WHEN PEACE, NOT PAIN GETS THE FINAL WORD.

Angie’s bags were packed.  She’d walked back into the room a dozen times. Each time in hopes to renew her strength to let go and leave.  She knew she wanted nothing less, but somehow the uncertainty kept tugging at her.  How was she going to do this? How was she going to walk out and leave?  All she had ever known had happened here, but she knew she wanted better for herself.  As she stood in the middle of the room one last time it was as if the words of the past seemed to seep from the walls.  The countless nights of sitting up in her bed, head in hands crying because of the rage filled drunkenness outside her bedroom door. 

A sudden noise from her door being opened her snapped out of her memories.  Her brother smiled, “Are you ready, sis?”

She stared at him, as if her sudden rush back to reality was just sinking in.  “Yes, I have to do this.” 

As her car drove down the entry way to the freeway she looked over at her brother.  “Do you realize what I just did? I just packed up my entire life into a few boxes and left.”

Her brother grabbed her hand. They rode in silence for a while.  Each in a bit of shock that they were doing. The sunset beaches of L.A. called her name, but she couldn’t help but hear all the echoes of her past crawling in.

Her heart so full of promise to what lay ahead.  With each passing mile marker, her excitement grew.  I’m out, I’m finally out.  I won’t have to watch the drunken stammering.  I won’t have to listen to the endless hours of yelling, anymore.  I am finally free!

Angie was free, but only in the physical sense.  She was right, she no longer was going to lay site to the alcohol filled evenings, endless mood swings, and nightly screaming sessions that her childhood home had held for her. But the pain of what she had been through… Well, she had packed that in her suitcase and that was coming with her to L.A…..she just wasn’t aware of it yet.

I think many of us have thought as Angie did.  Out of sight out, out of mind, right?  And while this theory might work with certain things in life, it doesn’t work with the deeply embedded pain we have suffered through in our lives. Pain is a sneaky issue. We can do our very best to wrestle it down, and keep it at bay for a bit, but inevitably, be it a year…5 years….10 years… it finds its way back up to the surface of our thinking. 

For many of us, the pain of our past won’t even leave us for a day. This was the case with Angie.  All she had to do was close her eyes and the events of the last 19 years would play back over her memory.  The doubt, the fear, the guilt, so tangible that at times, that she was sure that the events had just taken place. 

I would venture to say that by this time in the story, you can identify with Angie in some form or the other.  The desire to not face the pain, but instead to ignore it…. I can’t tell how many times I tried applying this strategy to my life.  Yet no matter how many different ways I tried to deafen the pain, it never was permanent. 

Angie tried these methodologies as well, but none of them worked for her either.  She too found herself amidst a temporary distraction at best, but nothing ever permanent.  Life had been very hard on Angie while growing up at home and while she had known Jesus and loved him, she was not utterly sure she could trust him with the pain that she had undergone.  She knew he loved her, but did he love her enough to be trusted with her deepest cut, her Achilles’ heel of the heart? Was she sure that Jesus would in fact see the pain for what it had done to her, how it had broken her?  Or would Jesus look at the pain and instead of treating it with tender care, would He in fact become insensitive to her needs and hurt her further?  These were all risks that Angie was too scared to take for many years of her life. 

Years later, Angie had worn herself out.  She had spent so many years thinking that she was the only one she could ever trust with her pain….but in shelling herself off from Christ’s help, she had also exhausted herself.  It was so tedious living with her fists in the air, her heart buried deep within where nobody could see it. It was overwhelming always trying to look out for where the next hurt might come from. She had mentally and physically reached a dead end road.  She KNEW something would have to change, but what?

Exhaustion wanted to speak louder than anything in her life, but she kept feeling a nudge within her thinking.  “You haven’t exhausted everything yet, Angie, in fact….you’ve never even given Christ a chance with your pain.”

Angie tried a few more vain attempts to “fix” herself, but each fell apart quicker than she could put them together.  Finally, Angie decided to take Christ at His word to help her. But she knew she could only manage to let go of a small amount of the pain to Christ.  With each passing day, she would waiver between releasing it and pulling it back.  A few months later, she found that she was a little bit better at releasing some of the pains and not having quite the same tug to pull it back within her.  Her guards were still up, and quite high, but step by step, day by day, event by event.

Angie is still working to move on in life, but it has been two years now, since she decided to take Christ up on His offer to help her.  She has seen changes in her life.  She lives with a more sustained peace that she had ever seen in her life. She is also learning that Christ is like nothing she has ever experienced.  All He wanted her to do was to be willing to let Him in, even if at the smallest amount at first, so she could start experiencing His Peace and His Love.

He started helping Angie to see that He agreed that what had gone on in her life was not fair, and yet that none of it had the final say over her life.  The peace that Angie has found has begun to have a lasting effect on her.  The movie reel in her head doesn’t play her pains of the past over and over as much anymore.  Instead, she focuses on the promises of where Christ wants to lead her.

I think many of us feel as Angie did. We become convinced that Jesus wants us to quickly rush and just “get over” the pains in our heart. As if it is a great sprint to take part in.  But, Christ is not like that.  He does ultimately want to see you free in every way of your life, but Christ knows that our pain runs deeper.  In fact, in many cases, the pain runs deeper than we understand, but at the root of every pain in your life, is a seed and that is where Christ goes to work.  We, as human’s can only hope to keep pruning the pain back in our life.  Yet in all our efforts, all we ever seem to do is cause the pain to rise up stronger than it was prior to our trying to “fix” it.

Christ brings the only one who can truly understand how wide, how deep and how vast your pain is, and the wonderful thing is that His love covers everywhere that your pain reaches. Being Loved for REAL for the FIRST time in your life, is what we are being offered in Christ, and He is willing to take a lifetime to show you. 

On a Personal note:

I know how hard it is to start letting go of the pain.  But, I can’t encourage you more to believe that Christ isn’t out to hurt you, He’s out to help you.  It’s going to take time, but Christ couldn’t be more committed to you. Pastor Daniella