Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Me the Abuser; Me the Abused; Me the Abuser

11:07 AM by Christi Bowman

As I get older I am beginning to understand the gravity of statements like "everything changes." Whether I am ready for change or not, nothing stays the same for very long. People change, friendships change, relationships change...as do seasons of life.

I can look back and in retrospect see two very clear seasons of healing that God has blessed me with and walked me through. The first season of healing was for me as the abuser. When God came to march through the balsam trees for me I was abusing alcohol and every hobby I had the time for. He went before me and struck down my addictions. He brought with Him freedom. During this first season of healing He was empowering me and giving me the strength to walk through, face, and feel the next season of healing He had in store for me.

The second season of healing was for me as the abused. In this season I was able to come to terms with the abuse committed against me. The road I traveled on was treacherous at times and the air was thick. There were moments when I couldn't breathe and times when I thought I might not be able to continue, but God provided my strength.

Ezekiel 36:26-27 (MSG) I'll remove the stone heart from your body and replace it with a heart that's God-willed, not self-willed. I'll put my Spirit in you and make it possible for you to do what I tell you and live by my commands.

God's promise to make me a new creation patterned after His Son, Jesus, the firstborn of many brethren is new every morning. I am a differant person, today, than I was just a few short months ago, but the process doesn't end with who I am at this moment. I am experiencing what it means to go from one degree of glory to the next.

I am entering into a third season of healing, and it is again for me as the abuser. In Jesus, I am no longer an abuser of alcohol or hobbies, however, in my anger, I have been and still am a very ugly abuser of people...especially my children. There is shame in admitting that, as this is not a season I have passed through yet...it is in its beginning stages and still a very real problem when I am not very intentionally focusing on Jesus.

I love my children. I don't want to hurt them emotionally or physically, but without God that is exactly what I do in my darkest moments. It is a very real thorn in my flesh. Something only His grace can be sufficient for. I must second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, and day by day intentionally choose to bathe myself in the thought of Him. The minute I take my eyes off of Him I quickly make the decent into my selfish world.

This world tells me that as their mother I have rights...rights to be alone, rights to my own body, as well as rights to theirs. This selfish world leads me to believe that I have the right to silence, the right to a clean home all the time, and the right to emotions that they don't have the right to have. When they begin to violate these rights (and many others) I am quick to decimate them emotionally and sometimes physically...I lash out in my anger, and then I am angry that I lashed out...but even that becomes cyclical as I can justify my lashing out as their fault...if they would just behave as children should then I would not have to get so upset. After all I am their mother and it is my job to "teach" them...if I have even taken the time to actually teach them at all.

This is a very painful season for me as I am coming face to face with the damaging behaviors I have been able to justify for years. The ugly patterns that I was damaged by are currently damaging the people I love most in this world, and I, without focusing on Christ, am completely powerless to stop it. There have always been rules, much like alcoholism, as long as I don't cross a certain line of obvious abuse than I am not abusive, and like alcoholism I cross that line once in a blue moon and it shocks me into the very ugly reality of just who I really am and what exactly I am capable of.

Without focusing on Christ I am no better than the worst of criminals...but because of the upside down nature of God's kingdom that I am a part of there is all sorts of freedom in that revelation. There is freedom for me because He loves me in spite of this monstrous attribute I possess, and there is freedom for the worst of criminals, those who have gone farther down this particular road of depravity, because He rescued me and He is rescuing them because our God is in the rescuing business and He is reconciling THE WHOLE WORLD to Himself. I believe this even when the state of our physical world says something quite contrary.

Hebrew 11:1 (ESV) Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

2 Corinthians 5:19 (ESV) that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

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