You know how every so often you stumble upon a writer who floors you with their ability to translate all you’re feelings into words? That’s just what happened when I stumbled upon Marisa’s blog Becoming His Butterfly.

https://mrsmariposa2014.wordpress.com 

I’m so greatful that she agreed to guest post on my blog today For Wise Woman Wednesday, because she most certainly is one wise woman.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

When you are pulled from the smoking wreckage of your life by the hands of a most capable Savior, it is so beautiful you scarcely realize at first that you can actually move your limbs freely or breathe without shattered ribs stabbing your every exhale.

And when you begin to walk in it, really walk in it, expect some setbacks. Phantom pangs that’s sole purpose is to convince you they’re real.

Reminders that whisper your old brokenness to you as though the healing were not complete and never could be.

Ghosts of who you were, what had been that circle round you, doing their best to drag you back with bony hands to those places of raw hurt to keep you splintered in your soul.

To the little girl assaulted by slaps and shouts, name-calling and spits in the face for forgetting to take her empty hangers to the laundry room.

To the young teen who cried and pummeled her hapless boyfriend for the first time one night and never could put to words why he caught what her mom had thrown at her for years.

To the wife burgeoning with pregnancy a third time, feeling a rotten, inadequate wife and therefore deserving of the deception and devastation of her husband’s affair and abandonment.

To the one who held out hope for so long, pulled the pathetic, raggedy scraps of her life together, scooped up her babies, and tried hard to follow her God.

To the woman who became desperate and whorish after the fact, surrendering pride and all manners of things she ought to have held fast to in her quest for love.

To the one who wanted nothing more than to die and be done with it, yet knew there was life yet to live, and that not for herself.

Past rushes to meet present and refuses sometimes to shake you loose from its skeleton grip.

And at the time, it is so hard to feel these are just jutting bones without real power to hold me.

And I find myself becoming any one of those girls again.

“Jerry Springer Reject”

“Hysterical Wronged Ex”

“Wounded Woeful Child”

“Suicidal Headcase”

“Hot-to-Trot Divorced Mom”

And if I sink down and stay there and let those words splash their headlines over me, I will remain forever anchored and defined by them.

And if I let the careless conversations, cold insults, and the inconsistent remembrances of others carry me to those ancient places of rejection and regret, I will reject the things which I know to be true.

Namely this: I’m not that girl anymore.

As surely as the leper lost the marks of disease when Jesus lovingly touched and made him clean, He cleansed me.

And I ran free of the torture of separation from my God and my fellow man.

Free to STAY in freedom, not to return to dirty bandages and isolating pain.

And as surely as He spoke to that woman at the well and gave her living water for her aching, thirsting, sinful soul, so He gave me this everlasting, ever-healing drink.

And no longer did I need fill myself with anything else again.

The bottomless well remains even when you momentarily forget its location.

And there is, in fact, freedom from these things which pull you and me back to the scenes that anguish the heart anew.

People and places and penetrating words can all trigger these phantom pangs.

And have for me. More recently than I care to detail for you just now.

Let’s just say satan never stops. He wants nothing more than for us to not possess the truth behind these empty bones rattling our cages.

Therefore, he lines our path with detour signs that lead to those ugly angry pictures of former times.

Just hoping we will get lost in the frightening moment before our mind’s gaze and never find our way back.

Get wrecked again and stay wrecked.

But, we don’t have to stay there. That’s the incredible thing I am gaining more heart knowledge on by the year.

You don’t have to stay this victimized puppet getting your strings pulled every which way! Not with a Savior not more than one word away.

And that word?

Help. Just help.

No need for elaborate expounding or flowery prayer.

The word “help” will do, provided it’s help you’re seeking.

From the honest hoarse scratching of a parched throat that word will bring such a wash of glorious river waters to flow and rescue time and again from the harshest places we find ourselves.

Time and again it will shore us up to remind that yes, once we were this, and once we did that, but it isn’t who we are anymore.

Time and again, He pours in strength and resolve to see what He sees in us.

To see WHO He sees in us.

To remember we ARE something far better and more beautiful than we know or believe most times.

Not because of anything we can lay claim to in our finite strength, but because of Who reached down from heaven to lift us in our weakened state.

Because of Who reached out, crosspoint to precious crosspoint to set aright what none of us ever could in an infinite amount of years.

Because of this, we are not summed up any longer by what we’ve done or had done to us.

Because of this, we are no longer just the abused kid, the weirdo, the sin-soaked or the abandoned.

Because of this, we are adopted into one simple wonderful eternal thing:

His.

Lord, thank You for helping all of us who find ourselves so sorely in need of remembering who we are today. Amen.