Surprised by Pain. Overwhelmed by Love.

Today, I was surprised by the voice of the Holy Spirit. He called my name.  It was beautiful to recognize the voice of my Shepherd.  Calling me to a place of calmness, God invited me to engage in conversation with Him, reminding me, once more, that He is my God and desires my friendship. How wonderful it is to hear the sweet sound of the Holy Spirit and not question where it comes from and why He would call my name. 

After years of pain and never-ending brokenness, I have been transformed deeply from within my core.  His love overcame the despair of the chaos that took over my life after the death of my husband. It has been quite a journey.  God took me from the precipice of death to a place of joy and spiritual fulfillment.  I have been transformed by the labor of His grace.  I have been given a relationship with my Lord and Savior.  I can now experience the joy of a relationship with the almighty God.  He takes time for me; and my life is important to Him in a way I cannot comprehend.  I have been overtaken by the goodness of God!  His love overflows within my heart.  Oh, how He loves me! My most guarded memories and mistakes had been the reason for loads of condemnation.  The untruths of trauma and hate had lie to me, saying that my worth and identity were tainted by the mistakes of my life.  I was led to believe that I had been left alone during the darkest moments of my life.  Filled with guilt, I prayed for forgiveness regarding the same sins, over and over again.  Looking at the ceiling of my room, I often felt like my prayers would not reach God.  I thought I had removed myself so far from God that the distance between Him and myself was greater than the whole universe.  God not only heard my prayers, but He revealed Himself to me, saying that His presence has never left.  His loved cannot be removed from me, not by myself or even by the enemy of our souls.  It is with praise in my lips and hope within my heart, that I can share the pleasure of learning from God about the nature of His character. God is love.  The fruit from His presence is one of goodness and not condemnation. I am aware that there are so many things I do not understand about the reality of heaven.  I know, however, above all else, that my God exists, and His love never fails.  Every day of my life, I choose to believe in the natural and supernatural goodness of God. 

During all days of my life, I will declare that God is good, and His love does not depend on how good I might try to become or how disgusted I might feel about myself.  Hallelujah, His love never failed.  When I felt abandoned and alone, God was there with me. Like a child who is unaware her father has never left her playing peekaboo, I failed to realize that He held me tight. His protection never left me.  Throughout my life, God has loved me through pain, confusion, loneliness, fear, self-disgust, condemnation, shame, and humiliation. From early childhood, God approached me, ministered to my spirit, and protected my innocent heart.  Although only a little girl, He called me His own and told me I was His daughter. The Lord named me the apple of His eyes.  I knew then how loved I was.  My heart never questioned when Jesus told me that He chose to take the cross and die so that I could live. Because of such amazing love, I have the honor to call Him my savior.  I have been gifted with the opportunity to know Him personally.  Jesus called me His friend and placed His worth within me.  He brought salvation to my life.  God did not want me apart from Him.  He offered His life in exchange for mine.  Now, He lives within me! Spiritual death no longer has a claim on my soul.  I have been adopted into His kingdom. Praise the Lord, I am His! 

I want to be honest. The realization that I was loved and found valuable before God’s eyes was not always clear to me.  I sought acceptance from sources other than God himself.  Then, like a child, longing for her mother who is no longer there, I cried with deep sorrow and fear.  I plead with God to please not abandon me. Yes, my God was with me in the fire and in the deep waters of suffering!  The enemy had no hold on me.  The all-surrounding presence of God protected me every single moment of my life.  When I felt orphaned and abandoned, lonesome in this world, I felt to recognize the embrace of God.  Spiritually unaware, I questioned my worth, sinking in my own tears, praying to God, as if He was far as wide the universe felt like.  Staring at my ceiling, I hoped my voice would overcome the distance I placed between God and me.  I am utterly overtaken with praise and gratitude, today my eyes have been opened and my heart have been healed. I now recognize the voice of my shepherd.  Hallelujah, He has always been there--yesterday, today, and forever! God is the same.  He never changed.  His promises are everlasting! His love never fails. The privileged of His embrace was paid by the sacrifice of Christ. The marks of His hands are reminders of how He loves me.  What a price He has paid so that I could be held by the almighty arms of God?!

It did not matter how unlovable I believed to be.  His love never failed me! Lovingly, the Holy Spirit clarifies and replaces the lies of my traumas for the truth of the gospel. The power of the world of God overcame my fractured attempts to protect myself from the destruction of hate and rejection. On my own, my best attempts of taking control and protecting myself resulted in disastrous childish-coping mechanisms.  The "fortress" I built, instead of keeping the attackers away only kept me from accepting the healing hand of God, offered to me all the days of my life. Dissociation and denial disrupted my awareness of the closeness of God, at all times.  It mudded my understanding of His mercy and grace He has placed upon me. Hallelujah! The love and acceptance of God never receded nor quivered.  

