I know what it is like to live in pain.

For 34 years I lived with so much hurt and pain and misery that I went numb. I lived what looked like a normal life-I excelled at school, had jobs, got married, had babies, did all the things successful people do-yet I walked around DEAD to the world, to my feelings, and to the power of God.

I pretended to be whole, but it always came out-the agony always showed itself. I always found a way to poison the atmosphere around me, whether by my own hand or me chucking my lot into the hands of someone as equally as jacked up as I was. I didn’t even know it was me harming me—or maybe I did know it was me. I had worn so many masks so long I just didn’t know which was the real me or which me was doing the sabotaging. All I knew was that I felt alone and like I was dying, not really understanding that I was already dead where it counted.

The day that God began to heal me was one of the worse days of my life. I finally admitted out loud that I DID NOT FEEL ANYTHING, that I felt removed from everything, that I felt disconnected, that I KNEW what I SHOULD be feeling all the time but I did not feel it. I admitted to God that the reason I was there—laid out in the middle of my bedroom floor tearless yet wailing after a brief lackluster foray into infidelity had been exposed—was really me just trying to feel something. Anything. Cuz everything around me sucked and sucked the life out of me. I told God that nothing worked and I’d love to cry but was quite afraid that if I did I’d never stop. That I felt like dying but I didn’t want to. I wanted to be…something else other than what I was.

In that moment, God told me, “I am going to rip out that stony heart and give you a real heart. You are going to have to walk through all this pain that you’ve been cowering in, but when it’s over you’re going to be who I created you to be“.

I have been walking ever since.

I don’t have any fancy stories to share, no life or death experiences to hand you (well, maybe a few but I was living in sin those times and God’s Mercy Endures Forever). I didn’t overcome any addiction or anything like that unless you count people pleasing and eating snacks too often as major addictions. All I have are the broken pieces of my heart that God expertly plucked like shards of glass from my eyes and ears and mouth and hands, and replaced with His own heart.

That’s all the message I have for you: God wants you to be whole. Not bits and pieces. Not good enough to manage the pain. Not faking. WHOLE. And you only get that in surrendering to the loving, corrective arms of the Father by embracing the finished work of Jesus Christ then allowing the process to do what it do… I think Paul said it…maybe James: Let patience have its perfect work”. Standing in the deluge of pain after accepting salvation simply isn’t God’s will for you. It is His will that you be transformed by taking in the mind of Christ.

I am praying for Jehovah Shalom to envelop your lives—nothing missing, nothing broken in your life. For Jehovah Rapha to embed Himself inside your hearts with full healing. Amen? Amen.