalms 6. "Have compassion on me, Lord, for I am weak. Heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. I am sick at heart. How long, O Lord, until you restore me? Return, O Lord, and rescue me. Save me because of your unfailing love... I am worn out from sobbing. All night I flood my bed with weeping, drenching it with my tears." What?? David, a man after God's own heart, had been hurt as much as I had? I knew God loved him. I knew God's hand was always on David, and yet he still hurt too? Had God really never left me? In that moment, I asked God to show me where He had been that awful night. 

I saw Him in another light. When I was screaming for help, He was already there with his angels to fight with me. When I was begging for mercy, He was weeping too because His child was hurting. When I was crying for comfort and shelter, He was already holding me and covering my nakedness. He wasn't repulsed by the filth I felt. He was washing every stain with his own tears. He didn't see me as damaged or unlovable. He saw me as his precious daughter who he wanted to cover with his love and healing. He never left my side. He never turned away. Yes, something awful happened to me because he gave his children free will. T used his free will for evil, but God never abandoned me. When I was angry and telling God I hated Him, He was already forgiving me. And when I finally took down my walls, He was right there waiting where He had been all those years.

That night, God's love was overwhelming. I sat in my bed and sobbed as I had so many times before, but that night, it was in the comfort of my Savior's arms. My heart broke that night again, but this time it was Jesus breaking through all the pain, scars, and emptiness that surrounded my heart. When a person is injured, the surgeon must clean up the dead and ugly to get to the healthy tissue again. The surgery sets everything back to being correct, but then there are scars left. They always remind you of the pain you went through. The best part about Jesus is that he is not only a God of healing, He is also a God of restoration and redemption. When God broke my heart open again, he didn't leave scars to remind me of my hurts. He gave me a new and pure heart. When I finally surrendered my pain to Him, He didn't just help me hold it. He took it completely away. He took the control of it that I had been holding onto for so long. 

I still have a long way to go in my walk with Jesus. There are days I still fight for that control. There are still days that I don't do what I am supposed to do. I am an imperfect human serving a perfect God. A perfect God with perfect love and forgiveness. Being a child of God doesn't mean that my life is easy. There are days when bad things happen to me. There are days when I'm sad. There are days I get angry. But there is never a day that I am not with my Daddy. He is with me in every minute of my every day. "But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works." (Psalms 73:28) I give God the glory for my healing. I praise Him for his faithfulness and love. He has made beauty from my ashes. He is my Abba Father, Elohim, and Addonai. There is power in His name. There is power in our testimony.