Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.
God dedicated a whole day in His creation to move the stuff He had already made around. There was water and firmament, but they were all mushed together, and for a day, that was ok. He sat with the mess.
On Day 2, however, He separated the waters above and the waters below with the firmament. He began to allow there to be separation and order to the chaos of the first day.
A couple of definitions of 'issue' are:
- an important topic or problem
- the act of publishing or officially giving out or making available
- something coming forth from a specified source
- come, go, or flow out from.
Order can be so scary when chaos is all you have known and come to rely on growing up.
Getting to the point where I could allow God to start moving things around and speaking His truth to my lies was an incredible process that was critical to getting ANYWHERE in my healing. I believe that's why God spent so much time on it with me.
He has taken my trust issues and has transformed them to issues or flowings of trust... places where trust now abounds. That's a miracle.
I'm going to start with some more of my personal story and then I will share some of the truth that God used out of Hebrews as He had made a way of trust for me to let the light of His word back into my heart. Yes, that's how bad my trust issues were. God has used so so many different avenues of His passionate pursuit and love of me to heal my locked up heart. Let me expound on what it has meant for me to have a locked up heart.
I don't know a lot about engines, but when I say "locked-up" I imagine what might happen to my car if I didn't have engine oil available to me. No Jiffy Oil places around and no knowledge that there even WAS engine oil that needed to be used in a car.
So instead I chose to use what I DID have: olive oil, canola oil or sunflower seed oil. Kudos to ME for doing my best to keep my car running, and I think that a car might actually run for a while on olive oil. Maybe? Just over time, there would be serious damage done to the inner parts of the engine, and potentially a lack of trust for any other 'oils' to be of any use to me.
Soooo.... if your heart is the engine, and you didn't have proper training, love and nurturing, you did your best to keep yourself running. Some of those 'oils' end up being shame and mistrust. They keep you going; they keep your heart protected in a sense as you try to make a world of non-sense, unpredictability and pain, not so scary. And one of the first steps of healing your locked-up engine heart is to celebrate that you worked so hard to survive this. Let me go a little deeper....
When your foundation of development is built on knowing that it is not safe to trust, it is NORMAL and in a strange way HEALTHY to not trust. My therapist helped me to see this. It's an act of survival to allow shame and mistrust as a covering of safety, and survival is a good thing. When that is all that you have available for coping strategies, you need to acknowledge and actually be proud of your younger self for doing everything imaginable to survive what did NOT make sense, what was NOT dependable, what was NOT provided for you. If you're a survivor, you chose to go through your cupboards and find anything that would help your heart keep beating. It's good to take the time to hug your little self in thanks for being so strong and so resilient and creative with what you were going through.
So now what?
Well, it's important to recognize that as normal and healthy as it was to put olive oil in your heart engine.... it wasn't what it needed, and yes, it did your heart some damage. It's not your fault, but there is repair that needs to be done now.
I am so sorry if you're reading this and are going through the hell of healing, because you shouldn't have to do all this work. I can't encourage you enough to spend the time you need to grieving and being super angry that you have to go through all of this pain and work. BUT..... if you truly want to be better, it is your responsibility to feel the pain, and to start recognizing "olive oil damage" in your heart. YOU are the one who has to take your heart to the mechanic. You are the one who has to pay for the repair bills, YOU are the one who has to go get the rental car while you wait on the process of healing. Yep. There is no other way. There is no magic pill, no wand to wave. It is your choice.
As my therapist has told me MANY times, a lot of people just don't want to go through all of this. Yes, you can just forgo getting your heart healed and journey another way. That is totally an option.
The day I realized that I didn't want to do this anymore though, was such a turning point in my life, even though I had a wicked amount of pain ahead of me and to be honest, I barely made it through alive.
But.
IT. WAS. SO. WORTH. IT.
I didn't think I was going to make it. I remember asking my therapist for the 'syllabus'. Yeah. She didn't have one. You don't know the road, there is ambiguity everywhere, you don't know if you're 'doing it right'.... and it just SUCKS! Realizing all of the ways that I had chosen to cope were not healthy, damaging to me... and then facing the incredible fear of 'doing healthy' another way... Absolutely terrifying. I didn't know what that looked like. The old way I knew. I knew what to expect. I knew how to disconnect, I knew how to avoid, how to shut down when something happened and I was in unbelievable pain and didn't know the real reason why. I knew how to blame others for what I was feeling. All of these things were my olive oil. But it had to be my choice to release them to Jesus, allow Him to sit with me in my pain and loss, and then let Him lead me in a new way to live.
