What do you do?

So what do you do with walls?  What do you do with hurt?  What do you do with judgment while you are trying to heal?  With callousness of social norms?  What do you do when taking out your trash brings turmoil instead of good?

You keep taking it out.  

You get your trash out.  You remove it from rotting your soul.  

You share it to allow others to see that they are not alone.  That pain is real, even for those who love the Lord.  That loving God and growing beyond the wounds does not simply mean that all is over.

Wounds do heal, and often can be stronger when the right stressors are in place.  That is why you set a broken bone-- to heal it properly.  That's why therapy is often active after surgeries-- to lay down scar tissue in the right directions along the lines of everyday forces to create movable, flexible, healthy patterns of strength.  Neglecting wounds causes long term inflammation, sometimes infection, and if not treated properly, almost always more problems in the future.  Improperly cared for injuries lead to compensatory reactions through the entire body.  THE ENTIRE BODY.

Emotional wounds are no different.  In fact, I would venture to say that emotional wounds are possibly far more likely to cause long term problems.  If you can't identify your hurt, explore it completely and see its current impact on your life, then you've missed a huge chance to grow.  A huge chance to improve all of your relationships.    A chance to be better.  A chance to help others.  A huge chance to see just how strong Jesus is.    When you try to do it all yourself, you will fail every time.  Your lines of stress are almost always laid improperly, selfishly, and keep you from moving freely throughout the rest of your life.

So what do you do with your trash?  When your skeletons come out?  When the ugly is revealed?  When you remember?  When you face it, willingly or un-?

Do you hide?  Do you try to bury further the things that keep you bound?  Do you allow stigmas of your trash to quiet or squelch your healing?  Do you just halt altogether because its too hard to keep going?  Do you eat?  Do you starve?  Do you run, kick, jump, and punch till you can't move?  Do you poison your own life and the lives of others with your bitterness, selfishness, and disgust?  

You do something.  What is it?

The easy and always church answer is always Let Go and Let God.  Makes total sense.  But for those of us with control issues, this isn't the easiest task.  For those of us with pride issues, this is nearly impossible to do.  For those of us with deep (or deeply buried) wounds, this is painful.  Sometimes excruciatingly so. 

But it's the only thing to do.  The only thing that brings healing.  To open your relationship that is broken.  Even if it is with yourself.  Especially  if it is with yourself.  

So as I pilfer through my trash, I have found that a major broken relationship with myself that has created many of the walls I've designed for self preservation, protection, and to cover my shame.

Because, somehow, we've been taught that shame is what we should feel for our failures.  For our sometimes catastrophic interactions with life.  Because life is just.  Life.

And so I ask the 'they' that have established these norms of shame...When is the last time you learned a really life changing lesson at the peak of success?  When is the last time you learned a life changing paradigm in the midst of smooth sailing?  

I was talking to a patient who, unbeknownst to me prior to that conversation, had been raped-- she said something so profound and so hard.  She said, "unfortunately, rape is as common as miscarriage and people shove both under the rug."  So. True.  No one thinks we should share the ugly.  Women are shamed and encouraged to never speak of it.  There are movies.  Shows.  Books.  All that demonstrate this social norm that is devastating.  That makes a victim feel guilty.

After the inappropriate actions of my youth minister and then being date raped, I realized just how much I blame myself for these things.  For my stupidity.  For being gullible.  For believing the best in all people.  And I hated me.  Hated me.  For all of my scholastic honors, I was an idiot.  And, sadly, when it comes to sexual abuse of any kind against a woman, there are generational norms that have been established to make us BELIEVE it is our fault.   There are societal stigmas that make us FEEL like it is our fault.  Like it is something to be ashamed of.  Like abuse is something to hide and bury.  Like it should simply be forgotten.  

Ask any victim if inappropriate conduct, assault, or abuse-- physical or otherwise.

You never forget.

You bury.

You move on.

You change you.

You do anything to forget.

But you never do.

 Why are the hard things of life stigmatized, judged harshly, and swiftly 'removed'?

Because real things happen to real people and real people have stories.

Real stories only heal when dealing with them in the light of God's truth and Jesus' love.  

God's truth is that sin is ugly and almost unavoidable.  Whether you choose it or it chooses you.  

Jesus' love assures us that nothing can separate us from His love.  Angels nor demons.  Height nor depth. Not sin or 'story'.  

Gods truth is that relationship matters.  We were created for relationships.  When those relationships are broken, we are broken.

Jesus' love says that we can endure anything.  Anything.  And anything.  Anything. Can be restored. 

Anything.

Feeling unloved.

