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Many years later, I rocked my newborn baby Hudson during his first days of life. I stroked his perfect little fingers and chubby cheeks. There wasn’t a more perfect and innocent creature that existed on earth. I leaned in and whispered, “I love you so, so much. I will never, ever, ever…” and felt the tears well up in anguish as the painful memories of that night of resignation came to the surface. I wanted to say, “I will never make you feel like a waste of a space.” I wanted to say, “I will never make you feel rejected or ashamed of who you are.” I really wanted to say those things to my precious baby in full confidence. But I couldn’t bring myself to finish that sentence because I couldn’t know for sure if it was true. I couldn’t say that I had broken the cycle of abuse and violence simply by avoiding the pain of the past and living in survival mode. But somehow I knew that there was some active work to be done, a deep healing, and God was beckoning me to it now more than ever.
Redeeming the darkness
How does one begin unraveling the wounds of the past? I had grown quite accustomed to this dark ecosystem. It was my modus operandi, my shelter, my hiding place. It had gotten me this far, right? There were times when I let the darkness take over me as I numbly handed over the controls, resulting in some roadblocks. But then I always seemed to recover and hide my tracks somewhat well. It didn’t seem so bad. Plus, I was completely terrified of what I would uncover once I began, deathly afraid of feeling the lifetime of pain I had tried so hard to conceal. I didn’t even know how to approach God in an honest way. Surely the God of the universe didn’t have time to deal with my silly thoughts and desires. They weren’t worth bringing as an offering. I wasn’t worthy. I felt like Adam and Eve, using puny little leaves to cover myself when God knew all along who I was and exactly what I was doing.
And yet I heard God’s still, small voice, so strong yet so peaceful, saying, “I want more. Bring it all to me. All of it.”
At first, I enlisted the help of a professional therapist because I knew I couldn’t do it alone. This moved me light years ahead in terms of confronting the pain. It felt powerful to name my shame and counter it with truth that revealed a little more of who I really was, who I was created to be. That active and facilitated work provided me the tools and courage to go at it and work by myself in the everyday quiet moments. One tip I received from a friend was to allow myself three pages every morning to write down everything going on in my heart and soul as a concrete offering to God. I began writing everything down in its raw form, unpolished and unattractive, sometimes even spilling beyond the allotted three pages. At first I was half-expecting some sort of punishment from God, or even a sign of resignation similar to my mother’s. No doubt it was exhausting to hear. But God received every word, fear, anxiety, and even silliness with arms wide open. There was a tenderness I felt, as if God actually treasured every word written, even celebrated it. It was unchartered territory, and as I took each step of discovery I was being swallowed up in the quicksand of God’s unending love and mercy. I was free falling, all the way down until I hit the most solid and sure ground I had ever known—the ground that was there all along.
