My greatest prayer as I lie in bed thinking about what to write is that this is not going to be just another write-up on healing. There’s been many of those, and you’ve likely heard everything I’m about to say.

But I pray that this would be a whisper of the Father’s heart, a glimpse of heaven’s glory, the full embodiment of divine healing.

May the Holy Spirit be personified through this writing to bring healing to God’s children, binding up the wounds of the broken-hearted; May He breathe His life into these ordinary words – flowing down to the unseen parts of every heart, healing the deepest hurts. May He weave His redeeming power into this piece, a beautiful tapestry of His Grace. 

Amen.

…

Friday. 

6 pm. 

Food is on the table like clockwork. 

And like clockwork, 2 hours down the line, I’m puking my guts out in the toilet. Time has stood still in that cubicle, but somehow I’m counting down the minutes before she gets to me.

Tick Tock. Tick Tock.

With each second my heartbeat grows, and my palms get more sweaty. I feel sick, literally and figuratively. I’m more worried about what’s coming than about my current state; bent over on the toilet, retching, my head, and sides hurting.

Finally, I hear footsteps approaching, and my tiny body immediately goes into self-defense. I protect my head with my hands, and the first blow lands on my back. Then on my arm. And before I know it, her hands are everywhere…angry, unrelenting, destructive. We go on like this for what feels like an eternity before she finally stops and orders me to clean up and return to the table for more food. 

And just like clockwork, the same portion of food that my little stomach could not stomach is refilled and placed before me.

And again, I begin.

There were days when I thought myself smarter and tried to hide bits of food behind the TV cabinet, but it never ended well. Probably because I wasn’t smarter than a grown-up.

And then there were days when things took a more interesting turn. On those days, we (my sibling and I) were locked out of the house in the night, with the security lights turned off, casting us into a deep, simmering darkness. For context, the compound was huge, and we lived in a place where snakes and other uncanny living things from the garden were not uncommon. This was apparently the ‘motivation’ we needed to eat. Obviously, my older brother always finished first, granting him access back into the light. And I was left sitting alone on the porch, in pitch-black silence, crying too hard from unbridled fear to actually eat. And at 6 years of age, it felt then like death would have been better, sweeter, than this unending trauma.

I fantasized about it, this utopia called death – by suicide. I called it by its name, petting its form, whispering for it to recline beside me and regale me with tales of the land yonder, a land of peace. I toyed with this idea in my young mind, completely oblivious to the darkness slowly clouding my heart.

And on the days when I was drowning in unending criticism, never seeming to do anything right, or when I was dismissed as “too sensitive for this life”, or when her blade fashioned from words made a clean cut through my chest, puncturing my already bleeding heart, I could see death’s dark hand reaching out to me through the brackish waters, beckoning me to salvation, to redemption;

But God said No.

I could go on and on about countless encounters that not only devastated my little heart but also completely shattered any sense of self-worth I might have had. My very core, having been crushed into a million pieces, meant I lived in constant torment internally, perhaps even more than any caused by external trauma.

Dear reader, that place was my home. 

And she was, is, my mother. 

And I was stuck with it, with her, through every emotional and physical blow, and through every hug, because yes, there were good days. Days when the sun shone brighter than a cloudless day. Days when, even if I could, I wouldn’t have rearranged the cosmos to initiate a rebirth in a different home.

My broken self became my second home, and it was even more toxic than the first. I don’t know which home I hated more, or even who I hated more between the both of us. 

Her, a narcissist who seemed so sure of herself, seemingly strong, unbowed by life…but deeply broken. Or me, a narcissist-in-the-making who seemed so sure of herself, seemingly strong, unbowed by life…but deeply, deeply broken.

Unfortunately, I slowly became just like her, this person that I hated, and I don’t have the words to describe how that made me feel. It broke me in places I didn’t even know bone could be, and I especially resented how I treated the people I claimed to love. It was a mess. All of it. 