Hopelessness.

Loss.  Deep, pervasive loss.

Pain.  All encompassing pain.

Stupidity.  Complete, full on, prideful stupidity.

Feeling alone. Very. Very. Alone.

And often times when we are taking out the trash of our lives, we feel alone.  We feel stupid.  We feel pain. We feel lost.  We feel hopeless.  But the truth of God's word and the love of his Son can somehow, inexplicably, BE THERE.  If you want to heal the brokenness.  Burying the brokenness only creates low level rumbling.  There WILL be an earthquake.  The earth WILL shatter at some point if you don't deal with your hurt.  If you don't deal with yourself.

Everett began chipping away walls in January.  Because we chose-- we actively chose-- to make losing our son the best possible experience.  The most faith building, marriage building, parenting building experience losing a child could be.  We chose to do that with losing our baby.  It didn't take away the pain.  It doesn't fill the Everett sized void in our lives.  It doesn't make any of the days better.  But it did keep us from rotting away.  From breaking relationship with Jesus, ourselves, each other.  It allowed us to lean into each other, to love on each other, in a way most couples will never even try-- because most won't have to.

As the walls got picked apart, the foundations began to show themselves.  Sometimes walls can be so big and strong that you don't even know where they came from.  How they got there.

I knew I had walls--fortresses-- in my life.  And having that patient walk in 3+ weeks ago who could have passed for my assaulter's dad allowed me a glimpse into the foundation of my walls. I don't recommend walls in marriage, but I've never met an honest couple who didn't have at least one barrier to real closeness.  In reliving that night (for the first time in YEARS), I could find some real untruths I had built in my life.

1.  Men are selfish, self centered, primal creatures with no regard for women.

2.  Sex is simply a tool of power operated by men who have no regard for women.

3.  Relationships with men that become physical (not just sexual) can not have real meaning.

4.  Men did not respect nor did they value women or their desires.

5.  Stupidity, not sin or anything else for that matter, separates from God's love. My choices.  Separate.  Me.  From God.  From Restoration.

I believed these things.  Whether I knew that I believed them then or not, I did.  I think I recognized #3.  Because I would reflexively "check out" of all relationships that included touch.  I changed me.  Because "touch" changed me.  I was/am no longer a "hugger" of adults, especially men.  I was/am not a "toucher", especially men.  I had GREAT friendships with guys. Anything more was a game. 

I lived by untruth #5.  So unforgiving of myself,  so guilt ridden in my story.  So low in my shame.  That I left God.  Because He could never love someone so stupid.  So naive.  So moronic.  As I. 

And so walls were constructed.  Self preservation.  Walls.  Instead of healing.  Doing it myself instead of asking Jesus for help.  Walls of protection around my emotions. Walls of "shut down" as soon as a relationship moved into a physical realm.  Hating myself so much that I believed that no one else could love me either.  Especially a self centered man only seeking to get laid. (my general overwhelming view of men)  

You can't do that and have a working marriage.  It just. ...Won't work.  Had I not unearthed that terrible night weeks ago, our marriage-- as strong as it already is because we choose it to be daily-- could never be as strong as it is *going to be*.  Because I am healing the broken relationship with myself.  I am understanding God's truth and Jesus' love in light of my world. 

This is what I have discovered.

1.  Sin sucks.  Choose it.  Be a victim of it.  Sin just sucks.  Its reach is further and deeper than most are willing to see and acknowledge.  Sin is ugly.  Sin has lifelong implications.  For everyone.  Not just me.

2.  Sin, my own and those sins against me, are nailed to the same cross as everybody else's. Jesus' love has covered me, smothered me, and cradled me to survive anything.  Anything.  And no one will bury me from sharing it.

3.  No matter the wall, no matter the foundation, no matter the source-- a broken relationship with yourself is the source of all other broken relationships.  Whatever its origin.   Healing always.  Always.  Always. Only.  Begins with me.  

Recognizing the source of the stench and then taking out the trash.  That is the only option.

I'm certain your story is different from mine.  I hope it is.  Sadly, if you're a woman reading this, it might not be all that different.  

Your walls, your untruths, your pain is different from mine.  Or maybe not.  

Your revelations may be very different from mine.  Maybe not.  

But I encourage you to love yourself, your spouse, your kids enough  to take out your own trash.  Don't be dumb like me and do it publicly if that's not your avenue, but start the healing process.  

Experience a peace you can't begin to imagine in your inner chaos.  

Experience joy you can't begin to imagine in your unhappiness.  

Experience love you didn't know existed.

Take out your trash and see how it changes you.