Her eyes were hopeless, lost
Drawn into a memory of long ago
A prison of abandonment
Loneliness
Was anyone going to show up for her?
Would she ever be acknowledged?
Would she ever feel loved, cherished, known?
It’s life-altering when we are known, when we connect with others deeply in being known. It’s life to a lonely soul and water to a thirsty and parched heart and mind. You know this all too well when you are not. Known, that is. When someone doesn’t “get” you, it’s a lonely place to live.
Secrets keep us distant from knowing and being known. The closet where we live, hidden away in solitude is a safe place. One that allows us to stay hidden in the story of our own lives. We show up daily to none but the narrative that lives in our heads and memories.
Those memories are scattered and broken at best, and they lie and taunt us at worst. We can’t be known. The lies tell us we’re unloved, unwanted, that nothing we feel or who we are matters and is of no consequence.
Our experiences have weaved these lies that live in our minds and poison our souls and the lives of those with whom we have to do. And poison they do, deeply, at the core of our identity and value, they lie and spin a demonic tale of hatred, self-loathing, and contempt for our very selves. The lie becomes the narrator of our very existence and tells us who we are.
So, hide, we must. Behind our makeup, personality, name brands, careers, traumas, and children only provide a shadow of who we truly are. And this is where we live. Safely, securely, a hologram of our existence. Superficial and hollow are the relationships we build with our counterfeit persona. Shame the taskmaster that drives us deeper into hiding. Building on sand. No wonder all it takes is a strong wind to blow it all away.
At last, a reckoning of ourselves arises and we come face to face with the image we convey and must shatter that looking glass. The responsibility is ours alone to cease with controlling what others see and believe about us and show up in the divine design of who we truly are and let the chips fall where they may.
We spend a lifetime covering up like concrete that’s poured and sets around a fence post. It takes a chisel, a jackhammer of bone-deep truth to break out. Break out!
It’s not something we choose, but something imposed upon us by the misery, the pain of isolation and pretense. The mockery of our fraud eating away at our souls brings us to the end of ourselves and our power to uphold the charade. It is then we surrender. The white flag waving violently for the pain to end. The hunger of freedom pulses from our depths until we no longer care what it costs, or fear what it may look like to others.
We have entered a match with ourselves and our experiences that is second to none of any battle we’ve faced. This battle of letting go and showing up for real is fierce and unyielding and can only be waged with truth! No other can stand with us or fight for us, save One and it is on this Rock we fall and cry out for deliverance. Our truth is thrust forth like vomit and spewed out in all the lies, the rage and pain we’ve held onto until we are spent and emptied of it.
It is here, in this broken, empty but most peaceful, purposeful place that we finally show up. We can do nothing else, for all has been stripped away and what is left is us; naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account (Heb. 4:13).
The place we feared most has become a place of restoration, life, and redemption. A place where Truth and Love live and guide and see us through. We can make it because He holds the keys to Death and Hades. We can do this because He is Immanuel, God with us. Never leaving, never forsaking, never shaming, love incarnate, Jesus Christ.
CRISIE HUTCHINGS 
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