My Own Shack

One of my favorite books of all times is “The Shack” by Paul Young. It is about a man who returned to the place where his “great sadness” began and what and who he finds while he is there. I returned recently to my own shack and “great sadness”, the place where childhood innocence was sacrificed for perversions, lies became truth, dreams died without ever being given a chance, guilt and shame were born, and coping patterns were adopted that insured survival but would later lead down a path so dark and fearful that death seemed like a better alternative. The trip back to this place held an element of anticipation, to finally have it behind me, to face the place where so much damage and pain happened as a child. Even though I was returning as an adult and I knew this place held no more danger for me, I wasn’t sure how I would react or feel. The one thing I had learned by experience was when one turns to face the past the fear and pain are as real and frightening this second time as they were the first time. This was the last piece in the process of healing and by returning and facing this place and the memories I could finally untie them and let them fall away, once and for all. I was ready to take the risk, to finally be loosened from this place that once held me captive to so much darkness and pain.

It would be a lie to say I went there absolutely fearless. Along with the feeling of anticipation for the freedom this trip would bring was a slight feeling of dread and apprehension. The “what ifs” began running through my head as we boarded the plane and started the journey back. What if I wasn’t as healed from my past as I thought I was? What if I relapsed and the voices, nightmares, and panic attacks started again? What if I had to go through all that again? What if I couldn’t do it this time? My restoration seemed so apparent and my life was finally starting to feel like living instead of merely survival while I was one thousand miles away but would it feel the same at ground zero? In spite of this doubt and fear, I knew that it was time to return and face whatever it was I found back there if I truly wanted to be free.

The setting for my “great sadness” is a small Midwestern town, once a booming oil town where money flowed as freely as the oil, but now stands as a victim of dwindling oil reserves and falling oil prices that left it a mere shell of it’s once former glory. The main streets that were once lined with expensive clothing, jewelry and furniture stores, car dealerships and banks are now mostly empty buildings with ugly, bare windows and old, faded signs. The few businesses in town that seem to be surviving are flower stores and mortuaries. Empty, abandoned houses are noticeable everywhere one drives. Neighborhoods that were once filled with families are quiet. A few new homes have been built but look eerily out of place next to the neglected and run down houses in the surrounding areas. The town appears to be more dead than alive but one gets the feeling that the remaining people don’t know where else to go so they stay. I’m not sure if it is my bad memories from this place or if this place really does have a sense of sadness about it that I never felt before. Did I bring the sadness with me or was it always there?

The exact site of much of my childhood wounding is on a quiet side street, much like most of the other neighborhoods in the town. The house was much different though than I remembered it. It was much smaller than I had realized. The outside now was rundown, paint peeling, wood exposed. The yard was overgrown with tall weeds and grass. The flower gardens were neglected and full of weeds. It wasn’t shrouded in mist or covered by creepy veins like one sees in horror movies but as a child it felt like it should have been. Even though it wasn’t the creepy castle from a horror movie, this place, now in a state of disrepair and neglect had an aura of ugliness about it that seemed more fitting to my memories of what had transpired under that roof so many years ago. To me it was a place of such pain and feelings of abandonment and betrayal that those memories were locked away for over forty years, left in the darkness of my heart to imprison me and alter the course of my life. The outside of the house now mirrored the ugliness of what had happened inside, the façade was gone. The lies were exposed.

At first, my return to this place felt very stifling to my newly opened, expanded heart. It felt like trying to stuff a size 20 body into a size 2 pair of jeans. I felt such a pressure to compress my heart, to accept the lies, to let the darkness back in, to undo all that God and I had done together over the last few years so that it would fit neatly and tidily into that tiny, hard, deadening box that it resided in since my earliest childhood memories. Although I have been told by so many people who know me, that my fresh, new, expanded heart is so evident and I am so different, it was not acknowledged or even noticed by those who have known me the longest. As I write the word “known”, I see the problem. Had they really “known” ME? Or did they only see the person they needed me to be, the one they shaped me to be, the quiet child, the good student, the keeper of family secrets, an avoider of all conflicts who never brought anything like that home, a child that demanded nothing and expected even less and never dared to hope for more. I could see there was no place in that world and still wasn’t, for the person I really am, for my needs, dreams, desires. Those feelings of being worthless, unloved, unlovable, unprotected were not born out of the vain imaginings of a child but were the reality of my life as a child. Even though I had found the truth and it had set me free, I was standing in the center of the same lies. I had changed but they hadn’t. What would I do with this?

Fortunately for me, the Jesus who pursued me relentlessly for years, following me as I moved from coast to coast, ran down so many dark and thorny paths full of detours and dead ends and finally loving me enough to let me break into a thousand little pieces when I couldn’t run any more, gave me the Truth. I was deeply loved, even cherished, that I always had been and always would be but not because of what I did but because of who I was, a daughter of the King of Kings. I was the much loved child of my Heavenly Father, Abba. I couldn’t buy His love, couldn’t earn it and couldn’t change it. I had always been a much loved Daughter and He had always been my Father, even during the darkest days of my childhood, only the lies and sin, both mine and of others, clouded and distorted that truth and kept me from seeing it. Jesus used that truth and with His gentle healing hands restored me and shaped me into the woman I was created to be. That new woman was standing now on the threshold of a decision, to resist the pressure and fight the lies and deception or to once again accept the lies as truth and let her heart shrivel up until it fit in that tiny, little, dead box that was born in this place of darkness.

It would have made a better story to say I wrestled with this choice, struggled with the decision for days, travailed in anguish about it but it wasn’t like that. It didn’t take me long at all to realize and acknowledge once again that I was free and that what Jesus has set free is free indeed! I didn’t need to accept those lies, let my heart shrivel up, become the person I used to be just because I was in that place. Just because the place hadn’t changed didn’t mean I couldn’t. That freedom I had found in Oregon extended all the way back to this place and especially in this place. It was mine I didn’t have to give it up, not even here, at the place of my “great sadness”. It now belonged to me to take with me wherever I went. I realized it was up to me to stand my ground, not compromise, and to allow my heart to stay open and soft, full of dreams and desires with complete trust that Truth wins in the end, He already had. Jesus paid a heavy price for that freedom but He once again reminded me that the choice was always mine, had always been mine and would continue to be. That day I chose to walk in Truth everywhere I go, especially when I return to places of darkness and lies. The last tie to my broken past had been loosed and it fell away…..once and for all.