wounds

Why should you be beaten anymore?… Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted. From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness- only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with oil…

I will thoroughly purge away your dross and remove all your impurities. I will restore your judges as in days of old, your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you will be called the City of Righteousness, the Faithful City.

                                                 Isaiah 1:5-6 & 25-26

Those days were long and dark. Hours spent in sorrow. The time I cried from my house to my in-laws, twenty-five miles away. The time I went running from a friend’s house, fumbled for my keys and shook all the way home. In my living room I collapsed in tears.

Over and over it happened.

I would pull myself together, lecture my emotions, fight my sorrow…and end up beaten and bruised and heartbroken.

I can’t tell you how long I hid the truth from myself. The time blends together. Maybe it was a year. Maybe more.

There is one thing I can tell you though. God didn’t leave me there. He called me out. I still remember the day I read these verses and realized they were written for me. And I found that God had not forgotten. He was pleading with me.

Why, Tasha, why? Why are you staying in that place of torture? You’re wounded! Let me care for you…

Why was I wallowing in the sorrow of broken friendships? Why was I hiding from the truth of infertility? Why was I crumbling in the face of lost dreams?

With God calling all the while. 

He wanted to cleanse my sorrows. To bandage my brokenness. To soothe my pain. He was begging. And I was so blind and deaf, that I stumbled in darkness instead of dancing in light.

I’ve been listening to a lot women. Hurting, dying women. They look alive and well but inside there are wounds and welts and open sores. My heart constricts with compassion when I hear their stories. See the flicker of pain in their eyes.

I know that place. I’ve been there. I’ve come out of there. I still slide back there far too often. And I long for us all, you and me included, to find a way to live in the light. Brilliant, life-giving light. 

Don’t be beaten anymore… Hear the cry of a God who is always found by those who seek him.  The one who calls you Beloved. 

I am planning to go through some of my journals and attempt to paint a picture of what God did/is doing in me, because of/in spite of the pain. Come with me?

Intro: Wounds
Taste of Tears
The Gentle Healer
Bittersweet