A good friend of mine who lives in a distant city from me -- I'll call her "Sarah" -- shared this with me recently, and she gave me permission to relay this part of her story to you. As a little background info, Sarah not only grew up with an abusive father, but currently lives with chronic, debilitating physical pain from various ailments, and has struggled, quite understandably, to find God in the midst of it. (A while back, I lived with chronic pain, myself, for about six years, so I can really relate to her struggle. But that's another story.)
Because our current pain is almost never strictly about our current life, but is also connected to experiences from our past, Sarah is tapping into some of her earlier pain in life, as well. Here is what I wanted to share with you, in Sarah's words. All names or other identifying details have been changed.
I'd done some Theophostic prayer in 2002 with a lady, that left me troubled with what I'd seen. I focused on one memory of my dad hitting my sister and I when we were 4/5 years old because we were talking and not taking a nap in the tent when we were camping. I asked God to show me where He was during that terrifying memory………. and all I saw was Him standing in the tent corner doing nothing.
When I'd talked on the phone with Lynn a few weeks back, I'd mentioned this and she said to ask God if that was really Him in the corner. Ask Him to reveal the real truth of where He was when I was being beaten.
This Sunday at church we sat up a little further in the pews. A stained glass window on my left depicted a Shepherd Jesus holding a lamb protectively in His arms. I saw in that stained-glass Jesus' eyes this look being given to my dad: "Keep away from my Sarah" and saw that Jesus was the one getting beaten by my dad. While I've always known that was the *truth*, I just couldn't see or feel it— I'd just seen the powerless Jesus doing nothing in the corner while I was hit again and again.
This revelation really helped me – that memory had been haunting me since 2002. This revelation is helping me take another step back to God.
2 comments:
You know, it seems to be a huge and constant struggle to see Christ at all as he really is. I often live with a miss perception of who He is, and I have to remind myself that He hates evil more than I or anyone else. It helps me to remember that, though intellectual understanding of things sometimes still does not make me feel any better.
I hate to jump on "The Shack" bandwagon, and -- if I looked at it solely on literary merit, I wouldn't. BUT as a work that represents some pretty sound theology about our all-knowing, always-loving, always good God, it was a really refreshing thing to read. For that reason, I would recommend it... maybe even to you, adam k. (Nice to see you here, friend!)
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