Naked on the cross
My friend once told me that I would not fully experience life with Christ until I was willing to be "naked on the cross"...That is to say, when I am able to remove anything that keeps me from expressing to God my true heart...That is not to say that Jesus does not fully love me or that my life with Him thus far has been inadequate. It is simply that He cannot fully heal me until I expose to Him all of my wounds. Even the ones I try to keep under a band-aid because I think they aren't worth tending to or I don't feel justified in crying about.
My pain tolerance has always been low. When my mom would comb my hair and hit any knot I would scream and cry. It truly, truly hurt - even if she thought it shouldn't. My mom eventually cut my hair into the "Dorothy Hamil" so that it wouldn't hurt so much to comb.
So it became in my soul: Prevent the tears to keep it from hurting (nevermind the fact that even short hair gets tangled).
For decades I have neatly tucked away and superficially forgiven "little" hurts because I wasn't sure they worth crying over. Or if I was even justified in feeling bothered by them. That's a lot of little things that add up to a tidal wave of tears pressing against my insides. Unconsciously or consciously I knew that if I started to cry I wouldn't be able to stop. This may even account for my avoidance of movies or books that I know have tear triggers for me (if an animal or child is likely to die forget it) Bambi - I hate it. Old Yeller/Sounder/The Yearling/The Old Testament - No Thank you!
Today I find that something in me is breaking. Maybe it was the book I stayed up late to read that chronicles 3 lives of sacrifice and unconditional love. Maybe it is the heaviness of experiencing when friends grow away from each other. Whatever the catalyst, the flood gates started to leak last night and this morning were pushed further.
In evaluating this unsettling feeling, I see that my band-aids are coming loose. To my surprise there are bloody scabs where fresh skin should be. These are wounds that I have too quickly covered before applying the ointment of God's love and counsel. Probably because I thought they were just surface wounds...But even a skinned knee should be washed with soap and parental kisses, should it not?
God has likely been tugging at my sloppy tourniquets for years. It is probably not coincidence that the Beth Moore study I recently did discussed this very thing. Among other things, Moore says submitting to God includes turning over our hurts.
Psalm 147:3 says "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds"
Moore expounds on this in the vernacular of full submission, pointing to Jesus' example in Hebrew 5:7.
She says:
"You have to let the Holy Spirit into the depths so that there is nowhere inside that has a shred of control that is saying 'I am mad about that'."
When you refuse to accept something you cannot change or you refuse to bring all of your hurt before God, you
"write yourself a living death sentence.... You will not be whole..Being whole means being still and letting Him tend to the wounds of inevitable life....If you do not let God bind your wounds as they occur they will stay bloody until you do. And it will continue to come up sometime, somewhere."
And so it has been for me.
I begin now the process of finding and removing those hidden band-aids and showing my hurts to my Heavenly Father who wipes away all tears.
He wipes away all tears... I just now internalized that he cannot wipe away tears that I refuse to shed.
Yet, how painful and terrifying it will be to let them go.
What will I see in the faces of those around me when I hang naked on the cross?
My pain tolerance has always been low. When my mom would comb my hair and hit any knot I would scream and cry. It truly, truly hurt - even if she thought it shouldn't. My mom eventually cut my hair into the "Dorothy Hamil" so that it wouldn't hurt so much to comb.
So it became in my soul: Prevent the tears to keep it from hurting (nevermind the fact that even short hair gets tangled).
For decades I have neatly tucked away and superficially forgiven "little" hurts because I wasn't sure they worth crying over. Or if I was even justified in feeling bothered by them. That's a lot of little things that add up to a tidal wave of tears pressing against my insides. Unconsciously or consciously I knew that if I started to cry I wouldn't be able to stop. This may even account for my avoidance of movies or books that I know have tear triggers for me (if an animal or child is likely to die forget it) Bambi - I hate it. Old Yeller/Sounder/The Yearling/The Old Testament - No Thank you!
Today I find that something in me is breaking. Maybe it was the book I stayed up late to read that chronicles 3 lives of sacrifice and unconditional love. Maybe it is the heaviness of experiencing when friends grow away from each other. Whatever the catalyst, the flood gates started to leak last night and this morning were pushed further.
In evaluating this unsettling feeling, I see that my band-aids are coming loose. To my surprise there are bloody scabs where fresh skin should be. These are wounds that I have too quickly covered before applying the ointment of God's love and counsel. Probably because I thought they were just surface wounds...But even a skinned knee should be washed with soap and parental kisses, should it not?
God has likely been tugging at my sloppy tourniquets for years. It is probably not coincidence that the Beth Moore study I recently did discussed this very thing. Among other things, Moore says submitting to God includes turning over our hurts.
Psalm 147:3 says "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds"
Moore expounds on this in the vernacular of full submission, pointing to Jesus' example in Hebrew 5:7.
She says:
"You have to let the Holy Spirit into the depths so that there is nowhere inside that has a shred of control that is saying 'I am mad about that'."
When you refuse to accept something you cannot change or you refuse to bring all of your hurt before God, you
"write yourself a living death sentence.... You will not be whole..Being whole means being still and letting Him tend to the wounds of inevitable life....If you do not let God bind your wounds as they occur they will stay bloody until you do. And it will continue to come up sometime, somewhere."
And so it has been for me.
I begin now the process of finding and removing those hidden band-aids and showing my hurts to my Heavenly Father who wipes away all tears.
He wipes away all tears... I just now internalized that he cannot wipe away tears that I refuse to shed.
Yet, how painful and terrifying it will be to let them go.
What will I see in the faces of those around me when I hang naked on the cross?
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