Becoming Whole

What is simple often isn’t easy; what is easy often doesn’t last.” ~Bob Goff

The simple truth is that what God creates He makes whole. He takes the pieces that have been shattered, torn, fractured, and scattered, and He moves those skillful yet tender hands to mend the broken parts back together.

As many of you know, my outreach team and I had to return early from Asia because of a national removal of missions teams while we were there. I cannot openly share the details of what happened for the sake of the security of the local believers still under threat. But I would like to include you on some of the post trauma recovery that Sweet Jesus has been guiding me through these past three weeks of being back. The rest of the story will become known in time. And as profound and beautiful as it is, there is also a deep heaviness attached to it that has grafted onto the core of my heart a tender need for an intimate embrace from my Creator.

For nearly two weeks after we returned to Australia, the YWAM base graciously lead us through trauma counseling sessions and one on ones to help us process all that happened overseas. I felt oddly normal. Perhaps I was simply numb of emotion and once my heart thawed a bit I would be able to process emotionally. Or perhaps God had prepared me for this to the point that I wasn’t responding to the situation as though it were trauma. But little did I know at the time that my body was reacting to the stress more than I could have imagined.

They say that we all have either a fight or flight response to emergency situations. I’m a fighter. What that means is that I am able to put my emotions aside for a time so that I can have good discernment and make clear decision during a stressful encounter. What that also means is that my adrenal glands were working hard for four days straight while the incident took place. In the moment it was helpful, but when I returned to Australia it took a long time for my body to feel safe again which caused my adrenal glands to keep working in full force even after I was home. Many of you know that a few years ago I struggled with adrenal fatigue. It took me years and years of discouragement, hope, and more discouragement to recover from it. And after two weeks of being home from Asia, I started to recognize many of the same symptoms. I made sure to take extra care of my body, but the fatigue rapidly grew worse each day. I began to panic as my body felt out of control. I spoke out to God that I would trust Him through this, but the fear and confusion still dominated my emotions. Would I be stuck in this place for many more years? Did I have the strength to potentially lose as much as I lost last time? I yearned for some sort of purpose for being back in this place of pain, but what was it?

In the midst of my fear and brokenness, God lead me to a place of stillness where He spoke straight into some of the deepest caverns of my heart. He showed me that sometimes He allows pain because He wants to make us whole in this particular area of hurt. If we didn’t feel the pain, we wouldn’t know that there was a wound that needed tending. Sweet Jesus tenderly took me by the hand and showed me that last time I was in this fatigue, I suffered neglect from many people. So I attached the feeling of neglect to the feeling of struggling with fatigue. I didn’t actually fear the illness at all, but I did fear the implications it could have on some of the friendships that I hold so dearly today. I attributed rejection to my struggle and thought that if others were to catch a glimpse of my heart’s brokenness, then they would run away from the hurt that I was carrying.

The older I get, the more I recognize that everything in the physical reflects something in the spiritual. If you were to step on a sharp nail, the pain you immediately feel is there for the purpose of pointing to the wound that needs tending. If there was no pain, you would be oblivious to the wound and it would fester and become infected. It’s the same with our hearts. The emotional pain we often feel is there for the purpose of pointing to a heart wound that needs our Creator to mend with His skillful and tender hands. God created feelings for a purpose. In our culture though, we tend to push aside our brokenness and numb our emotional pain because we don’t want other people to see it, fearing rejection. We don’t know how to heal our hearts. And the truth is we can’t. In my case, I believed a lie in the core of my being that if I struggled with discouragement then I would be neglected. But there was a deeper lie that was like poison in my system: I believed that when I struggle I am unlovable. We’ve heard that “perfect love casts out all fear,” and it’s true. The healing of our hearts comes when we are connected to that perfect love that promises to NEVER neglect us. In just about every heart wound case, they are there because of a lack of connection to perfect love.

If God hadn’t allowed me to go back into fatigue then I wouldn’t have felt the familiar pain and fear that it caused. The pain pointed me to an unattended wound in my heart which brought me to my Healer who mended it by flooding this cavern of my heart with the golden beams of His perfect love. Did my healing hurt? Absolutely! Was it worth it? Increasingly! But ultimately, the One who breathed me into being, desires to bring me back into wholeness. The walls that I have unknowingly built up around the broken places of my heart can be let down so that He can have relationship with ALL of me, not just parts of me. And yes, it is a process. But it’s one that brings me into deeper intimacy with my Creator as He sees more of me than I let Him see before. And not only does He see me, He loves even the broken places that were once rejected. It’s as simple as this: His perfect love heals. And what is simple isn’t always easy…

“If in the integrity of my heart I speak the words, ‘Thy will be done,’ I must be willing, if the answer requires it, that my will be undone.” ~Elisabeth Elliot