“Roses at Dusk” | Photo by Rebekah Brackett, Brackett Studios

Darkness encroaches, steadily seeping into my world. All is still, hushed under heaviness. The vibrant verdant hues of Summer’s approach are dulled with the impending ink of night. My favorite wooded reprieves bare down under the Sky’s tears and the lush honeysuckle sighs. Mountain ranges are turned to charcoal silhouettes against the backdrop of stacked varying tones of grey and sullen blue. The Spring roses heave their heady musk into the damp air, yet fail to distract from the danger I feel pressing, prickling the nape of my neck. Something is coming, and every part of me feels it. What has been chasing me just outside of my peripheral vision stalks ever closer, more sinister. Or perhaps what is unknown is considered frightening simply on the basis of previous harrowing experience. Either way, friend or foe, memory taunts, and I am worn thin in the layers of me, all the way down to my tired, aching bones.

I keep thinking… we are meant for more than simply waiting to die. I strive and I forge ahead, but often feel I am carrying the Ring of Sauron around my heart; a violent shrieking threatens to break out from the cells of my being where trauma had its way with me. I am over it. I am over it all, and I push back against the impending doom of yet another “new” memory crashing into my conscious sphere. When will this “healing journey” be over? When will it be enough?! I demand answers, but realize the questions I ask aren’t always the ones God wants to address.

The truth of it is, it’s not all darkness and heaviness in the lands that comprise my being. Increasingly, there are more and more expanses of light and life and hope — even moments of revelry and joy so beautiful, it almost excruciates me in its pleasure. I am learning, growing, healing. And Lord, it has taken eons. But throughout it all, He has been with me.

Oh, I rant and rave within myself and daily carry the weight of the pain and nightmare, but to stop there would be a lie. Because in the midst of the chaos and confusion and emptiness and numb, Jesus has been there every single step of the way. Every time I lie down and cry to die, He’s been there. Every time fear curls me into the fetal position, He’s been there. Each time laughter has broken out of this mouth so hungry for truth, He’s laughed with me. And within the labored seasons of grief or the ever-expanding glimpses of wholeness, He’s been my Immanuel — God with me. Right in the mess, right in the glory and in every space of this life in between.

I don’t carry the Ring of Sauron around my heart; Jesus paid for the curses, for the atrocities, for the sins committed against me just as He paid for the sins I’ve committed against others. I can’t be a victim or simply a survivor as a daughter of God. I am MORE THAN A CONQUERER… I reign with Him in the heavenly places, and all that has been given Him has been shared with me. His promise declares I am moving from glory to glory and strength to strength!

And yet — the reality is, I’m walking into the true awareness of the wholeness Christ has gifted me. So I wrestle; I grope for Him in the night watches and I seek to receive all of Him in all of me. I am relentless in my passionate pursuit of restoration. I understand the storm will pass and daybreak will greet me again. But it doesn’t always feel that way. Depression and pain are very, very real. The effects of trauma are real. It doesn’t make us failures as humans after encountering the arrows of hell to be enveloped with grief, feel anger at the injustices committed against us, or question our existence and wonder why terrible things happened. We wouldn’t be human otherwise. Please don’t allow the sharing of my faith and encounters with Jesus to convey your own heartache isn’t valid or something to be acknowledged and honored; it is surely the opposite. All of us matters to Him. I believe in more and more of my heart He is continually, unbreakably present with us in the midst of it all. And that is changing everything for me.

“Then why does He allow awful things to happen?” we might ask. The simplified explanation I’ve come to is we live in a world at war (to borrow the words of John Eldredge). But just as we ask why God allows all the pain we see and experience, we need to equally ask in awe why He allows so much good and beauty in a fallen world. In this realm, the two extremes will be inextricably tied together. I think this is why we long for a far better place… Tonight, my heart aches for my eternal home where “everything sad will come untrue.” (J.R.R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings) But even as I feel this in the depths of my being, I hear the Lord gently remind me how He taught His disciples to pray: “Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” (Matthew 6:9-10, my emphasis) We don’t have to wait for the afterlife to experience glory, to revel in wholeness. In Heaven, there is no sorrow, no pain, no suffering, no confusion, no illness, death or disease. So I strain forward, pushing the boundaries of my mustard seed-like faith, and cry for expansion… Let me live as though Heaven has come to Earth, because it has.

What then will I do when the buried memories rise up and hit like a tsunami — for they don’t taunt without basis and come they will for a reckoning? I will recall the words of a cherished, wise counselor: “You have already survived it all. You are alive!” And Jesus will meet me there just as He has in every broken and beautiful place before.

In the end, we choose to see our pain from a place of deception  — “This is who you are; this is all there is.” — or from a place of extraordinary victory — “This is not the end; there is more to life than this.” I choose life again today, and by God’s grace, I’ll choose it again tomorrow, trusting in His promise of “a whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more life on the way!” (Romans 6:22, The Message, my emphasis)

Be blessed in the shadowlands, and be blessed on the mountaintops, for Jesus is with us wherever we go! xo