Wednesday, May 27, 2009

When God Hurts Us

11:44 PM by Christi Bowman

"The best path is through the valley of the shadow of death. The crags of doubt and the valleys of despair offer a proving ground of God that no other terrain can provide. God does show Himself faithful; but the geography is often desert-dry and mountainous-demanding, to the point that the path seems to dangerous to face the journey ahead...the path involves the risk of putting into words the condition of our inner being and placing those words before God for His response...The obstacle to life is the conviction that God will damage and destroy us. The problem is that the path does involve His hurting us, but only in order to heal us"

I am being broken, dashed against the Cornerstone. I am proving God in the "crags of doubt" and the "valleys of despair." He is there, but it is a waiting game! Jesus is not like us; He does not rush through pain or bypass it altogether. He purposefully walks right into the center of it. He is unafraid. Jesus makes pain His home. He makes it ours too if we allow Him to take us there. The painful places are where He wants to go; they are where Jesus feels most at home. We are the ones who want a quick fix. Pain makes us uncomfortable. We want to hurry it up and sweep pain under the rug.

My mother never really had any friends. She kept everybody at arms length, eventually even me. For a time I knew her inside and out. I knew other people considered her a friend, but I also knew that she did not trust them. She had a beautiful facade and put on a glorious show but I knew who she really was. It was not that she was a bad person...when you are loved by her she is the most amazing person in the world. Growing up, she was spectacular, and others in her path thought so too. It was not that she did not get along with people it was that she did not trust them. When people would get to close or demand more from her than she was willing to give she would, without a word, pick up and silently move on. I am not sure she would be able to admit this to herself, even today.

My mother and I have had a very strenuous relationship for years now. She used to call me her best friend, but that was many years ago. she has since picked up and silently moved on and left me with only her shell. For a few years we enjoyed peace, but what I did not realize then was: The harmonious times would only last for about as long as I remained the person she wanted me to be. When I dressed the way she wanted me to dress, when I did the things she wanted me to do, when I dated who she wanted me to date, when I could be controlled and therefor trusted my life was filled to the brim with pleasantries. But, when I dared to step outside of her will I became uncontrollable and therefor incapable of being trusted. I quickly found out that my mother's love was conditional. Nothing has changed.

Today I do not get phone calls, although it is expected of me to call. when I can bring myself to call, which is not often enough, I can feel her keeping me at arms length and when I am in her presence the distance feels even worse. There are so many elephants in the room, so much pain and anger swept under the rug for the sake of niceties that the air is thick with tension.

I have recently told my mom that I want to start being honest about the things that hurt me hoping against hope that honesty might remove some of the tension. It was my sincere desire to find out, through truth telling, that I had somehow created her, in my head, to be a person that she was not. I assumed that by being honest about my feelings she would come through for me and I could then change how I saw my mother. This was not to be.

If I ever needed a mother, these past few weeks were the time. I called her on a Thursday at 2 a.m. to talk about some of the memories I was having. I was desperate for her solace. She was not supportive. She spoke words that stung rather than words of comfort and she cut me very deeply. I tried to be honest with her the next day and she only got more angry. I could not talk to her so I passed the phone to my husband hoping that he could somehow make her aware of the pain I was in. She continued to say hurtful things.

After I was out of treatment I sent her an email trying to explain my state of mind and why I was angry with her. She was unable to hear that. During a phone call she was quick to absolve herself of any guilt during the 2 a.m. call saying that she was not in the right state of mind at that time for that type of phone call. I told her I could understand that, but I wondered why, during a time when phone calling was more appropriate, she had said hurtful things about me to my husband. She never denied those for a minute all she could do was accuse him of betrayal. After blaming my husband for things that were not his she went on to say that she would never be able to forget the hurt I caused her for choices I made as a late teen finding my way through the pain of past abuse. As I hung up the phone I realized that the tension that had hung so thickly in the air for all those years was gone but to my surprise there was no longer a relationship underneath it.

Today I got an email from my dad making it very clear whose side he was on. I do not blame him really, but he also had to walk me through, in many paragraphs, why I was a bad daughter. He completely invalidated me and at one point even bolded, underlined, and in all caps said "shame on you." I couldn't believe my eyes. My heart began to race and I began to sweat. Time does heal wounds but the process takes longer when people keep ripping those wounds wide open. I had just begun to heal and make sense of yesterday's phone call when I received today's email.

After today we are being proactive and my husband, in an effort to protect me, has blocked their emails. The other day a friend informed me that God does not hurt us only fallen people do...but I will have to disagree. The relationship with my parents has been toxic for years and in the last few weeks has become unbearably painful. As of yesterday and today I have felt free of any need to continue a relationship with them, but that freedom came with a price tag and its price was pain.

Today, on Wrecked For the Ordinary, I read a timely piece titled "Love in the Midst of Pain." Kari Miller writes: "Why had love exposed my tender place only to leave it unprotected?"

Ms. Miller said it correctly. Jesus exposes our tender places only to leave them unprotected. Fallen people do hurt, but Jesus tenderizes the hard places and that belongs only to Him. He does this for freedom...not freedom from flesh and blood, but freedom from powers and principalities and that type of freedom is costly and its currency is pain.

Labels: emotional pain, Jesus, Proving God

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