It’s funny how God works…no really it is. God, who would design things like burps, a platypus, and toenails, surely must have an impeccable sense of humor. How He must be chuckling at me now because at the beginning of this month, I told my teammates that I felt like the bulk of my personal growth had been done. That’s not to say that I don’t have many more areas to grow in, rather, this last month was going to be one of celebration and reflection rather than clawing through another layer of the wonderful mess that this life is.
Cue God’s laughter…He knew what was coming. Rather than explain, I’ll just let you read an entry from my journal, or rather, a description of an image God gave me:
I stopped, frozen in terror as I heard the unmistakable sounds of someone getting a severe beating. I crept closer to the edge of the low building which I found myself standing on and peered over the edge. The sight that met my eyes was worse than I could have imagined. There were two short women down below. I could have thought they were twins were it not for a striking difference: one was standing, clean, with a sheen of sweat across her brow and bruises on her knuckles. That’s not what struck me. No, her distinguishing characteristic was the look of pure, unadulterated fury and hatred cemented into what may have otherwise been a pretty face. She was poised to kill, showing no signs of remorse. My gaze shifted to the other woman and my heart stopped. She was curled on the ground, bone-thin, starved, clothing hanging off her in tatters. Her nose was gushing blood and her skin was dotted with deep bruises, some old, some just blossoming. Her eyes, oh her eyes, they looked dead, sunken in deep with the darkest circles that I’ve ever seen. Her hair was matted with some balding patches that I could only guess had been the aftermath of one of her attacker’s fits of rage. She was trembling, unable to so much as defend herself, or even speak for that matter. The fury she was facing was too great.
There was a pause in the attack where the attacker wiped her brow. In that moment, I could hear my own heartbeat, time slowed down. I was able to see the tears in the attacker’s eyes, evidence of her misery over what she was doing. Even more shocking was the fleeting glance I received from the woman on the ground. There was the slightest hint of a plea, but the look also communicated that she knew I had been watching the whole time. She wasn’t upset. I don’t know how I knew, but she wasn’t. Time, as it seems to do, sped back up and the attack proceeded with a heightened intensity. The absolute rage was unleashed and the attacker kicked the abdomen over and over until, quite suddenly, she fell to her knees, her body convulsing with sobs. From out of nowhere came a man dressed in white, that was too dazzling to look at. He walked up, first to the woman on the ground. He touched her and everything that had made her look unrecognizable, vanished. She was whole. He extended His hand, pulled her up and engulfed her in a fantastic embrace. When they parted, she was beaming. The man then turned to the attacker and knelt beside her. He whispered something to her, but she shook her head and continued crying. He continued speaking quietly to her until she slowly got to her feet. He dusted her off, asked her another question, and this time, she nodded. He gently touched her head and from within her came a black mist, that He caught in His hands. With one word, the mist disappeared. From my perch, again, I don’t fully understand how, I knew that the black mist was a mixture of anger, hatred, bitterness, and disappointment. Everything from the bruised knuckles to the awful disfiguring facial expression left the attacker. Her posture relaxed, her fists unclenched, and her beauty shown through. She walked over to the now healed attackee and embraced her in a way that suggested both an apology and a request for forgiveness. After recovering from her surprise, the attackee returned the embrace with the full weight of forgiveness. They parted and the man hugged the attacker, and then, before my eyes, the two women merged into one. It was then that the dazzling man turned his gaze to me as if to say, “See, the two who were once divided unto self have become one again. As they were always meant to be.”
You see, God was trying to show me two versions of myself. I’m a self-aware person, but I also am extremely hard on myself. There have been a number of things that I’ve done in my life that I’ve worked through this year, but after all the challenging reflections and conversations, I realized that even with all of the work I’d done, I had neglected me. I had forgotten that the person I needed to forgive above everything else was myself. Ouch. That’s a tough order and one that I had subconsciously been running from because it seemed too daunting.
Several nights ago, our team watched the movie, “Wild.” While it has some explicit material, the general message and journey hit home for all of us. The main character decides to go on a three month hike alone. At the beginning of the film, we laughed hysterically as she assembled her big back, pitched her tent, and a variety of other things that World Racers can relate to. As the film progresses, the viewer learns that she went on the hike to go through a great deal of healing from her past decisions and life.
“What if I were to forgive myself?” That’s the first question she asks herself during her final reflection and then, towards the very end, she asks, “What if all those things I did were what got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?”
While I’ve known the goodness of a faith in Jesus Christ, grace, fully experiencing grace has for whatever reason, seemed elusive. What I loved about the film was that it was raw. The main character went through a number of incredibly difficult life situations, several of which were self-inflicted. Yet, at the end, she realized that she was actually fully redeemed and always had been. The film was not at all appearing to be Christian-based, until the very end and it was such a sweet, beautiful, authentic story.
That film in combination with the journal entry, made it painfully clear that ultimately, what I needed to do was quit being my biggest critic and enemy and decide to start being my biggest fan. God and I had some intense fellowship but the result is, I forgave myself. What a relief it is to say that I finally let myself off the hook!
Silly me, instead of this last month being a time of reflection, it turned into the biggest step in my personal journey of the entire Race. I hate you, I hate me, I hate who? What if I decided to forgive myself? And that’s just what I did.
Cheers to being my own biggest fan!
