The past few weeks and maybe even months have been quite an emotional journey for me. I have been going to a great Christian therapist who has been helping me work through a lot of bitterness and anger from my childhood and helping me find healing and forgiveness. For years, even currently, I have battled a spiritual and emotional battle in my home with my parents... primarily my dad. I have never really openly shared that with people, but I have faced years of verbal and emotional abuse.
Every few weeks I get a homework assignment, on top of my journaling through the normal emotional occurrences and interactions with my family. This assignment was one that I knew would be intense because it will open up a lot of healing wounds. My therapist wanted me to write a letter to my dad. Unfiltered, full of truth, pain, honesty, just releasing it all. The flood gates opened as I worked on this letter, as I relived memories of pain and neglect from the past. It was definitely a heavy emotional week for me.
Well, tonight as I sat in that little room on the couch in therapy. I encountered Jesus in such a real way.
There I sat with my journal in hand with a tear-stained letter and I was asked to read it to the empty chair across from me as if my dad was sitting across. As I read the letter aloud, my voice began to crack, and tears began to flow, and I had to stop and catch my breathe.
"There is a little girl inside of me who just wants to be love and cherished- I just want to call you daddy and fee pride in that title, not shame, disgust, and bitterness... how dare you, I just want to be loved and cared for...
He (God) quiets my soul- I need a reason to sing... Lord, help me through this process, I pray victory over these demons...
I sat there and wept as I finished reading the letter. My therapist had me close my eyes and say anything that came to mind, that came to my heart. It was another tearful experience but then my therapist led me to a place of beauty, a place of healing, a holy ground...
As I closed my water field eyes, the therapist asked me to envision my pain and hurt and baggage. It was this black blob with a dark grey cloud that loomed over it. Chain were attached to the blob and attached to my ankles. Then we invited Jesus in. She asked me to speak with Him and describe what I saw, felt, smelled... whatever came to mind. I thanked Him for His love for me, for the friends and church family that He placed in my life to love me in ways that my family couldn't. I felt His presence there because I could barely speak for fear of saying the wrong thing, for feeling like my voice was so tiny compared to His great presence. I felt His Holiness. I could feel His arm around me, comforting me. I wanted to take my shoes off because I felt I was on holy ground. Then He knelt below at me feet, as if He were going to wash them I began to weep more. He broke the chains. The therapist asked me, if He said anything thing. There I felt His words touch my soul, I saw them paint across my mind. I didn't even want to say for fear that the words might not be real. I didn't want to share them but there was such love and comfort in them and peace that washed over.
As He looked me in my eyes, He whispered...
"Oh my sweet child, it will be okay. We will get through this!"
As I envisioned His presence, the light got brighter almost like staring into a florescent light. The black blob began to be speckled with color, with purple and blue and the brighter the light got, the more the blog disappeared.
As I opened my puffy tear soaked eyes and took deep breathes, I felt healing. I felt like the baggage weighted a little less. It wasn't completely gone, but I walked away with that moment where I met Jesus. Where He comforted me and He continued healing my broken heart. Sometimes Jesus will take away the pain and hurt in one swoop, and sometimes He'll chip away at it, little by little. No matter how long that process takes, I am so happy to know that He is there along the journey. I pray that I continue to seek His face and to know and remember that, we will get through this together. I just have to BE STILL and wait for His Presence and Listen for what step to take next.
"Be STILL and know that I AM God"
-Psalm 46:10
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