HOW TO ABIDE IN CHRIST

          As spring blows in summer I’m seeing more and more motorcycles on the road, which always remind me of the accident I was in at nineteen. If I think about it too long, I’ll become nauseated as I recall the gravel violently ripping open my skin from head to toe and embedding itself in its place. After my 5’8, 135-pound frame came to a bloody heap thirty feet away I passed out from the relentless pain that consumed my body as if it were on fire. It was so excruciating that the morphine the ambulance crew and ER staff administered was incapable of even touching the pain.

Have you ever had pain like that? Not just physically, but emotionally? You know what I’m talking about – the kind of disappointment and pain that is so deep and wide that it’s a chore to even breathe; the kind that makes you fall asleep crying and waking up crying; the throbbing, numbing kind of agony that leaves you feeling as though you’re living outside of yourself and you wonder how on earth you’ll get by for the next few minutes, let alone the day? Looking back, the external agony I was enduring at that time paralleled the internal pain I was going through.

I was raised in a home where my parents were forced to marry after my father raped my mother at gunpoint. As such, my mom entered a marriage wrought with violence, fueled by alcohol, and justified by prejudice. As the only girl, and with my father’s panache for violence, driven by underlying rage, and insatiable power and control, I was abused in every way imaginable by him. In spite of what he was and did I craved my dad’s love, believing that if he loved me it would make me complete, filling the canyon-size void within me. His rejection and the subsequent pain were no less painful or consuming than the agony I went through in the motorcycle accident; they were just internal wounds instead of external.

Covered with a blanket of shame from the childhood abuse, I attempted suicide for the first time at twelve years old. When I wasn’t successful, I rebelled against everything and everyone; I quit school, became sexually promiscuous, jumped head first into drugs and alcohol, and didn’t look back for years to come. At nineteen, I'd been married and divorced, had two children whom I’d abandoned, had an abortion, had tried to commit suicide numerous times, and was facing time in the Idaho Department of Corrections. No one expected me to become little more than a statistic, but God had another plan, intervening in a way that only He could. Years later, at the tender age of twenty-five, I was introduced to Jesus and welcomed Him into my life.

Before I became a Christian however, I’d been to therapist-after-therapist, read countless self-help books, attended groups, tried various religions, studied counseling in college to try to figure myself out (didn't work), and just about everything else you can imagine to get well and fill the gaping wound within. While some of those attempts eventually brought some healing, I was never able to acquire complete healing. Essentially, they were like putting a Band-Aid on my wounds, protecting them from bleeding into my everyday life and the lives of everyone around me. They helped me to cope well enough that I could get by, but every time I had a nightmare or something triggered a memory from my past, the Band-Aid was unexpectedly ripped off and the wound beneath would come open and ooze out the poison that was slowly killing me and hurting those around me. What I needed the world could not give me.

After I’d been released from the hospital for the accident, I was required to go back to the hospital daily for physical therapy. Every day for months I was made to sit in a large vat of hot water and soak my entire body. After about thirty minutes the nurses attending to my wounds would take a plastic brush with soft bristles, scrub off every one of my scabs, remove them from my body, and clean the wound. This caused them to bleed profusely. Afterwards, they would apply an ointment called Zinc Oxide and wrap my injuries in extensive gauze. Of course, because the wounds were reopened, I bled habitually. I’m sure I looked like something out of a horror movie. The purpose of this procedure was to heal my body in such a way that the wounds left no scars.

Eventually my body healed enough that I could care for my own wounds, and I was encouraged to continue the “hell bath” (as I referred to it), and continue to apply the Zinc Oxide and wrap my injuries. I continued this procedure for a year – except in two places where my wounds were the deepest: my knees. While my entire body is free from scars to this day from the accident, I still have two half-dollar-sized scars on both my knees. These scars are a result of my foolishness. You see, I got tired of the pain, became lazy and stopped applying the Zinc Oxide and let those two places heal on their own. Apart from the proper procedure and the application of the Zinc Oxide they scarred.

One day not too long ago, while I putting on a pair of jeans I noticed the two scars on my knees for the first time in years and God reminded me of something He taught me shortly after I became a born-again Christian in fall of 1993 that has remained with me for 27 years: that if I surrendered every broken and wounded part of my body, soul and spirit I’d receive complete healing – that is, healing without any residual scars. As I looked at the scars on my knees (of all places), where the wounds I endured from the accident were the deepest, the Lord showed me that it is only on my knees that I receive complete healing from His heavenly Zinc Oxide: The Holy Spirit. It is only when we seek to heal ourselves or apply the world’s answers to healing that we have residual scars.

I have suffered extensively in life from both the actions of others as well as my own choices, but I can tell you today that I can look back and see each one and feel the pain. Matter-of-fact, it’s like looking at the life of someone I once knew instead of my own life because of God’s healing and redemptive power in my life. God also desires for you to allow Him to come into the broken places in your heart, mind and soul, and let Him bring healing. No doubt you have experienced the Band-Aids of the world and know first-hand how incompetent they are. While they may bring a measure of healing, they cannot provide complete healing; only the One who created you can re-create you in His perfect image and bring healing in every area of your life.

I want to stress a couple of important things for you to consider before you allow God into your life to do a healing. First of all, you need to count the cost. Sometimes the healing of a wound is more painful than that which caused it. Such was the case in many areas of my childhood as I sought God’s healing. There were times when He had me soak in His Spirit for days so He could come into those wounds, lance them to allow the poison to come out once and for all, and for healing to take place. Do you know what the most agonizing part of that process was for me? Trusting Him; trusting Him enough to give Him the wound of mistrust that had been brutally seared into my soul by those who stole my innocence. One of the most profound stories of healing for me in the Bible is found in John 5:6 where Jesus asks a man who is sick, “Do you want to be healed?” He was asking the man to count the cost of healing, which first and foremost requires surrender, followed by trust and belief in His power to heal. This is known in the Bible as faith.

Next, I want to tell you up front that healing for deep wounds takes time – give that to yourself as a gift from the Lord. This is not an excuse to remain idle, but to learn to lean on and trust Him as you grapple with the cause and residual pain of what you’ve endured or are going through. There will be times you grow tired and wonder if healing is really happening or will come. The answer is, “Yes!” God promises to heal those who come to Him (Jeremiah 29:12). One of my favorite verses that came out of those years of healing that I literally clung to with every essence of my soul is Proverbs 3:5:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.

There are a couple of words I want to point out in this verse. Do you see the word ‘all’? Do you know what it means in Hebrew? It means ALL. EVERYTHING. Did He make that clear enough for us? ALL. Then there’s the Hebrew word ‘understanding,’ which in this verse literally means ‘intellect.’ So, lean not on your own intellect…in other words, your own knowledge or wisdom, or that of others.

In closing let me assure you that healing deep hurts are to me a lot like having a baby in the sense that there’s a whole lotta pain, but a lifetime of wonderful that follows. When you surrender your past, present, and future to God wholeheartedly and you allow Him to do the healing it’s going to be painful and it’s going to take time, but let me tell you that an eternity of wonderful will follow and you’ll live a slice of that here on earth if you trust Him with all your heart. The most beautiful thing that has come out of the suffering I’ve endured is a closer relationship with the Lord – a relationship outside of suffering that I know that I would have never sought out on my own. Thus, looking back, although I don’t understand all the reasons God allowed specific things to happen in my life, I trust Him, knowing and believing in faith that Father knows best.