Trusting HIM when He didn't stop what happened to me. That was hard.
What helped me?
God allowed me to NOT TRUST HIM. He just sat with me while I writhed in anger and pain... and did not leave me. He didn't require me to be a prayer warrior or a truth talker... He just plain old didn't go anywhere while I was in agony. And that????....is what won my heart. THAT is how, if you want to know....how I let Him have the reigns of my heart. He became Papa to me. He just loved me right there and never turned His back on me.
Once I knew He wasn't going anywhere, once my deeps knew His motivations, how DIFFERENT He was from anyone else in my life I couldn't trust, including myself, THAT's when I could start letting Him leak in His truth to my lies. My very very favorite precious lies that felt so normal and safe, but were literally killing me.
So the truth is.......
Papa's heart comes through Jesus too. He is the perfect one to understand our pain. He is the perfect one to save us. And even with His own life, He let that be a process.
I couldn't have just believed this without the process Papa and I went through of Him establishing His faithfulness to me in my darkness. So please keep that in mind as I share this last bit of truth with you out of my Hebrews journey.
He had me soaking in Hebrews last year for months. Here are the scriptures He used to heal my heart even further regarding His nearness in my pain.
The first section is Hebrews 5:1-3:
So instead I chose to use what I DID have: olive oil, canola oil or sunflower seed oil. Kudos to ME for doing my best to keep my car running, and I think that a car might actually run for a while on olive oil. Maybe? Just over time, there would be serious damage done to the inner parts of the engine, and potentially a lack of trust for any other 'oils' to be of any use to me.
Soooo.... if your heart is the engine, and you didn't have proper training, love and nurturing, you did your best to keep yourself running. Some of those 'oils' end up being shame and mistrust. They keep you going; they keep your heart protected in a sense as you try to make a world of non-sense, unpredictability and pain, not so scary. And one of the first steps of healing your locked-up engine heart is to celebrate that you worked so hard to survive this. Let me go a little deeper....
When your foundation of development is built on knowing that it is not safe to trust, it is NORMAL and in a strange way HEALTHY to not trust. My therapist helped me to see this. It's an act of survival to allow shame and mistrust as a covering of safety, and survival is a good thing. When that is all that you have available for coping strategies, you need to acknowledge and actually be proud of your younger self for doing everything imaginable to survive what did NOT make sense, what was NOT dependable, what was NOT provided for you. If you're a survivor, you chose to go through your cupboards and find anything that would help your heart keep beating. It's good to take the time to hug your little self in thanks for being so strong and so resilient and creative with what you were going through.
So now what?
Well, it's important to recognize that as normal and healthy as it was to put olive oil in your heart engine.... it wasn't what it needed, and yes, it did your heart some damage. It's not your fault, but there is repair that needs to be done now.
I am so sorry if you're reading this and are going through the hell of healing, because you shouldn't have to do all this work. I can't encourage you enough to spend the time you need to grieving and being super angry that you have to go through all of this pain and work. BUT..... if you truly want to be better, it is your responsibility to feel the pain, and to start recognizing "olive oil damage" in your heart. YOU are the one who has to take your heart to the mechanic. You are the one who has to pay for the repair bills, YOU are the one who has to go get the rental car while you wait on the process of healing. Yep. There is no other way. There is no magic pill, no wand to wave. It is your choice.
As my therapist has told me MANY times, a lot of people just don't want to go through all of this. Yes, you can just forgo getting your heart healed and journey another way. That is totally an option.
The day I realized that I didn't want to do this anymore though, was such a turning point in my life, even though I had a wicked amount of pain ahead of me and to be honest, I barely made it through alive.
But.
IT. WAS. SO. WORTH. IT.
I didn't think I was going to make it. I remember asking my therapist for the 'syllabus'. Yeah. She didn't have one. You don't know the road, there is ambiguity everywhere, you don't know if you're 'doing it right'.... and it just SUCKS! Realizing all of the ways that I had chosen to cope were not healthy, damaging to me... and then facing the incredible fear of 'doing healthy' another way... Absolutely terrifying. I didn't know what that looked like. The old way I knew. I knew what to expect. I knew how to disconnect, I knew how to avoid, how to shut down when something happened and I was in unbelievable pain and didn't know the real reason why. I knew how to blame others for what I was feeling. All of these things were my olive oil. But it had to be my choice to release them to Jesus, allow Him to sit with me in my pain and loss, and then let Him lead me in a new way to live.
