Make Sense of Your Story

Scriptures: Psalms 147:3, Isaiah 61:1-3, John 8:32

WHEN YOUR HEART IS WOUNDED

As a young adult, I spent years devouring the Bible, looking for help with anxiety, depression, and emotional pain. I tried books, conferences, journaling, prayer, counseling. But little changed in my anguished heart. Then I discovered the power of engaging with my story. This meant more than writing down my life narrative and journaling or thinking about it. It meant acknowledging how my past was affecting my present. 

Like me, you may have tried many things to get unstuck. It’s easy to berate yourself for what you imagine is wrong with you. But what if every symptom you have points back to a story that has something to reveal to you? 

When a behavior in the present doesn’t make sense, it is usually because we don’t understand how that behavior is rooted in the past. There is a reason you are stuck in the places where you are stuck. That reason will be found by exploring your story, particularly your story in your family of origin. While we can’t dig deep into what that looks like in this devotional, we’ll use these five days to get a glimpse of the healing and hope God has for you. 

This passage from Isaiah that foreshadows Jesus identifies the link between our past and how we live today: “[The Lord] has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners” (61:1). 

Isaiah is making a connection between being brokenhearted and becoming a captive. When your heart is wounded, you begin living in a way that assures you that you will never be hurt in that way again. This way of living enslaves you. The Bible calls this idolatry. Your idolatry is not random. It grows in the soil of your pain. It is rooted in the experiences that have caused your brokenheartedness 

According to Jesus, it is truth that sets you free (see John 8:32). Freedom can’t come without eyes wide open to past experiences of heartache. 

God sees your broken heart and he longs to bring you healing. What does this look like, especially if we have been praying for healing for years? That’s what we’re going to look at tomorrow. 

Where do you feel most stuck in life right now? In what ways might that struggle be related to an experience in your past?

Scriptures: Job 3, Psalms 38:9-10, Psalms 62:8

DISAPPOINTMENT WITH GOD 

God is the coauthor of our stories. For me, this reality is both relieving and agonizing. It’s relieving because it brings me hope that my story is not over. It’s agonizing because it begs the question, Why didn’t God protect me from so much pain?

If you take your story seriously, sooner or later you will find yourself disoriented by the heartaches that have happened to you. And the very fact that those stories of harm exist implicates God: You expected God to show up, and God didn’t. How do you engage with God after you have been disappointed? 

Job is one of many biblical examples of someone whose life was turned upside down by tragedy and heartache. He lost his wealth, his health, and his children. What were the first words he spoke after his world shattered? 

After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth, Job said: “Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’ Let that day be darkness! . . . Why did I not die at birth[?] . . . For my sighing comes instead of my bread, and my groanings are poured out like water. For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me.” (Job 3:1–4, 11, 24–25 ESV) 

It’s common to think, “I should ask God to increase my faith during this time,” or “I should be grateful for what I still do have.” Job did none of that. In fact, each of those responses can be a way to avoid being honest with God about your heartache. But Job chose not to deny his story. He put words to his emotional turmoil. 

To understand the unique way in which you reflect the glory of God— the thing that makes you you—it’s important to name what you really want and what has broken your heart. You cannot know yourself until you have been willing to name the deepest disappointments and greatest longings of your heart. 

This is what it means to engage your story with God. 

How do you tend to respond to God when something difficult happens in your life? Are you more likely to deny your pain or speak of it? Why do you think that is?

Scriptures: Psalms 6, Isaiah 43:2, Romans 8:26

PRAY YOUR FEELINGS 

To deny sorrow is an odd inclination for people who value the Bible, given the large portions of its text in which people pour out their sorrow to God. Here is a small sampling from Psalms: 

My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord, how long? (6:3) 

Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? (10:1) 

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? (13:1) 

My eyes fail, looking for your promise; I say, “When will you comfort me?” (119:82) 

Why would God have put these expressions of despair into Scripture? Perhaps so we can give ourselves permission to pour out our true feelings to God in lament. 

Lament consists of two things: (1) allowing yourself to feel your sorrow and grief and (2) expressing your sorrow and grief with complete honesty. 

When was the last time you poured out your feelings to God without first making them “appropriate” for expression to a holy God or consistent with some sort of theology? When was the last time you poured out your sadness to God without first editing your words? 

