Finding Freedom by Facing Pain

He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
He determines the number of the stars
and calls them each by name.
Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
his understanding has no limit.
Psalm 142:3-5

Desperate, I sat in the clearing of trees just outside my office, breathing in the sun-baked pine smell wafting through the air, praying for an answer. I was tired of pretending everything was alright. It was not. My heart was filled with badly bandaged wounds that were leaking out all over my life.

Another hardship our family was enduring this season dredged up all the things I wanted to forget. Exhausted, after weeks on my knees, I finally threw my hands in the air and shouted “fine” at God. He had instructed me to take time off work to heal from the wounds in my past, but I really did not want to. Stuffing them into the corners of my heart locked behind my fear of facing them was not working, but facing them was just as frightening. I only relented because there was nowhere else to run.

While I had started the process of healing with God a few months prior, I knew God was taking me to the core of my broken heart. I had attempted to keep these parts of my heart closed off for so many years. But like a pesky weed, I knew if I did not address the root, it would just return again. Now was the time to face them head-on.

I sat nervously on my first day off with no plans asking what to do. Gently, He revealed we would be visiting all the places where my heart had been wounded to grieve and heal properly. Unfortunately, running from the pain had afforded no time for grieving, so my heart had never healed.

One of the days, we revisited the most painful memory I have from my childhood. In 4th grade, my friend David and I were relentlessly teased. I was a chubby kid, and he (as far as my 9-year-old self can recall) was either poor or severely unkempt. One day as we were playing on the monkey bars, they circled below us and shouted, “Ew, the dirty kid, and the fat girl, gross!” It hurt, but the worst part was, I believed them. From that day forward, my identity was “ew, the fat girl.”

In my head, I know that God does not judge on man’s outside but rather looks at the heart. I also know that I am made in the image of God, and He sees me as wonderfully made. But that little girl with a broken heart, she didn’t know any of those things. She believed what they said, and those lies got trapped inside her broken heart, creating a false identity.

So, we sat together and grieved for the little girl rejected by her peers. Sitting in His presence, God made it clear that His heart had broken for her too. He saw His precious daughter wounded to her core and grieved like a loving father. And there at the river, I let the tears and the sound of the rushing water take the lies away as I allowed God’s love for the sweet child and now the grown woman replace them.

The hard truth is that we all experience painful moments that feed lies into who we believe we are. Experiences and thoughtless words have the power to shape what we think about the world, ourselves, and even what we believe about God. They have the power to shape our identity. Until we allow God’s love to heal these places, we carry wrongful beliefs as truth.

But, the good news is that we can heal from them in the power of God’s love. Healing and redemption are God’s plan for us and His ultimate pleasure. He is the one who can take our worst moments, heart fragments, and tears and put them all back together again far more beautifully than before. This is a God worth letting in.

When we face the painful moments in our lives, allowing God to knock the lies down with His truth, we allow God to start the redeeming process. Only by going backward, facing the pain, and tearing down the protective walls, we build to let God in can we be healed.

Is there a painful experience from your past that keeps coming back up? Maybe, it is time to bring it to God. He is waiting to bind up your wounds and heal your broken heart with His love.

Although I cannot assure you the process God will take you through to heal, I can assure you that healing and freedom are worth facing the pain. When we allow God to heal our past, we set ourselves up for His glorious future.