Trusting HIM when He didn't stop what happened to me. That was hard.
What helped me?
God allowed me to NOT TRUST HIM. He just sat with me while I writhed in anger and pain... and did not leave me. He didn't require me to be a prayer warrior or a truth talker... He just plain old didn't go anywhere while I was in agony. And that????....is what won my heart. THAT is how, if you want to know....how I let Him have the reigns of my heart. He became Papa to me. He just loved me right there and never turned His back on me.
Once I knew He wasn't going anywhere, once my deeps knew His motivations, how DIFFERENT He was from anyone else in my life I couldn't trust, including myself, THAT's when I could start letting Him leak in His truth to my lies. My very very favorite precious lies that felt so normal and safe, but were literally killing me.
So the truth is.......
Papa's heart comes through Jesus too. He is the perfect one to understand our pain. He is the perfect one to save us. And even with His own life, He let that be a process.
I couldn't have just believed this without the process Papa and I went through of Him establishing His faithfulness to me in my darkness. So please keep that in mind as I share this last bit of truth with you out of my Hebrews journey.
He had me soaking in Hebrews last year for months. Here are the scriptures He used to heal my heart even further regarding His nearness in my pain.
The first section is Hebrews 5:1-3:
Every high priest selected to represent men and women before God and offer sacrifices for their sins should be able to deal gently with their failings, since he knows what it's like from his own experience. But that also means that he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins as well as the peoples.
The second section is Hebrews 5:7-10:
The second section is Hebrews 5:7-10:
While He lived on earth, anticipating death, Jesus cried out in pain and wept in sorrow as He offered up priestly prayers to God. He honored God, God answered him. Though He was God's Son, He learned trusting obedience by what He suffered, just as we do. Then, having arrived at the full stature of His maturity and having been announced by God as high priest in the order of Melchizedek, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who believingly obey Him.
I am ASTOUNDED that Jesus was chosen, as high priests were chosen, for their ability to understand human weakness and deal gently with them in their failures. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice not only because He was sinless, but because He suffered. God CHOSE to do salvation this way. Not just offer a perfect sinless substitute but He gave us Jesus who perfectly understood us, and because of the time and willingness to suffer long, He created a pathway for earning the trust of the most wounded individual.
I am ASTOUNDED that Jesus was chosen, as high priests were chosen, for their ability to understand human weakness and deal gently with them in their failures. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice not only because He was sinless, but because He suffered. God CHOSE to do salvation this way. Not just offer a perfect sinless substitute but He gave us Jesus who perfectly understood us, and because of the time and willingness to suffer long, He created a pathway for earning the trust of the most wounded individual.
Another verse that supports this beautiful truth is Hebrews 2:10. Please humor me by reading it in 3 different translations. It's just that wonderful.
Hebrews 2:10 NKJV
For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
Hebrews 2:10 NIV
In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.
Hebrews 2:10 NLT
God, for whom and through whom everything was made, chose to bring many children into glory. And it was only right that he should make Jesus, through his suffering, a perfect leader, fit to bring them into their salvation.
Jesus learned trusting obedience by what He suffered, and BECAME PERFECT through sufferings. I can just hear all the but... but.... but..... going on when I emphasize it like that in all caps. BUT.... it's right there in the Bible.
Perfection was made. God allowed the process. He willed the process. God learned.
In my opinion, there is no greater holy humility. There is no other Savior for me.
I can look at His face now, see Love, and release the old. This is how He has helped me take on His truth, how He has helped me be open to future and new. He knew how hard it was going to be for me to accept new, and that's why He had the most magical, special way of helping me trust it.
More of that on Day 3
Hebrews 2:10 NKJV
For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
Hebrews 2:10 NIV
In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.
Hebrews 2:10 NLT
God, for whom and through whom everything was made, chose to bring many children into glory. And it was only right that he should make Jesus, through his suffering, a perfect leader, fit to bring them into their salvation.
Jesus learned trusting obedience by what He suffered, and BECAME PERFECT through sufferings. I can just hear all the but... but.... but..... going on when I emphasize it like that in all caps. BUT.... it's right there in the Bible.
Perfection was made. God allowed the process. He willed the process. God learned.
In my opinion, there is no greater holy humility. There is no other Savior for me.
I can look at His face now, see Love, and release the old. This is how He has helped me take on His truth, how He has helped me be open to future and new. He knew how hard it was going to be for me to accept new, and that's why He had the most magical, special way of helping me trust it.
More of that on Day 3
