I Didn't Know.

I sat in the office of my counselor, and started the typical small talk. The kind that protects my mind as I work up the courage to talk about the true feelings I have inside. As I sat there, I desperately wanted to pretend to be okay. I wanted him to ask me how I was, and I say “Great, here are all the highlights to the perfect story I planned out.”

Preparing my mind to be strong I readied my answer to escape and glide through the session. Prepared and ready, He asked me “How are you doing?”, and what followed was not the well thought out answer I wanted to be true, but the actual truth. And the truth was I was barely holding on. Every day was a fight to get out of bed, every day I thought “God when will you make all of this end?”. Every day I was bitter, angry, and desperately wanting to be better, but sinking a little deeper into despair.

I epically underperformed in seminary, to a point of which I may have failed a course (I still don't know), I stopped communicating because I had nothing left to give, and the people I trusted that should have protected and helped me, didn’t.  As my body blurted out these words almost uncontrollably, my therapist stood up, walked over to the further end of the couch from me, and handed me two paddles and began to explain the process of bilateral stimulation, or better known as EMDR.

EMDR is a gift from God that helps you to find freedom from this endless cycle of abuse within the walls of your own mind. It engages the left and right hemispheres of the brain and as the pace of the stimulation is set to move a little faster; so do the neural connections in your mind.

Typically, my mind would process in a manner that was “appropriate” for the listening ear. Gauging my audience to keep their peace, and quite honestly my sense of peace, and filtering out the “unnecessary” information that might potentially hurt them or make me look unstable and unhinged. But as the paddles buzzed between my right and left hand, it caused the neural connections in my brain to move at such a rapid pace that I couldn’t help but say every word that came to mind. I began with the question of “How do I always end up in relationships that make me feel like I am worthless and unvaluable? And why can’t I just stop?” As I processed my trauma, I was led down a trail to my childhood. Leaving me face to face with the relationship that meant and still means the most to me, my dad.

Admittedly, I have held a lot of bitterness toward my dad, and I never could articulate why. I have always loved my dad, respected my dad, longed for a relationship with my dad, and yet bitterness sat engrained inside my mind. Leading me to become paralyzed in his presence, and so our time together was spent with surface level conversations that presented my life with a beautiful bouquet in a prestine glass vase; but, even still, it mostly ended with a shattering that sliced through open wounds and left shards of embittered glass behind in us both.

My dad has been a wonderful dad in so many ways. He's the most hardworking man I have ever known, the most joyful and engaging man I have been blessed to be raised by, and yet he has often said and done things that make you feel inadequate and small. As a child I knew my dad loved me and so I had to believe these words and actions were said in love. I had to believe that it was tough love that coated these knives that sank deep into my mind and heart. Thus, twisting my knowledge of love, and leading me to the comfort of men who would always leave me feeling like I would and could never be enough. Men I know truly want to be good, but wrestle amongst their own demons of inadequacy and shame.

I thought if I could love them enough and show that I would be there no matter what, then maybe it would make them better. Maybe it would fill the hole inside of them so they could fill the hole inside of me. But just as the glass has always shattered into both my dad and I; so the glass shattered into all my relationships.

Truthfully, I adore my dad with an adoration I know no man will ever measure up to. At least not until I meet the man God has created for me. And he still hurt me, and that hurt impacted every relationship I have had in my life thus far.

And he was doing the best with what he was given. Met with far more degrading, belittling, and sinister words that spoke death over his formative mind. Words that he didn’t deserve, and through it all he didn't let it trap him a pool of desolation. Rather he took it and let God use it to make him resilient in all of life’s challenges. Making him the man I do deeply admire and respect today. The man I know has more freedom to be found that is yet to come.

The truth is reality doesn’t have to be dishonoring, it’s just the reality of a broken and fallen world.

 I used to believe that love and pain had to be separate from one another, and if love was present that meant any pain I felt had to be my problem to overcome. Turns out love sees life and people for what and who they really are. Broken, messy, sinful, beautiful, loving, resilient children, of a God who is big enough to cover it all.

I didn’t know love could be so expansive. I didn’t know grace could abound that much more. I didn’t know that reality could be the safest place to land. I didn’t know that healing would begin when I accepted life and people for who they really are.

I didn’t know the Gospel until now.

I didn't know.