confessions of a healing heart.

“Where are you, Joanna?”

It’s been echoing in the back of my mind a lot lately.

My walls only begin to crumble when I respond.

Where am I?

This is the part of my journey that I don’t want to admit. It’s the part where I want to give up. It’s the part where the season of healing and transformation and wholeness no longer feels raw and beautiful. It just aches. It’s the part where the pain that I keep dodging turns into a dull throb and my ambition becomes more about withdrawing in fear than being loved and loving courageously.

“Where are you, Joanna?”

I’ve been in that place where I have to admit again that I haven’t a clue, nor the control, to pull myself together and keep marching on.

And heaven knows it’s easier to post it on the web than to sit down with you and hold eye contact while I unburden my heart.

My middle name is Hope. It’s probably my favorite thing about myself. But, to be brutally honest, my hope has felt badly shaken recently. As a disclaimer, I don’t understand all the pieces, so this isn’t my polished explanation. Just an attempt at telling the honest story of what one human heart is experiencing in the hands of a good, good, Abba.

 God is gentle. I feel like that truth soaks deeper into my soul with every bend in the road as I journey with Him. In fact, He is gentler than anyone I have ever met. His gentleness is genuine. It’s about who He is, not who I am. It isn’t based on my performance, but rather on how receptive I am to it. And it is always, always, His desire.

He is gentle to peel back the layers one at a time. He is gentle to bandage the wounds until they are ready to be unbound. He is gentle to respond to my stubbornness with mercy. He is gentle to wrap my vulnerability in steadfast love.

And I am finding that He is especially gentle when I reach that point in the road where I sit down in the dirt and can’t go on. When I stop desperately racing down dead end paths, and cry out “God, I don’t know anymore!”

In that moment, He stoops down to hold me in His arms.

And without a fancy explanation, or a profound new revelation, I find exactly what I need (though it’s usually not what I thought I needed!).

Sometimes, it’s just the comfort of being with someone who is not frightened by my humanness. Sometimes, it’s the relief of unleashing my furious thoughts without being afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. Sometimes, it’s just finding a safe place to cry.

My tendency is to want to figure everything out.

No joke.

Everything.

Sometimes I daydream about what it would be like to just put my brain on snooze for a day or two. For those of you who know me…go ahead and laugh. Yes, I am well aware that I do all kinds of airheaded, ridiculous, what-were-you-thinking type things. But it’s not because I’m not thinking it’s because I’m trying to think about everything at once. I exist in the day to day in a near constant state of pondering anything and everything besides the current moment. Not the best way to live, I know, so I find myself daydreaming about what it would be like to live in the moment. Hence the question…

“Where are you, Joanna?”

“I’m struggling, Lord.”

Why is that so freakishly hard to admit? I don’t know. I just know it feels all kinds of uncomfortably vulnerable.

Pretending it away hasn’t been working for me. Has anyone else tried that? Please tell me I’m not the only one. When I start to pretend, I resist the very thing my soul is craving and run to something that not only aggravates my thirst, but damages me in the process.

Someone told me once that “God deals with reality.”

I like that.

I like that God doesn’t refuse to deal with my reality until it paints the picture of what “should be.”

He deals with reality as it is. He deals with who I am, not who I should be. He deals with what’s going on, not what I wish was going on.

And, He is gentle.

I remember one of the very first times I got painfully honest with God. I was so angry. I felt that I had done everything, and tried everything I knew to try in order to measure up for Him, and I the harder I tried the more increasingly I felt inadequate. Clearly, it was an exercise in intense frustration.

I finally blurted out what I hadn’t yet dared to voice: “What do you want from me? I don’t know! I don’t know what you want from me anymore!”

In the moment I finally admitted my insufficiency to figure it out and pull it together, He was gentle.

“Where are you, Joanna?”

“I don’t know.”

This is where the healing begins. It’s a little word called humility. It’s that place in the journey where you realize that you can’t do it. You just can’t. You are too tired, too weak, too tangled up, too broken…to go on.

In the moments that I reach the end of myself, I have three potential responses (in no particular order):

1)      Complete hopelessness and despair.

2)      Attempts to drown out reality with a plethora of ineffective coping behaviors.

3)      Crumbling at the feet of Jesus and whispering or shouting “Please help me, I need you.”