Oh, how could I comprehend the greatness and magnitude of God's love when all I could do was to focus on myself?  On my own, I saw my failure. I could not stop the voice of condemnation.  The hate and rejection reigned my mind.  Every thought discouraged the purpose God designed for my life.  The perception of my identity was shuttered by the words of destruction spoken to me, by the very one from whom I was born. I had no comprehension that my worth came from the Lord.  Only He, the Creator of my life, the one Who designed the attributes of my identity, has the authority to determine the worth of my being.  In His presence, through the sacrifice of Christ, I am called daughter of God and the apple of His eyes.  The word of God confirms that my old being has been replaced by the life of Christ.  My identity now belongs to Him.  He gives me my self-worth. Oh, how He loves me! His unimaginable perfection and goodness, never fails. 

I have been created for a purpose: not a mistake, unwanted, without a place to belong, I have been born to shine the light of the Holy Spirit into the darkness of this era.  I have been created accordingly to the image of God.  If God is love, and He is, so am I. Because He loved me first, I can now live my life through the love of Jesus: He who died, so that I could live!  Wow! How gracious is the Holy Spirit to reveal Himself to us. The reality of a loving- living God is absolute within itself. It is unnegotiable, regardless of one’s beliefs. His existence is not a metaphysical probability and never the result of the ever-changing attribute of navigating life. He is not a fabrication or a delusion of a world in chaos that is searching for a dissociative remedy to suffering. The perception of His reality taking place within our lives is dependable on whether we welcome His friendship. This knowledge comes with maturity and experience. It is a natural consequence of one’s awareness, wiliness, and often of brokenness throughout life. My own understanding, my vision, and perspective of God’s character had been dinted. I had been blinded by the untruths engraved into my continuousness by the abuse I suffered, from the moment of my conception. It is human conditioning to be affected by our relationship with ourselves, others, and with the world around us—cultural, geographic, social, political, temporal realities that define one’s world. Such awareness, therefore, is a never-ending, and often, unstable, lifetime process. Like an artist is always in search of beauty and inspiration, so do we must break away from the distractions of modern life, in search of what is greater than ourselves. We shall live in a state of curiosity, amusement, and openness to welcome the unavoidable changes brought by individual growth. The entirety of my life, I have been confined by my hopeful, if not deceitful, belief of holding absolute control over my life.

Suborned, with the perspective of a small child, I held to the illusion that I could protected myself from evil, preventing my fears from happening. With unswerving resolute and clutched fists, I painfully labored my control over the disruptive influences of trauma. Unknowingly to me, instead, I kept myself slaved to bitterness and unforgiveness. Like a dilution warrior, a self-destructive kamikaze, fighting a lost battle to keep the attackers away.  Failure was inevitable. The exhaustion of the losing battle depleted my heart from hope and joy.  Like lighting, suddenly, life as I knew, had been ripped from me.  I found myself on the ground; like never before, I was knocked out of my feet.  Surrounding me and overtaking my breath, like broken glass, my life was shuttered into uncountable pieces. There was not reminiscence of the life I had just minutes before, and the one I dreamed for my family would never be.  Like a town, wrecked a violent and unexpected tornado, I was thrown into the abyss of fear, hopelessness, and death.  My life was utterly altered.  The person I had been moments before no longer existed. Like a corpse, I finally found myself utterly powerless. 

Life-shattering events threw me to the edge of the precipice of destruction and death. The illusion of strength and self-power, I once had, was finally exposed.  I painfully realized that my trust had been misplaced.  I finally understood that I had created a mythology for myself, a superhero-like, holding control over life events. This was no more. The phantasy was debunked, and I found myself gutted—absent of any desire for life.  The pain was such that all logic was lost.  Literally, I kicked the walls in my room, with all my force.  At the top of my lungs, I yelled in anger.  As if there were no end to tears, I cried myself to the extent of nearly drowning in my pain. Yes, I was finally defeated. I could barely open my eyes in the mornings. Although, I wish death for myself daily, I knew that I could not take my own life. This was the moment I decided to ask God to intervene: to become my strength and my courage…because I had none.  Moment by moment, I asked God for His hope.  On my own, I wanted death. In faith, however, I made the decision to ask God for His life to replace the deep emptiness within me. I made this my plea more than a million times, until something new slowly took shape. There was a sense of that something greater than me was amidst. God, my creator, my rescue, made me aware of Him and that He had been with me all along. In my hut heart, I had perceived myself so alone, as if I were the only human on earth. Logic, however, prevented the feeling of looniness from becoming a delusion of being the last human standing—obviously! The intensity of my pain had made me numb to all else, including hope, joy, and even to the always omnipresence of God. I have been transformed, not by the pain, suffering, and grief but by the Almighty and Omnipresent God and heavenly Father! Please, I emphasize on the fact that I still hurt and struggle with grieving. Although I often take my focus from God by the influence of grief, I chose to remind myself that I am held by the safe arms of God, and that I am His daughter. He does not forsake me…even when I judge myself deserving of rejection.

Luciane Hawkins