Broken Child

When I was in high school, I went on a tour of Israel with a group of adults, led by my dad, as the Army post Chaplain.  The trip was truly remarkable! Beyond the Biblical sites we visited, our trip included some time at the Holocaust Museum. There are so many profound moments I can recall from that one place, but the one I will share with you today involves a statue on the property.  

It is the statue of Yanush Korzack surrounded by a mound of children, in honor of his work with kids.  As I stood before it and took it in, I heard God say, “Carrie, that is you.”  I felt in that moment that God gave me my mission in life to rescue children.  Honestly, it wasn’t something I fully understood in that moment, but have come to unpack its truth throughout my journey. 

Many years later, I was at a local camp during a women’s retreat leading a workshop over the weekend on, “Healing from the Pain in your Past.”  After the workshop, I stood and spoke with a few women as they were unpacking the pain in their hearts.  In that moment, I heard from God again - this time he said, “Some of the children you rescue will be little girls inside grown women.”  

What an amazing revelation?!  Have you ever seen someone share about a trauma in their childhood?  It doesn't matter their current age, its like they have transformed right before your eyes as the pain they carry has transported them to that exact moment years ago.  You can almost see that child before you.  

People are amazing to me, yes, we can stereotype and categorize and use those things to find commonalities and guess at how we will respond in certain situations and yet, being human means we are all unique, we can deviate from our norm at any time without known explanation.  

Two people can go through the exact same crisis - one will be crushed, another will use it as fuel to climb the next peak in life.  No matter what we see on the outside, we never really know the narrative that plays out in someone's heart and head. 

This profound truth struck me again tonight as I watched the latest episode of, “This Is Us.”  We can go on with life, find success and see our dreams revealed and yet no matter what, that child inside of us still lives.  Parts of us remain broken, unless we are intentional to fix it.   We can keep going and growing even with the brokenness remaining inside.  It resurfaces from time to time depending on the triggers we encounter, but it doesn’t go away.  

That is one the biggest lies we believe about our past - if we ignore it, it will go away.  It doesn’t!  

We have to be rescued or choose to rescue ourselves.  That is why I am passionate about helping people explore those broken pieces and allow God to lead them on a journey to put them back together.  We don’t have to live with the broken child, or broken adolescent inside of us our whole lives.  Sure, it will always be our story and affect the way we live but it doesn’t have to disable our thoughts, feelings and actions.  Living with the internal pain, despite the outward success, is unnecessary.  There is freedom.  

What does the little child inside of you need?  How can you be brave and examine what you most fear to face?  That, my friend, is the first step, but one we all must take if we want to live in freedom.  

Two Ways To Overcome the Weird In Your Head

I don’t think I’m an ugly woman, but I often think if people could see the mess of junk going on inside my head - they might see a different woman than what’s depicted through the physical body before you.  

Its like that episode of Gilmore Girls where Lorelai is trying to write a letter but the words just don’t come.  Her rant ends in the conclusive line, “its a big bag of weird in there.” This.  This is exactly how I feel.   Sure I am a nice, kind-hearted person and that is beautiful, but there are other sides of me that aren’t so pretty. 

One of those uglies lurking inside is a struggle with anger.  Years of counseling lead me the epicenter of my angry outbursts - anxiety.  

 A little over a month ago, my son had surgery.  He had his tonsils and adenoids removed.  

We got up early and took my daughter to my parents’ house.  

We then made the almost hour drive to the surgery center in Fresno.  

After we got my son checked in and he was wheeled into surgery, my husband and I took our seats in the waiting room.  

That morning had been hard on my anxiety levels, so I decided it was a good idea to get out my binder and start on a worksheet that has been a part of a book I’ve been working through utilizing Cognitive Behavioral Techniques to overcome anxiety. 

One of the many exercises involves writing down all negative thoughts associated with a particular anxiety incident.  Usually, I have a variety of related emotions, but this time they were pretty well concentrated in the fear section of the emotional scale.  

My husband was curious as to what I was doing so I read him my list of negative thoughts associated with this particular day.  When i finished reading my list, my husband, in shock, replied, “I would have never even thought of half of those.”  I wasn’t just worrying about more than he did, I actually had thoughts about particular aspects of the day that didn’t even occur to him! 

This struggle has been so crucial to me because it is incongruous with my religious beliefs.  God tells me to be anxious for nothing (Philippians 4;6).  Its easy to see ways in which our every day life is out of touch with what the Bible calls us to be.  

So what do you do? 

1. Do Your Part

  Instead of beating up on yourself, something I often do, for missing the mark, identify the root.  Take inventory of your thoughts and feelings so you can begin to weed out what doesn’t belong.  You can’t replace the crap until you know its there! 

One of the next steps in the exercise I was doing on the day of my son’s surgery was to write out a positive thought for each of the negative thoughts on which my brain fixated. Its replacing the lie with the truth.  This process, while laborious, is necessary to make sure, how I live and what I believe, stand side by side. 

2. Let God Do The Rest 

I have heard one story where a surgeon performed a ground-breaking operation on himself, but typically a surgeon performs the surgery and the patient lays still, usually unconscious. This is a great picture of our spiritual life.  God does the work in us, sure we may prepare the way for the work with everything I discussed above, like a patient may fast or take certain medications prior to a surgical procedure.  But the rest is God's job.  I can tell you the most meaningful change is when God took my faithfulness and transformed me in the midst of a challenge.   

The encouragement is - God is always working.  Even when we get stuck in a holding pattern and feel like we aren’t getting very far with our goals, God stays the same.  He's always there, using our lives to direct us into the people he created.  He wants to be close to us, and wants to see us reach the stars he designed for us to grab.   

So go do the work you have to do to prepare for the work God is already doing!