He Brought Me Up

At C-School, today they gathered around me and called Jesus into the room before a single wound was named. My healer. My Prince of Peace. Sandee covered me, covered the ministers, covered our families, and asked the Father only for the eyes He wanted us to have and the ears to hear His still, gentle voice. Before I'd said a word, I was already safe.

I told them the truth I've circled for years: that I struggle to put into words what goes on inside me, that I've been disconnected from myself for so long I don't always know what I'm feeling. I know God is here. I know who I am in Him. Still, I look at the fruit of my life like a mountain I can't find the foot of, and underneath it all sits that old dread, the fear that if anyone truly saw me, they wouldn't like what they found.

When the tears rose, they asked what lay beneath, and I named the anger of these past months, the ache over injustice and manipulation that has left me feeling so powerless. I named the strangest grief of all: that I can worship in the Spirit for hours, yet when I reach for words, I blank; when I reach for Scripture, it's gone. It has felt like a hand pressed over my mouth.

Then the memories came, few and far between as they always are. The little girl crying, her head pushed under cold water, and the vow that rose in her never to cry again. The child hidden in the cupboard while her parents fought, certain that if she told, it would somehow be her fault. Further back still, the knowing I've carried since birth, that I came after an abortion and shouldn't be here, that I don't belong. The thirty four houses and thirteen schools by the age of 18, and the displacement that carved itself into me. Then the tenderest, costliest thing of all, the abuse I buried for decades and told myself wasn't so bad, the shame that kept me silent for more than thirty years. Sandee said it so gently: burying a thing has never healed it. Whatever is buried alive stays alive.

So we brought it to the Cross, all of it. They laid hands on me and stepped into the timeline of every fracture, the womb, the birth, the little one, the preteen, asking Jesus to heal what was splintered and disconnected. I repented on behalf of my mother, my father, and those before me, and for my own part too, for beating myself up, for the self-rejection and self-hatred, for never once thanking God for the body and face and mind He gave me. The blood of Jesus washed back through the generations and forward to my children's children, and the cross was set firmly between me and all I was due to reap.

Then the pictures turned upward. I saw Jesus at the top of a mountain, calling me to keep climbing, and I said yes to His help. I heard eagle's wings and knew I was made to rise above these storms. I sensed dancing, freedom, uncharted waters, the Father inviting me into trust where trust had been broken since the beginning. Last of all, I saw the lies I'd believed about Him, that He was uncaring, unkind, mean, unavailable, and I understood at last that I'd been reading Him through my earthly daddy's face. I told Him I was sorry, sorry for every time I shut Him out when He only wanted to be there for me. It's His kindness that has led me home, and His perfect love that is casting out my fear.