The Story Bleeds Red

There are many things I see when I look at you.

Shame

Hurt

Rejection

Lies

Depression

Longing

Performance

There are also deeper things I see. Good things.

Beauty

Tenderness

Desires

Love

Dreams

Hope

A good heart

A passion for people

So many good things. Things that are hidden deep in your soul. Things hidden so deep you can’t even see them and you certainly can’t believe them. All the bad feelings, all the lies have smothered the truth. Shame has convinced you that you aren’t valuable. Rejection has told you that you are not worth loving. Depression sucks away the dreams. It has you convinced that you are nothing more than a failure. Just one big mistake.

You can’t see what I see when I look at you. You see bad. I see good. Maybe on the surface I can see the bad, but your heart is good. I want to see the good things about you. I want to find the true you. The one God created and called good. I wish you could see you for who you really are. You would be beautiful. You would be unstoppable. You would be free.

~ Your sister, Hope

We sit in your church pews every Sunday convinced that we are a misfit. We believe we’ve been rejected by God and are living on death row. We don’t want to hear the latest news on abortion and divorce rates or your favorite rant on same sex marriage. We all know the Bible is clear, it’s sin and God hates it.

He will punish it.

We know…

We’ve sat in your office and told you our worst fears, that God has signed us off as unpardoned and we’ve tried to accept your reassurances but as hard as we both tried, we’re still here.

Some of us have turned away and left because the pain was unbearable then got written off as a rebel or an airhead.

No one is just a rebel. There’s an aching and lonely heart inside that person and you can glimpse it when you look in their eyes.

We are lonely and afraid and some of us have gone silent, pretending we now believe but we don’t.

Not everything is as it seems, speak to your people. We’re not the heathens of the land, we’re the children of God. We need to be fathered and cared for. We need training and discipleship not another history lesson or the latest doom and gloom.

There is no quick fix as much as we both wish there was but there is time, love, and relationship. That’s what we all need.

I’m lonely and afraid, not that rebelious girl who wears tight clothes and likes to flirt, or the quiet man who has a porn addiction, or the depressed mother whose children are loud and unkempt, or that perfect church girl who does everything right.

We’re all crying for help. Please hear us.

-KD

Water flow

Down over my heart

Wash the pain away.

Leave the wounds –

Clean

So they can heal.

Wash away,

The shame,

The guilt,

The loneliness.

I want to leave

It all and

Walk away

Brand new.

Whole because of

Your love.

I want

To start again.

I may or may not have a slight addiction to old western movies. The drama, the suspense, the solid ending get me just about every time. And when there is a band of men fighting together to save the story – my heart leaps and wants to be a one of them. That’s the part that really gets me. I wonder what it would feel like to know that no matter how despondent or how captive I am, that someone will fight through for me. One of my own will come for me.

The Christian church is messed up. I don’t have to be smart to figure that out. I love the church dearly so please don’t think I’m a hater. There are too many people walking away from the church. Do you know why? Its because the church doesn’t have answers. They don’t know how to help people and they don’t know to help people heal.

I wish church were more like old westerns. How would it change your life if you knew no matter what happened, that someone, maybe even several people had your back? That even if you were tied up in the desert held by evil forces because of a mistake you made, that your ‘brothers’ would come for you. There would be no battle too hard or too dangerous that would keep them from securing your freedom. You would always know that they were convinced you were true and you knew the same about them.

That sounds more like church to me than what’s going on right now.

Somewhere in the middle, between good and evil.

I have no place to call home.

I pray from the bottom of my heart, I love to do good but evil comes natural.

I put my chin up and step out to greet the day, a brand new day, a clean slate but ten minutes in I’ve already cussed a stranger.

I spit out venom

I spit out praise

I live a miserable wretched life but I love the Lord, I love the church.

They tell me I’m a wild girl, I smile and lift my chin.

Inside I weep and no one sees.

This is me: this is the life of your average church girl.

-KD

I’d like to tell you about something I’ve learned recently. Here it goes.

(Deep Breath.)

This past year I have been learning more about lies. Not about what a lie is, but what it does to me. Lies dig deep under your skin like a parasite. You don’t have to know where they are for them to destroy you. Lies have been trying to destroy me – they want to take out my life. I was reading a book the other night when feelings started stirring inside me. The book was amazing, it wasn’t about the book. When I started processing, I felt something coming to the surface.

Most of my life I have been labeled as strong willed. Just recently a couple of my respected human beings told me that I am strong. I want to believe that. And I might be just a bit smug that people believe that about me. But I don’t fully believe that I am strong. This is the lie that came boiling up to my mind after reading that book.

“I am not strong enough. I have fought hard to prove to myself and everyone around me that I am strong enough, but I’m not. I, Hope am not strong enough.”

On New Year’s Eve, KD and I were writing out our new year’s resolutions together. Actually she was writing and I was goofing off. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to actually think about resolutions. In between writing my goals, I scribbled this down in my notebook. “I hate New Year’s Resolutions. It just feels like another thing to fail in. I’m so tired of trying only to blow it.”

I don’t actually hate resolutions. I enjoy them. Why did I write that I hated it? Deep down inside of me there is a weariness that dreads the thought of more things to do. Every task is another test of whether I am strong or whether I’m going to blow it and reveal the lie’s truth. Projects are not just projects in my life. They are the enemy’s way of inserting the lie over and over again. “You, Hope, are not strong enough. You don’t have what it takes to survive this battle. Everyone else, now they are strong, but you are a failure.”

I know this is a lie. That means I’m on my way to freedom. This is step one. I know this is a lie. But I only know it in my mind not in my heart. My heart still believes that it is weak. Lies don’t come out overnight, I know that too. The strangest thing about this lie is that fighting doesn’t seem like the way out. I have to actually tell myself that I don’t have to fight to prove my worth. I am enough whether I fight or not.

This is what I do know.

With Him I am enough.

He is my Fight Song.

He will bring me out from the lies. I can’t do that on my own.

He is my enough.

~Hope