Restored in an Instant
I loved hanging out with my dad as a kid, but his time was limited and precious with three jobs. So most of my upper elementary years, I rode with him on his school bus route. He’d arise while it was still dark, stand at our bedroom door, and quietly – as not to disturb my sleeping little sister – whisper my name to wake me up.
But when it was time for junior high, our relationship changed. My dad was not only a school bus driver, but he also was a teacher where I would attend. So I’d see him at school every day, and he would be one of my teachers. For a tween girl, it was a mortifying thought. Suddenly, my dad went from someone I wanted to be around a lot to a relationship that felt awkward.
My solution to ease the uncomfortableness was distance.
Have you felt this awkwardness too with someone in your life? Are you hurting from the fallout of distance and disconnection? Has it affected your ability to feel wanted and to cultivate genuine, healthy relationships? Has it affected your spiritual life and how you view God?
I don’t remember consciously deciding distance; I just remember the anxiety swelling to a suffocating doom, like I wouldn’t survive seventh grade. I don’t recall having one single conversation about it. It just was; why talk about it? Was it going to change anything?
It certainly seemed the more manageable, less painful path at the time. But, unfortunately, what I can clearly see now that I didn’t see then was – this easier, less painful emotional path – would be the main ingredient in a recipe for regret in my life.
As I gazed down into my dad’s lifeless face in 2007, there were so many words unspoken between us.
My dad was so kind, and he worked so hard for us. He was a beloved teacher and coach to the community. But, of course, he loved me, didn’t he? It’s one of those things I’ve told myself over and over during the decades. I “knew” he loved me by his providing for me. But, the reality was I didn’t hear those words from him or say those words to him until right before he died.
Distance and disconnection are the sticky, messy relational spaces where shame begins to multiply like a virus causes infection. Anytime we can’t put our feelings into words and healthily process them, it does damage. Something excruciatingly painful happens to the very core of our being every time we can’t wrap words around our feelings of unworthiness and lack of belonging.
Shame researcher Brené Brown shares her findings of studying people who are living what she’s coined, a “wholehearted life” and compiles this working description of shame. “Shame is the fear of disconnection – it’s the fear that something we’ve done or failed to do, an ideal that we’ve not lived up to, or a goal that we’ve not accomplished makes us unworthy of connection.” She goes on to say “the pain of shame is enough to trigger that survival part of our brains that runs, hides, or comes out swinging.”
I hid or ran a lot. Have you thought about how you respond?
The distance and silence had been devastating for my dad and I’s relationship. I felt like I didn’t know my dad or him, me. And the fact that I would never have the opportunity to change that reality was devasting.
The grief and the inability to control my world that was crumbling, combined with the reality of how I was coping woke me up. I had no real power in my willpower. It was an illusion. Willpower was a lie I had let culture define, a spiritual enemy who hated me exaggerate, and old Kelli agreed with all of it. Those nights I went to bed begging for Jesus to take my problem away was my saving grace; my heavenly Father stood near and quietly called my name to tell me to wake up and follow Him, just like my dad did those early mornings decades earlier. Isaiah 43:4 – NLT – Others were given in exchange for you. I traded…
God can restore our honor in a moment when we invite Him into our lives and He calls us Daughters. 2 Corinthians 5:17 – NLT – This means that anyone who belongs to Christ ha…
Our choices are our choices, and we need to own them. But we don’t need to be bogged down in shame anymore. When healing starts to happen, we can finally understand the emotional, physical, and spiritual reasons for our choices. That’s empowering and feels lighter and freer than we can imagine. With Jesus’s healing presence and power, we can recognize the why behind our thoughts and behaviors and have the strength to choose differently.
We don’t ever have to go back to how things used to be. Our honor becomes restored the moment we accept Jesus. Our honor isn’t at stake anymore. We are clothed in His honor! And He will defend it.
Our ongoing battle becomes fighting the lies that contradict the new truth.
It can feel so uncomfortable to declare the whole truth. But we have to be honest about where we are. Honest and humble curiosity guided with the courage to embrace reality at all costs is where true healing begins.
