A new thing...

I am in the process of learning a new language, and tonight I have all these (super-deep) thoughts in my head about how learning a new language is so much like the process of healing…or whatever you want to call it when you take the messy parts of your life and try to make them less messy.  I call that healing, probably because that’s what others have called it.  But it’s something that we all do right?  We all have trauma and we all have to heal from it. 

One discussion that I have had with many people, on many occasions: there is no level of trauma that is “too small” to be considered.  Trauma is trauma and we all have it.  At first glance it may not make much sense, but it’s only our minds that put levels and degrees on everything and make this worse; or that better.  It’s only our minds that say “you think you have it bad, you don’t know bad…wait till you hear what happened to me.”  Your worst experience is your worst experience…and, sure…maybe when you put it next to someone else’s worst experience it suddenly doesn’t seem so bad anymore – but it’s still your worst.  Whatever caused you the most pain, ever in your life, is just as bad as whatever caused me that level of pain in my life.  Only one of those things might be dramatic enough for a lifetime movie marathon – but the level of pain it caused is still the same…in my opinion.  (oh…and just fyi…you cannot convince me I’m wrong on this…it’s not possible.  So I guess this isn’t really an opinion, it’s more of a belief)

So – back to my purpose – sorry for all the words.

To me - learning a new language is a lot like the healing process (like how I summarized first thought there?) because I hear a new word in Swahili and my mind tries to relate it to an English word – but they may be totally different (for example “–lake” goes onto the end a word to specify ownership and my mind wants to relate it to “lake”.  The two aren’t even similar) and I realize that if I try to memorize it this way…the meaning of this new word is going to get all jumbled up in my mind and confused at some point.  It’s like that with healing.  If you have a learned, unhealthy, way of coping and you set out to change that, it’s easy to just relate the old unhealthy behavior to a new behavior…and then it becomes unhealthy too.

I experienced this in my own life.  For a long time, I never even stopped to consider if the way that I was surviving life (because that’s all I was doing…surviving, not living) was healthy or not.  I didn’t really have time to care because I was too busy with all the craziness going on.  Eventually – with the help of a trained professional – I recognized that I needed to remove some harmful behaviors from my life.  But no matter what I did I ended up with only slightly less unhealthy behaviors.  The problem was - my desire for the way the behavior made me feel and my need for something more was still there, so I was just taking the new “healthy” behavior and searching for ways to have it make me just as “good” as the old one did.  I was relating the new thing to the old thing, and thereby corrupting the new thing. 

Skip forward a few years…I now had a relationship with God.  I now knew that I had been searching all along for something to fill a void that he fit perfectly into.  But my relationship with him suffered because I was constantly stuck in old, negative behaviors.  I knew they weren’t healthy, I knew they created a wall between me and him – but I couldn’t get away from them.  Then one day, I was driving to work and I was repeating a verse in my head about how the old has passed away and I am made new in Christ.  I felt this desperation come over me and I told Jesus “I can’t wait until I am new and the old is gone” and his reply to me was basically “I can’t wait until you realize that you have BEEN new…it’s done…the old IS GONE…you just don’t realize it”.

I had to think on that for a while.  How could I be new…when I was still behaving the same old ways?  Because… I was still relating the new thing to the old thing, and…you guessed it - corrupting the new thing.  My mind thought that I had to still be the same old person because that’s who I had always been.    This next part offended my mind quite a bit – but here it is… all I had to do was stop giving in to the temptation to return to these old behaviors.  But that seemed impossible to me…that I could turn around and walk the other way.  My mind couldn’t grasp the fact that there was a brand new me already in place that didn’t need those old things anymore.  I had already learned a new language and didn’t even need the old one anymore…but I was too afraid to step out and start using the new words!  To go one step further…I couldn’t even see the new language because I was focusing so hard on the old one!!!  This realization was so freeing for me.  It opened huge doors in my healing and allowed me to step past some negative things that had seemed to be glued to me before.  I was able to drop them and walk away. 

So – this may have gotten a bit rambly…maybe my path was a little twisty  :) but I think you get the point I am trying to share.  Maybe it’s more like three points – 

1. We all are broken in some way…there’s no shame in that.  Even if we end up broken into tiny pieces, there’s no shame.  It’s just that much more amazing when God creates a *new* life out of the broken pieces.
2. Our minds cannot grasp or comprehend the healing, restoring power of the Holy Spirit and what all is possible when we surrender to God.
3. Sometimes, all it takes is seeing ourselves the way GOD sees us.  If we would live like we are the person HE sees…man…what a changed world this would be!

Wait..I’ll add a fourth point – feeling temptation to sin isn’t the same as sinning.  (That one took me a while.)

Ok…I hope this isn’t too jumbled...I actually think it’s quite amazing just because of the emotion that’s attached to it for me.  (strong ones just so you know)  God is all powerful…there is nothing that he cannot do.  He is most certainly in the business of reclaiming, restoring and redeeming.