I've been told I'm a pretty forgiving person. I honestly harbor no desire to hurt anyone, just to love the way God loves me. I knocked myself out for my entire life, working so dang hard. I wasn't really sure of the details of my promised reward, except that it was eternal glory in the world to come, and some measure of peace here. Joy really had very little to do with it. I followed the five-step repentance process carefully and fully. And even then, I operated with so many wounds, so much fear. After decades, God gently brought me to a place where I could realize those hurts were still there . . . treatment I'd received long ago, hounding and bullying, humiliation and ridicule. He had to expose the pain and make utterly unprotected places that were still weak and raw. It was a fairly gradual process for me, one spread over weeks. At first, I owned that those experiences had injured me, and spent quite a bit of time feeling second-class, honestly asking my Father "Why me? Why? That really hurt, God, and it still does!" I indulged in old-fashioned self-pity, feeling like most of the rest of humanity didn't have to go through my own particular hellish junk, and it wasn't very fair. (I know, I know. But that's how I felt, so I'm owning that, too.)
My own mortal patching of those wounds was to protect them with fear, layer upon hardened layer, calcified and chafing. It had become a pain I was used to, my spiritual and emotional operations distorted by this well-known background noise in the same way a limp distorts and hinders a free stride. Words can't quite capture the vulnerability, the utter nakedness that uncovering brings. Then, I had the opportunity to offer them to Him. He showed me someone who was in the same place I was . . . a young woman, utterly vulnerable in the complete exposure of her pain and her past before God. I knew her heart, knew her pain, and finally saw my own in its fullness. And I was undone.
It was only then that He clothed me in His healing, His righteousness, through the intercessory prayer of a woman sent to me by God Himself; one who knew what to do, how to pray, for the place where I was.
And I was made whole.
