The summer He makes me whole.

On healing, hurt and the healer.

This summer feels like a breath of fresh air from my past. It’s the summer where I suffer healing, sweet sweet healing from the lies of my childhood. It’s an audacious sentence; to look back at my yesterday, the trauma and ideologies that have shaped me and call them lies, but they are. They are because I remember the past from my perspective, from how I felt about the things that were said to me and never from the perspective of how a non-biased adult, or God, or even older me would have seen it. 

I had this plan to write something related to this topic on my Medium. It was going to be more elaborate or something like that. I was going to speak about my trauma and all the bullying I went through in high school, particularly the one from adults that stuck. I was going to write about the blog post from 2018 where I wrote about the terrible experiences that shaped fourteen-year-old me till date. I was going to write something, and even now I’m not sure the direction I want it to take.

When I first heard Make Me Whole from this year’s Audience of One vol. II retreat, I knew it was for me. It was clear. It was like a moment between me and Jehovah Rapha, the therapist. I was saying, ‘God, here are all the things that have hurt me over the years, I hand them over to you. Release me from them.’ The people who have hurt me have moved forward. They have forgotten the things they said to me. They have forgotten the things they did to me, but I’m stuck. Release me from them. 

Healing is not linear, or at least it has not been for me in the last three years that I have been learning to let go of all the hurt I have bottled up. On some days, I am high on confidence, and on other days, I am sure I want the ground to swallow me. It was easier to forgive my agemates because looking back, we were all children and children can be hurtful, but with the adults involved, it was (is) very difficult. Their words had to be true because they were adults, or so I thought.

In the last few years, I have been healing. I’m not there yet. I can still count on two hands my male friends, but here are a few things I have learnt about healing with God.

1. Healing is not linear. We will have days where we feel confidently assured in God (his words and the fruits of his presence), but we will also have days where we don’t feel anything. It may even feel like the pain has won, still, God is (t)here, refining.

2. The past is not real, self and the devil have spiked it. It is true that in the past, my Hostel Master and ICT teacher embarrassed me before the whole school and called me a woman who cannot play volleyball, unprovoked. I promise you, the whole school heard it and laughed. It is true that multiple other events like this happened in my entire high school experience, but what is not true are the words that were spoken and how I remember them. Yes, those words were spoken, but they were not true before God. They were not true because an adult said it, and others affirmed it.

   
   

   The past, contextually, is not real because when you begin to remember the hurtful scenario, you remember it differently. With each recollection, you Lord it; you exalt it. You idolize it. The actions are ghastlier and the laughter is more cruel, echoing even. Emotions you didn’t feel and words or actions you didn’t remember that you could reply or perform in real time begin to fill your mind. You begin to recreate the scenario, extend the dialogue, and fixate on what the enemy is inspiring self to fixate on. It’s in this place that hurt becomes trauma, and trauma becomes a chain of seemingly unrelated actions that only deep introspection, or therapy, can link back to the source.

Side bar: You know what’s insane? And hopefully, this does not support Ennie’s ‘The-past-is-not-real’ crazy theory, but what if proof that the past might not be real is in the fact that there’s probably people who went through the same thing that traumatized us, and forget to be traumatized or are not as traumatized as we are because we, kind of, individually, create a future with the past we choose to remember and how we choose to remember it. So is the past really real? Obviously it is, but I mean in the recollection of it.

3. God always provides a people of escape. God does not find pleasure in our hurt, nor in us remaining in a place of brokenness. He always reaches out. Unfortunately, we have to face our hurt to overcome our hurt—but fortunately! God always provides, both the people and the resources (strength, faith, more strength). God always provides, like he did for me, people who will help us overcome our hurt. Like how he gave me an amazing friend in 2023 when I was sure boys belonged in the deepest pit of hell after high school. It’s usually people, made in the image of God but devoid of his leading, that hurt people, and it is only people, made in the image of God, brimming with his love and leading, that will heal hurt people. That is you and me, even in our hurt.

4. Be the healer. Even as you limp in your hurt, you always want to be the one who recognizes those who hurt as you do and fill them with God’s love before the enemy and self can dictate what they fixate on. You always want to be the source of light and voice of reasoning you wish you had when you were first hurting. It really helps, both as a vessel for God and even self-satisfaction.

5. Let Go and Let God. Easier said than done, but God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. You must approach every day with the readiness to forgive and let go. If you’re seeking the I Am That I Am as Healer, then you must believe that nothing is too hard for him; no hurt, no cycle, no addiction, no feeling and certainty of hopelessness is too hard for him to pull you out of. Even in your lowest moments, as you grieve the unjust and unfair cutting of your innocence, let somewhere in the corner of your mind that you have refused to access in that moment, believe that he will perfect this non-linear healing journey.

Yada yada yada, I haven’t figured it all out. But I have opened myself to God for healing. I still am. A group of boys still deeply overwhelms me, but I played volleyball this summer with you guys at the beach! I rode a bike. I opened up at the Men’s talk thingy at AO1. I survived three nights with three amazing guys at the retreat who are very cool. I am (selectively) accepting more hugs. In bits and pieces, God is doing, and God is healing in the summer he makes me whole. (Yo, the irony is I was physically sick all summer btw.)

Jesus loves you and is ready to make you whole. No past is too dark for his light to shine through.

Victor.