The Dark Gift

A few weeks ago I was really struggling, battling inner issues that I have been dealing with for a while.  Years, really.  I think I shared in a recent post how I had seen my friend share her own bitterness with me, her disappointment in very valid and justifiable hurts from those who should have loved her best.  I saw her hurt and prayed that the healing of Christ would pour into her.  "Will she let it in?" I wondered, seeing her anguish and aching for her.

Then the Spirit whispered, "Do you not look the same to others?  Will you let Him in?"

I looked at two paths to take action, wanting this bitterness to leave me.  One seemed to make sense: tell those who you felt wronged by what they had done and, as this suffering friend counseled, "give them the opportunity to repent."

The other path was presented in the beautiful imagery a friend shared with me a few days later: take all the darkness, the bitterness, and wrap it up in a package in your mind's eye.  Wrap it with paper, beautiful paper, and the picture yourself giving it to Christ. "I'm a visual person," my friend said.  "It worked for me."

I think we all have things we struggle with, people who have hurt or are hurting us, and sometimes there seems no end in sight. It can be an isolated incident years ago or ongoing struggles, physically and emotionally. I encourage you to take the second path.

Maybe there are those out there who, like me, feel like they want to make a choice to get rid of it, to move on, and just don't know how.  The visualization above was a very powerful process for me and was surprisingly simple, gentle and effective.

Sometimes, poetry is the best way to capture something like this, something that defies rhyming and meter.  So this is what I wrote.  My heart glories in my God and the miracle of Christ's Atonement!

The Dark Gift

The war is waging.

I am losing.

Words trigger emotions...feelings...

"unnoticed"

"unwanted"

"unworthy"

Bitterness, my poisonous friend

stirring chaos.

Help me, please.

Shut out the hurt.

Effort!

Trapped within these walls of my own making.

So deadly,

So strong.

A light.

A hope.

An improbable healing.

"Look within!"

Pierce the confusing gloom,

Seek every corner

Extract the bitterness within.

Build a box carefully within my mind,

My soul.

First one side,

Then the other.

Deceptively frail...and then...

I pour my darkness into the box

Filling it impossibly

Darkness and swirling shadow

Forced within this box.

I look around my inner realm.

Silence.

Whiteness.

Peace.

Freedom.  

I hold this box in front of my mind's eye,

Carefully wrapping it in

Beautiful, shimmering paper

A large golden bow

Gracefully tying it together.

The beauty serves sharp contrast

To its dark and hurtful contents.

"Now, imagine Him coming to you."

The echoes of my friend's counsel drifts in my head.

"You give it to Him, and He takes it,

Keeps it

And it is never yours again."

Never? I wonder

Never? I ponder

Holding it out

To the One who can take it from me.

The shouts

The dissonance

The tendrils of bitterness..

...all gone.

"Is it really that simple?"

I wonder, I ponder

As I watch His retreating back.

A whisper of peace echoes

In the peaceful whiteness of my mind.

The peace that surpasseth all understanding

Has replaced my Dark Gift.

Borne away by Him.