I Am No Longer What Happened To Me

-

There is a thing that happens to us when we experience trauma, or we find ourselves the victim of abuse, violence or a tragedy. 

 It's a thing that sometimes finds us sometimes later in life when repressed memories or feelings come flooding to the surface.  Or in many cases, it simply hangs over us like a cloud, always there, never really allowing the sun through. 

 What am I talking about? 

 It's the thing that happens when we lose our identity in what happened to us so completely that we believe we are defined by it.  It's when we become synonymous with what happened to us, and without that identity, we don't even know who we are. 

 I know this intimately, as do many of you who are reading this.  But we don't have to live this way.  The self that has been created when we lose ourselves in what happened to us, is a false self.  It is not who we really are.

 Who we are instead is defined by the great love of God, the One who is constantly speaking into our brokenness and the identity crises we create and says, "Behold, I am making all things new." 

 Imagine what it would be like to live your life free from your past---free from the ways you have defined yourself after past trauma, heartache and wounding. 

 I read this wonderful poem today by Tiffany Aurora:

 Say it with me: 

 "I am no longer,
what happened,
to me.
I am now
what happened--
after what happened
to me--
Finally. Healed." - Tiffany Aurora

 Read this poem today and let yourself hear the words being spoken.  Live into the new things that God desires to make in your life.  Discover your new identity in Christ--an identity drawn from what is real, good and true. 

 And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always. Amen. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for leaving a comment! If you comment Anonymously, your comment will summarily be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

Wuv... True Wuv...

-
Image
Go ahead. Ask me what my favorite "chick flick" is. The Princess Bride , that's what.  The pic at the top of this entry gave it away, I know. There are three reasons why it is my favorite "chick flick." 1. It's not a chick flick.  2. The only kissing is at the end of the movie... where it's supposed to be. 3. It has Andre the Giant in it. Any of these reasons could stand alone in their own right as pretty dang valid reasons why The Princess Bride is atop my list of romantic films.  But when the aforementioned reasons are lumped together, I don't see how anyone could argue against it. There is a scene in The Princess Bride that makes me giggle a whole lot...the wedding scene where Peter Cook, playing a priest with a speech impediment presides over Princess Buttercup's almost wedding to the evil Chris Sarandon (and I hear he's still pretty evil).   Here it is. Wuv...  true wuv...  gotta love that. I've been reading and re-re...
Read more

Rapha & Yada - "Be Still & Know": Reimagined

-
Image
One of the most well-used verses in the Bible comes to us from Psalm 46:10, which reads like this:  He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;     I will be exalted among the nations,     I will be exalted in the earth.” That one line---"Be still, and know that I am God"---finds its way into greeting cards, wall art, church signs and the like.  And it sounds so nice, doesn't it?  But what does it actually mean ? What does it mean to be still  and know  that God is God?  Well, to dig deeper into that phrase to see what it's really saying, I'm going to have to bust out some Hebrew--so, don't hold it against me. The Hebrew word that's used here for the phrase "be still" is the word  rapha. And get this... It means "to hang limp, sink down, be feeble."  That's a heckuva lot different than what we usually take the phrase "be still" to mean, right? I don't know about you, but whenever I have heard that verse ...
Read more

The Lord Needs It: Lessons From A Donkey

-
Image
This Sunday is Palm Sunday---the beginning of Holy Week. It's also one of those Sundays when you can't ignore the church calendar and just preach whatever you want.  I am sure that some people do just that, but they probably aren't Presbyterian, and I am sure that the liturgical rhythm of the Church is not first and foremost in their mind. And they probably have had no trouble at all working on their sermon this week. I'm not one to blindly follow tradition, but there are some things that you just don't do---and you can't just ignore  the story of Jesus' Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.   But this leads to a bit of a quandary...  In the short time I have been doing this whole preaching thing I have gone through the Palm Sunday story a few times.  After a while you sort of wonder if your congregation has heard your Palm Sunday riff a few too many times. That sermon needs to get preached, though.  While we celebrate the che...
Read more