The psalmists, Job, and others in the Bible model for us to pray our feelings. To pray your feelings is to pour out your feelings to God before you’ve reflected on them and judged them as good or bad. 

Nothing is more hardwired into the human heart than the tendency to run to someone bigger and stronger than you for help when you are in need. If you have stopped running toward someone stronger than you and stopped expressing your sadness, fear, and anger, engaging with your story will help you understand why you have stopped. 

It is not pain we fear; it is aloneness and meaninglessness in the pain. More than wanting a particular circumstance to change, we want to feel the presence of Someone with us. 

Lamenting alone leads to despair. But lament poured out to God leads to connection with God. The laments that fill the book of Job, Psalms, and throughout Scripture give us permission to feel. If you risk letting your deepest parts engage with God, you will find Someone in the fire with you. 

Spend time lamenting to God, praying your feelings without editing them. If it’s too hard to speak words of lament out loud, consider writing them down instead.

Scriptures: Isaiah 42:3, Romans 2:4, Philippians 1:6

WRITING A NEW STORY 

Here is a gut-wrenching truth about trauma: The harm you do to yourself through self-contempt is greater than the harm that has been done to you. Self-contempt blocks the healing process more than any other single factor. 

By “self-contempt” I simply mean harshness from you to you. 

The antidote to self-contempt is kindness. 

According to the apostle Paul, it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance (Romans 2:4). If that’s true, why does a part of you feel like the best way to change and grow is to be harsh with yourself? Have you ever considered why it’s so hard to bring kindness to your own heart and body? Might it have something to do with what happened in your past when you were in need of kindness and you were either shamed for that need or abandoned in your moment of need? 

If you’re like me, you’re harshest with yourself when you are most in need of care and comfort. Why is that? Perhaps it has something to do with your immense need for kindness and your deep ambivalence about receiving kindness. 

It’s time to write a new story. You can begin by offering your heart and body kindness today when you are in need. In Isaiah 42:3, God says, “A bruised reed [I] will not break.” You and I are bruised reeds. If God does not hate the fact that you are a bruised reed, why do you? Why do you have hatred for your brokenness, for your weakness, for your frailty? When you are not doing well, do you respond to your body’s suffering by striving harder? Grinding it out? Do you turn against yourself? 

You don’t have to respond to your brokenness with self-violence in the form of lies about who you are. Jesus said that Satan is the father of lies and when he lies, he speaks his “native language” (John 8:44). You have likely borne the weight of self-accusations for years. In fact, behind each experience of shame in your life is an accusation. But what if the accusations that haunt you could become questions you explore with kindness—part of your story that, when considered with gentleness and grace, can lead toward healing? 

How did others respond to you when you needed kindness as a child? Why does receiving kindness from ourselves, others, and God lead to healing?

Scriptures: Jeremiah 30:12-17, Isaiah 43:19, Luke 1:37

GOD IS DOING A NEW THING 

In Jeremiah 30:12, God says to Israel: “Your wound is incurable, your injury beyond healing.” 

This is precisely what many people with a history of trauma feel. We wonder if our injured hearts are too damaged for genuine healing to happen. 

Then just a few verses later, God says, “But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds” (v. 17). 

These verses acknowledge two things that seem to be impossible to hold together. On the one hand, the text acknowledges the severity of the wound. On the other hand, the text acknowledges the possibility of healing. 

Many of us have trained our imaginations to stop being able to conceive of God intervening in a hopeless situation and creating something new. 

Think about this for a minute. What is required for the genuinely new to come into existence in your life? An act of creation. Do we think the Creator stopped making new things? What if the Creator has the freedom to continue to create new things? The present ordering of your life claims to be the final ordering of your life. But what if the Creator can create new green shoots in your life even in places where nothing seems to grow? 

Can you feel your imagination open to this possibility? Can you feel hope rise? Maybe you also feel something inside of you slam the door shut on that rising hope. It’s a little voice saying, Don’t be a fool. You’ve hoped in the past and it’s only led to disappointment.

We all war with hope, though the nature of that war looks different for each of us. So why is hope reasonable? Why is it worth keeping? Because the history of the world is the history of a Maker making new things that are underived from the present circumstances. 

We read in Isaiah, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:19). All you might see right now is an impossible situation. But God is a God of Creation. Of new life. Of hope. 

What is one thing you are afraid to hope for? What is something you have stopped hoping for? How would engaging with your story help you to hope in the new thing God wants to do in your life?