But something hit me in my early twenties…it was a pattern. How my mother treated us. How her mother treated them. How my mother’s mother treated them. And on and on. My mother was a victim of the system. And so was her mother. And perhaps it went as far back as the fall of man….or maybe that’s a stretch. Pun intended.

The point is that I was going to be another statistic in this long line of brokenness. And my home would be just another cesspool of broken hearts and broken dreams. A replica of the pain I came from. An unholy home.

Today as I write this, I hold close to this paradox: I wish I would have forgiven her (me?) sooner. She represented everyone in the bloodline that needed a whisper of love at their worst, that needed a reassuring touch at their weakest, that needed a gentle affirmation at their harshest. And even though I acknowledged that I was too broken to offer her that, I aspired to rescue the little girl trapped in the loveless home that was my heart. I was going to free her so she could love genuinely, unconditionally, bravely. 

Well…to say that I recovered in just a few short years, or even that I am whole today, would be a lie. It took me 8 years of grieving before I could even get to the point of acceptance, or even be able to stumble through giving a semblance of forgiveness, and a few more years before I could begin to work on my own home, on my own triggers. 

I wept through countless therapy sessions, through nights spent sprawled on my bed reeling from the literal physical pain in my heart as I relieved those harrowing memories, memories that broke me all over again; sobbing so hard my chest felt like it would burst open from all the pressure. In the first years, I wanted to take all my pain and make her feel just a sliver of it, dreaming of ways to hit where it would hurt most. Then in the consequent years I successfully went through 3 or 4 triggers before I lost it and allowed myself to be dragged back down into the mud…a filthy concoction of angry, hurtful words, petty actions, and once or twice very closely physical violence.

Then over time, I painfully learned to apologize when there had been an altercation, regardless of whose fault it was. And it wasn’t because I had hacked being the bigger person. No. Rather because I had made a promise to make myself a better home for the little girl that took up residence in my heart. I was going to do it for her, and I would make the necessary sacrifices. Then after that, the altercations became few and far in between, each trigger being the training ground I needed to practice self-regulation. 

And over even more time, I realized that I might have been traumatized, but I was also not an innocent bystander. I had my own deep flaws, selfishness being a strong one, and it was finally time to take responsibility for my contribution to the dysfunction around me. And it sucked to accept this. 

Dear reader, I’m writing this blog to tell you that the road has been hard and winding, with many a time when I have failed miserably and swore off any further attempts to heal or show mercy, but God has kept me going. There have been times when I have felt like my progress was too slow to mean anything, but years later, I have been astonished at how far I have come because this journey is not a sprint. It is a very slow marathon. And it’s easy to miss the steps you are making. 

But every single thing builds up to a big thing. 

Like choosing to withhold your reaction builds up to self-regulation. Choosing to empathize with their upbringing builds up to forgiveness. Doing something kind for them when you’d rather karate chop them in the belly builds up to freeing your inner child. And so on…you get the gist.

I’m also writing this blog to tell you today why God said No to my dalliance with premature death. It is for the very reason that He wanted you to read these words at this very moment: GOD RESTORES. 

I have been to the darkest of places, and I can confidently say that there’s nothing God cannot deliver you from, regardless of how extraneous your circumstances. And beloved, I probably understand more than most – I am well acquainted with unrelenting pain. And still, I stand firm in this truth; GOD RESTORES.

There are not enough words, nay, no words that exist to describe that kind of pain, to describe your kind of pain…But hear me when I say God knows. And He is not nonchalant, neither is He oblivious. He might not always take you out of it, but instead, He allows it to shape you to be who He wants you to be in order to be fully equipped for the calling; to be perfectly moulded for His purposes. Allow Him into the deepest parts of your broken heart so He can make it all better. 

And yes it’s going to take time, and likely lots of tears, and even physical aching, but God will deliver you. 

And yes it’s going to take years to unlearn the patterns of pain so deeply embedded in the sacred planes of your heart, to come home to a version of you that bears the qualities of your ideal dwelling…but it will happen, and has begun. If all goes well you will impart that same healing to the person, to the people, who least deserve it, the people you call(ed) home.

One step at a time.