Broken

but held

I know what it feels like to think you are broken.

Thirty-nine years of faithfulness and love should outweigh four years of bad, but sadly it does not. You would think I would not react the way I do—still—but there it is. Rationally I know I am safe and loved unconditionally, but there is the trigger reaction, still popping up sometimes, with no warning. 

When I try to explain why this still happens after all these years, I falter with words. I don’t understand it myself. I’ve been to therapy, done the EMDR, repeated the affirmations, read the Bible cover-to-cover at least twenty times and studied all the applicable passages more than that.

I’ve read the books that explain how The Body Keeps the Score. I know the trauma is not just in my head but in my actual, physical body. The reaction is not just emotional, it is physical. I feel it happening. My head may tell it not to, but my body remembers. It is the elephant that cannot forget no matter how hard it tries.

I want desperately to provide a good explanation to the one who wants desperately to understand, to help me. All I can think to say is I am broken. Something in me was damaged and it can never be fixed. Surely if it could, it would be by now. With all the things I’ve tried, all the prayers, all the therapy, all the grounding exercises, all the reading and studying and begging and pleading, I should be cured.

Yet my body remembers.

I know what God says. 

He is the great physician, the healer. He shelters me under his wing, holds me in the palm of his hand. He is my shield and the lifter of my head. He is my safety and my strong tower, my hiding place, my rock, my strength. He is my help, my joy, and my hope. He is my deliverer, the one who always hears and comforts. He promises to be near to the broken-hearted.

But I also know what I’ve been through and how I still react now, forty years later.

So how do I reconcile these two?

I do not blame God for the difficulties in my life. The rain falls on the just and the unjust. Stuff happens, bad things happen to “good” people, and while God may not approve, he does not always prevent hard things.

Here’s where I land: what he does is walk with us.

Just this morning I read in Deuteronomy where Moses was reminding Israel of their whole story from the beginning. God brought them out of Egypt, out of slavery, to give them a good land, to bless them and prosper them. They complained, wanted to go back to Egypt where they had leeks and onions and garlic and where they thought life was easier. Bunch of whiners.

God provided water and food. Moses sent twelve men to spy out the new land, and ten of them came back saying it was full of giants, too hard, they could never win it. We should quit, choose a new leader and go back to slavery.

So God got tired of their constant complaining and disobedience and gave them a forty-year timeout in the wilderness. And here’s what Moses said about it:

For the LORD thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand: he knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the LORD thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing.

For forty years Israel was on probation, and for every single one of those forty years the Lord was with them. He wandered around the wilderness right alongside them. He didn’t just put them in a corner and leave them there alone. He stayed with them, providing everything they needed.

Sometimes I feel like I am in a wilderness not of my own choosing. Maybe you do too. It’s not a punishment, just a place I wound up because #lifehappens. It is often hard to understand. I could ask “why?” but mostly God doesn’t let me know that right now.

But here’s what I can know: The LORD my God has been with me; I have lacked nothing.

My life has been chock-full of blessings despite the hard things. I still struggle at times, but always, without fail, Jesus is with me, always holding me. It doesn’t take away the pain, but it reminds me I am not alone in it.

Sometimes we have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death—or at least it feels that way—but “thou art with me.” God doesn’t send us into the valley and leave us there to make our own way. He walks us through and he stays with us the whole way. There may be giants in the land and we may feel like grasshoppers in their sight, but the LORD thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing.

Do you feel broken?

Jesus is right there with you, holding you together, giving you everything you need to keep walking through to the other side.