Gregory and Elizabeth's voices fill the house.
They are running around. They are playing. They are laughing and giggling and chasing one another around and around. Up the stairs and down the stairs. They are living. They are full of life.
I am sitting. Looking out a window and staring at beauty. Adding a little bit of correction here and there when the kids "play" needs it, but thoroughly taking it all in, their joy and their life and their freedom.
Wasn't always the case.
I laid on the futon. I couldn't move. I could hear them all running around down stairs. I couldn't move. In my head pictures of what I wanted to be doing, running around with them, (heck, just being with them.). I would picture in my head how I wanted to finger paint with them, how I wanted to go on walks with them, how I wanted to read books and sing songs and color pictures with them.
But I laid on the futon.
Body frozen. Mind even more so....
My mom at one point spoke that if she was younger she would take them, if she was younger and if my husband would allow she would take them. My mind dull and heavy and full searched out the window for answers. My heart so brutalized by the past, by depression, by anguish unidentified.. barely able to breath, watching my life be stolen before me but incapable of rising up and catching the thief.
Who do you say things like that to?
Who do you tell that you have laid on the futon for days?
Who do you ask for help?
Especially when you are a Christian.
Especially when you are a Christian and you and your husband are in ministry.
Won't it wreck your testimony?
Won't it impede the work of God?
What will happen? What will people think? What will it look like?
There is no hope in that place, only condemnation and accusation. It never came forth from the community. It didn't have to. I placed enough of it upon my own shoulders.
I could stand up, I could speak, I could teach, I could minister... but I couldn't live.
Everybody's journey is going to look different.
What happened with me is I couldn't remain silent any longer, after driving around and around and around the small New England town I called a friend. I have prayed and I am not released from this torment. I have gotten prayer and still am wading through this bog. I don't know what else to do.
My cry wasn't left unheard.
My heart wasn't told to buckle up underneath faith.
More anguish wasn't put upon my mind.
You see I could clean up good. I could play whatever part I needed to even if it was ever so briefly. I could make the exterior look really great. Except.... except inside I was perishing. Inside I was dying. Inside I was dead. I pushed myself and contorted my being into what I thought a "good" Christian needed to look like. I kept my mouth shut about the inside and sang the right songs and spoke the right words and perished.... PERISHED.....
Christ didn't come so I could look pretty on the outside. Christ didn't come so that I could name it and claim it and fake my way into it... Christ didn't come so that I could wear the garments and trappings of religion and condemn or judge myself and everyone other one who wasn't looking the part
I keep saying to the Lord how I am not a theologian. There are things upon my heart that I so desperately want to say but feel intimidated. This morning what was on His heart for me to understand was, "that Peter and James were uneducated men but they spoke with the authority that flowed forth from the heart of Heaven."
I could feel His heart. I could feel Him sharing to once again tell people to "rise up and walk." Once again tell myself... RISE UP AND WALK.
I was never able to finish out a try at college... my past in one way, shape or another kept biting my back side.... But this I do know.... I know that I know that while there is still, oh so very much, for me to learn, I know the heart beat of Heaven. I know its strength. I know its resiliency. I know its passion. I know its calling. I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is for me and for you, I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt that He is beckoning all away from a place of perishing towards a place of life.... I know Him and the promise is that those who know their God "will display strength and take action."
DISPLAY STRENGTH....
TAKE ACTION....
Shame comes to silent but there is a holy roar building within in the gut of the multitude. No longer willing to live in its grasp, aching for freedom.... hungering to breath... A ceasing of suffocation will let loose a holy roar... It is promised that a pile of dry bones that was left and without life WILL arise.... DRY BONES WALKING..... AN EXCEEDINGLY GREAT ARMY....
Why? Why is this what happens?
Because when you have tasted death and darkness the light tastes amazing.... when your eyes have had to squint to see through the fog, the clarity that comes jump starts the heart and it becomes fearless... STEP by step... moment by moment... strength to strength.... bit by bit....
I once couldn't lift my head off the futon what I realized ever more powerfully every day is that HE is the LIFTER of my head.... AND HE IS GOOD.
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