TRIGGER WARNING
09272016 Secrets Maybe Part 1
I included maybe Part 1 because I’m not sure where this is going to go. I’ll also include this Trigger Warning right up front. Because I’ve had some crazy days and nights in my life, and I don’t want to cause anyone else to stumble. So if you’re a former addict, a former cutter, a former suicide risk, a former anything that you may be in danger of revisiting, please don’t read this today.
The first secret has been ruminating for a while. Like a pot of cold water, it’s been simmering to a slow, rolling boil. I was recently accepted to be a part of the launch team for Ann Voskamp’s new book, The Broken Way, and as I read the first line, “The day I cut up the inner softness of…” I could see myself there, on the old gray patterned linoleum of my bedroom in the tiny home where all of my secrets live. I continued reading into the third paragraph, where it sounded like my own personal story. “And I had stood, out on the back porch, all of sixteen, and let go of those glass jars…” Except that my own personal story was a hot flame and a sharp knife. Yes, you read that correctly.
Deep inside, I could feel heat and I thought I could feel the blood coursing through my veins. I often screamed inside, so loudly, my eardrums burst, but no sound came from my throat. I felt smothered as if breathing in thick smoke. Nothing, nothing I did relieved the feeling of hatred – that ugly, damning hatred. Nothing until I put that blade to the flame, heated it up, and pierced my own skin. It was a bit of magic in my room, no one knowing what I was doing. I wasn’t going to hurt anyone. I didn’t plan on burning down the house. I simply wanted to feel on the outside what was happening on the inside, and I decided to test the theory that a hot blade doesn’t hurt.
I can still see myself there, bare-legged on that floor, a wet head dripping onto an oversized t-shirt. I remember that I had gone to school and work, and probably done homework and watched tv with my family after we ate supper around the kitchen table. At a quick glance, we looked like a perfect nuclear family. At a quick glance, no one would even think there would be a reason for me to go up to my room with a knife later on. It was a paring knife I’d taken from the kitchen, and I promise you that my mother would be mortified if she found out today what I’d done with that knife; the one she used to peel potatoes into transparent strips of waste. If you’d have just looked in the window at suppertime, you’d have never thought I’d be ready to open up the caverns of pain and allow the flood of emotion to erupt. I looked happy. I seemed well adjusted.
I wasn’t much of a stand-out kid. I didn’t excel at anything. I woke up every day and went to school. I worked at a nursing home and a grocery store after that. I played an instrument, sang in the choir, and enjoyed visiting with friends on the phone. I didn’t have marks on my body, no funky hair or piercings. I was just an average girl, with an average life. One would never suspect that I held inside a world of dark and scary feelings I had no clue how to manage or control. A deep, wellspring of emotions that I had never shared with anyone.
The ember danced atop the wick as wax warmed and slithered its way down the little candle stick. I can see it, the white candle, in a crystal holder with a thumb ring to hold the base. The flame sways, rocks, jiggles, and pops there on it, like a night wind is blowing, except it is completely still in my room. Not a single sound. Not once, as I was sitting there did I think of the words I have in my head now, as I’m writing this description to you… “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” No, my thoughts were more sinister then. “If I don’t feel the pain, I can go deep and possibly leave a scar that will forever remind me how love hurts. If I feel the pain, then I deserve to, for this is a stupid act, yet, I can’t help myself. And what more could I hurt than I do right now? What’s a little physical pain to go with the pain of this ugly that lives inside me?”
I slid the blade along the thin skin of my ankle and was pleasantly surprised when it didn’t hurt. Although, I don’t think I would have felt pain anyway; my mind was blank the second it touched me. I know that it cut, because I saw the blood, softly flowing down my heel onto the towel I’d put underneath. The blood-soaked into the towel like water, slowly, turning white to red. I watched it go out from me, all that pain, and I exhaled. Inside, I felt relieved, but spiritually, I felt no change. My mind was still full of all the worries and thoughts and problems as before. I wanted to feel something, so I let the knife cool and again, pushed it into the other side of my ankle. A perfect heart shape now oozed blood onto the floor.
It seemed the perfect juxtaposition, that bleeding heart. All that had been wrong in my life started with love. All the things I’d done, had been in search of, all the ways I’d wanted to be treated, the desire of my heart was that perfect, complete, and unconditional love. It had been the underpinning of my existence – isn’t it for everyone? Because I had felt unloved, unlovable, unwanted, undesired… because I had not known how deeply treasured I was… because I did not understand true love, I’d been willing to fill my life with anything to fill that void. The “anythings” made me feel worthless and ugly, which in turn, convinced me that I was unlovable. And the lies continued to grow and build until the foundation I’d started with was covered in scrap and I was believing something that simply wasn’t true.
That very night I was opening up a wound that had been festering on the inside for months, maybe years – Jesus himself was there with me. He watched me cut my own skin. He watched my precious blood spill out and down, and He sat with me until I could make sense of the sadness in my life. It had come down to self-harm, and Jesus knew all the things that led to that point. Jesus knew all the things that would have to happen to get me to the next place, the place where I was broken enough to see how deeply I needed a Savior. He would be with me then too, and to the time when I was able to think clearly enough to comprehend the weight of the blame of the sins I had committed, to comprehend the totality of the sacrifice He made for me, and until I was committed enough to understand the value of the blood that was spilled out for me.
Alone, in my room, that night, I thought I knew the answer. I thought I had found the best way to get all that anger and ugly out. I thought that hurting the physical would heal the spiritual. Oh, how I wish I had known the truth. How I wish someone would have caught me there, seen me as I took the knife, heard those silent screams, saw the bloody towel, and grabbed my body and held me in their arms until I saw the love of Jesus. How I wish someone would have grabbed me in that raw, bloody, and broken moment and told me that I was loved, that I was lovable, that I was the perfectly created child of God – no matter what I’d done. I was created by a God who knew all that I had done, all that I was doing, and all that I could ever do, and yet, chose to adopt me, and restore me.
I wish it were that easy. Truth is, once something is broken, it has to be held up to The Light to sparkle and shine. When we keep all the broken things down, when we sweep them up in the dustpan and seal it up into a paper bag and take it to the bin outside – we miss the opportunity to see the beauty in the broken. We miss the chance to say, “no, this isn’t what it was created to be; but it is still beautiful”.
If you are cutting, drinking, using, harming, being promiscuous, gambling, overspending, running, raging, or in any way abusing anything, including yourself; please – do something different today. Chose love. Choose to break open the walls of personal prison, and let your imperfection be the key that unlocks your heart to receive the love of an amazing Father, a God who loves you enough to get you to this place, this point.
A Father who sees you as broken and beautiful.
*This post, is inspired by page 1, chapter 1 of Ann Voskamp’s new book, “The Broken Way” which will release October 25, 2016. This effort to tell my story, to out my secret is my first step in living life The Broken Way. To pre-order the book, visit The Broken Way.
Momma Rich's 