(I may try #1 and #2 a couple of times before I get to #3, but #3 is usually where the cycle stops)

I realized why my hope has been feeling so badly shaken. Somewhere along the path, I anchored pieces of it in the comfort of this world.

The unfortunate reality about placing your hope in the hands of a broken world, full of broken people and broken circumstances, is that you are sure to be disappointed.

Disappointment hurts.

And you know what else I’m realizing?

Disappointment still hurts at the feet of Jesus.

Whether it was someone’s harsh words during my work shift, a painful fact bubbling up from my past, or the subtle ache of loneliness at night, I cannot escape the reality.

Sometimes, it just hurts. And do you want to know what I’m learning? God can handle that. God can handle our reality when it just hurts. He is gentle. Just as the aches and pains of this world make their marks on hearts designed for eternity, they have also marked His heart. He is not unaware or unconcerned.

The truth that is so hard to swallow at this part in the journey, is that He doesn’t always make the pain go away. And He is not obligated, or required to make the pain go away in order for Him to remain a completely good, completely compassionate, and completely loving God.

What I have been so desperately running away from during this specific leg of my journey…is this very fact:

It still hurts.

It still hurts to be human. It still hurts to hear those words. It still hurts to be lonely. It still hurts to miss them. It still hurts to fall down. It still hurts to struggle.

No amount of soothing from this world (or a polished church service) can mask the reality of my pain….and no amount of demanding on my part will force God to eliminate my pain.

That may sound like a no-brainer on a good day, but in the middle of the mess…

That’s hard to swallow.

For whatever reason (or ten-million reasons), I have an incredibly difficult time sitting still to feel the pain of my sensitive heart. In fact, in the moment, it sounds more appealing to have tea with a starving lion than look my brokenness with brutal honesty.

Bear with me. My intention is not to look at life through a completely gloomy and cynical filter. There is hope! It’s real! But, if my hope is that I will feel better in this moment, I set myself up for painful disappointment. My hope must be in the presence and the person of a good God, who is not tainted by a broken world. In humility, I will find the embrace of His presence in the midst. Even if it still hurts.

God does not despise hurting hearts. His love is strong enough to envelope the deepest wounds…and tender enough to tend to the everyday scrapes.

“Joanna, where are you?”

“I’m hurting, God.”

“I love you.”

“It still hurts!”

“I’m still here.”

...So, where am I?

I’m learning to fall into His arms

when I don’t know where I am,

what to do,

how to fix it,

or why it still hurts.

I think I’m learning to let myself feel more human…and to honor Him as God. I can’t make myself more, and He sure won’t settle for less. I’m in process. And He is gentle.

One more thing before I put this keyboard to rest: Remember that angry, messy moment when I asked God what exactly He wanted from me? He was very clear in His response. As I drove home from work today, He reminded me of it again.

 “I want your heart.”

Nothing more. Nothing less. If I only give Him my good days, good feelings, and good performance, I have not given Him my heart. If I only give Him my tears and withhold my praise, I have not given Him my heart. It is the moments that I extend my mingled reality of pain and praise, struggle and victory, sorrow and hope, that my heart meets the embrace it was created to receive.

  

I don’t have it all figured out, but I do know this: He is worthy of my heart.

All of it.

As I learn His gentleness, the question “Where are you?” is starting to sound a lot less like His frustration with me and more like His invitation for the real Joanna come out of hiding and into the exposure of His marvelous light.

He is worthy of my entire being, poured out in honesty and humility. He is worthy of my love, my honor, my praise, my devotion. Even in the disappointment. Even in my imperfection. Even in the loneliness. Even in the unresolved issues. Even in the pain.

Even in this part of the journey.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” -Psalm 139:23-24

“Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.” -Psalm 51:6

“Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord!” -Psalm 31:24

“For He will hide me in His shelter in the day of trouble; He will conceal me under the cover of His tent; He will lift me high upon a rock. And now my head shall be lifted up above all my enemies around me, and I will offer in His tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the Lord.” -Psalm 27:5-6

“I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace. In the world, you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world.” – John 16:33

“Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.” – James 5:11

“Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says, ‘He yearns jealously over the spirit that He has made to dwell in us”? But He gives more grace. Therefore it says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” – James 4:5-8

“For He has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and He has not hidden His face from Him, but has heard, when he cried to Him.” - Psalm 22:24

“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith-more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire-may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” – 1 Peter 1:6-9