Relational Scars
I was in a relationship years ago that left me with a great deal of hurt. Unfortunately, many of the emotional scars from that time still affect my behavior today. Sometimes it’s subtle, other times it’s more overt but the scars affected the way I related to others, including God and my husband. Wherever I went, I came with a deficit. A scrutiny. A secret fear that I will eventually be rejected.
Recently I was hit with a wave of grief about this dark time of my life. It was a time when I was not following God at all. In fact, I was seeking everything I lacked in the person I was dating. I was looking to be filled, affirmed, loved, accepted, and validated. I went after those things hard. And I thought I was getting them. I thought my eyes were being opened to how life really is. I thought I was experiencing a deep, caring and passionate love, and yet the truth of the matter was far from reality. What I was really experiencing was the heart-wrenching pain of being chosen one minute and rejected the next. Of being told I was the “only one” and then being cheated on the next. Of being kept a secret, of being put on hold, and eventually being completely cut off without warning.
Sometimes when this pain surfaces, it still feels fresh. Even though this happened 10 years ago the scars stay with me. There are a few memories from that time that are burned into my mind.
One of those memories is the night I blacked out from drinking too much. When I woke up the next morning my boyfriend was laying on top of me. What was worse is realizing I wasn’t wearing any underwear and didn’t know when or how it came off. To give you an idea of how far in the dark I was at that time, I never found an issue with this memory… And yet now, I can’t get it out of my head. It sickens me to know I was so careless.
Another memory is the day I figured out that this same boyfriend was also sleeping with a girl we both supervised at our job. There’s that night where we argued about it and then the very next morning when I believed his lie that things would be different.
Yet another haunting memory the day he ghosted me and asked his other girlfriend to marry him.
Yup. An engagement proposal that I didn’t learn about until a few silent months later.
Needless to say, there is a long list of memories that surface without warning. I remember all the nights I cried myself to sleep cradled between pillows because I needed comfort.
I remember the day when he apologized and asked to be friends and I actually thought he meant it.
This is where my husband interjects the statement “when it comes to dating, smart girls are dumb.” And he’s right, I was very dumb. But more than being dumb, I was blinded. I was so far down the rabbit hole of trying to fill the God-shaped vacuum of my heart that I no longer had any sense about me.
To illustrate my lack of sense, there was a short bit of time when we tried dating after the whole engagement thing didn’t work out. In some perverted sense of poetic justice I thought I was justified in sleeping with him one night and then with someone else the next night. Messed up, right?
So why do I share all this?
I share all these stories because I believe God wants to do something good with them.
As the sting of rejection and the painful memories came up recently I felt the Lord tell me that all those moments of rejection where a sort of kindness. Sure, I was way out of God’s boundaries, but His kindness led me to repentance. I was not able to sustain these messed up relationships, and therefore the rejection was ultimately for my good; it made me check my heart and my motives against what I knew was right.
I’m so thankful to not be stuck there anymore. Had that relationship ended up working out would I have ever come back to Jesus? I don’t know.
Now I could sit here and play the blame game, asking God why it happened, or wonder why this young man treated me so poorly, but what good would that do?
I’ve lived more of my life than I’d like to admit re-hashing my past decisions. I’ve faced a great deal of regret - but now I’m learning I don’t have to live my past through the microscope.
A dear friend of mine described regret this way:
“It is the blindness of not reveling in our redemption.”
You see, God is a redeeming God. He restores the things that have been lost, and makes better the things that have been broken. He brings life where there was death and enjoys creating something out of nothing. It would be a shame to stir up or go through all these memories and then just stay in my grief. Mourning and grieving have their place, but they are meant to be walked through not lived in.
So where are we to remain?
In His love!
Jesus talks about this in John 15. He says specifically in verse 9, “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in my love.”
When I share my testimony, there are many ugly parts. But the more I grow in my Christian walk I become more secure in my identity as a redeemed daughter of the King of Kings. As a result I am much more open to share the hard parts, because they not longer control me; they no longer define me.
The fact remains that the exposure of our sin can be a scary thing, but in reality it is an invitation to the most glorious gifts we have received from the life and death of Jesus: repentance, forgiveness, and redemption.
Isn’t the essence of a testimony is that we were one thing before Jesus and are now something new? If I spend more time describing what I did wrong in my past than what Christ has done and is continuing to do, then I’ve missed the mark.
God has taken an untrusting and untrustworthy woman who couldn’t and wouldn’t commit to anyone or anything and turned her into a committed and faithful wife who is learning to build trust more and more.
He’s taken me from rolling in the mud of the pig pen to returning humbly to my Father’s grand estate; restoring me to a position even better than my previous one.
The Lord has progressively silenced my need to strive for affirmation and opened my heart to receive and rest in His love.
He has transformed me from an independent individual whose drive for achievement was based on the insatiable desire for acceptance, to a person who increasingly gives out of love rather than to get love.
I am a long way from perfect, but I am a beautiful new creation who is part of an incredibly redemptive story. Israel made great mistakes and constantly turned their eyes from God. Heroes of the faith described in Hebrews 11 made grave errors, but they are remembered for the good things, for the ways they submitted to God and let Him change them for the better. My encouragement for you is this: God’s not done with you, and that’s an incredible joy! As it says in Philippians 1:6, I am “confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
Take care and stay blessed!
