The past three weeks and two days have been a literal hell for me. The pain I have experienced and am currently walking through is so mind-boggling, so difficult to put to paper, that I can hardly stop the bouts of enormous sobs that wash over me. I have alternating periods of complete silence where I feel like I can't move, or think, or breathe. I have been shot in the back, and I'm still moving through the free fall to the cold hard earth. Or maybe I have finally hit the earth and felt the double impact of my body banging against the ground. Regardless, the trauma is immense.
I could sit for hours and try to explain to you my thoughts but it's unnecessary. You are all four walking through this simultaneously, an experience that only works to further the impact on my spirit. Not only is my whole heart destroyed, but my eyes are also forced to watch you all suffer as well.
I told you that it's like a nuclear bomb was dropped in the center of us. I'm at the epicenter, my body is mangled, broken, destroyed, aged a hundred years, and all around the center of the epicenter is all of you: also broken, mangled, and aged. The only thing still standing is the Cross which holds our Savior. My mangled flesh is wrapped around it with its whole being. Christ is all I can hold on to.
The images that have been flooding my brain on repeat are equally devastating. The pain of this experience is unrivaled. I hate how angry you are. I hate how broken you all feel. I wish I could scream loud enough in order to take it away. I wish I could cry more, starve myself longer, or fight with my fists to any level which would make you finally feel complete. I know that is not possible.
I have reminded you, daily, how much you are loved, and how many adults you have in your life that would drop anything to support you. I have tried to check in with how you are feeling and whether or not you are okay, all while trying to see through the haze that is covering my own eyes.
We are not alone.
Every single image that floods my mind gets tacked on to that Cross holding us all together. Every single sin is each mark that lashed our Savior. All of the emotional agony and grief that we feel is exactly the anguish that He felt in the garden, at the lashings, and while He hung... I hate that this hurt is hurting Him so much. But in a moment where I was genuinely wishing for the end of my beating heart, I heard Him cry out to me: put this on Me! And then the crucified Jesus flashed into my brain. I argued with Him and said that I don't want to hurt Him anymore. And He said Putting it on Me is the only way to heal you. So I did. And I heaved the heaviest sobs while I did so. I have spent so much time imagining myself reducing His suffering. Wanting to Love so vastly that the evil the world throws out is reduced. Even if my broken self is but a drop in the bucket, love never dies. So I resolved to love as much as I humanely could, despite how much evil remains inside of me.
Jesus climbed up on a Cross so that this enormous wound, this vast hole, the perpetuating injury could be made whole, entire, and complete. I know how much anger you feel. I know how abandoned and hurt you are. I know how scared you all feel. I cannot possibly imagine wholeness, or completeness, or ever feeling joy in my heart again, to be honest, but I know I will. Because my joy is not in humanity. My love does not come from people. All that I am is wrapped up in the One who jumped out of a perfectly good heaven, to come here to be with us.
I know you all won't be reading this until I'm gone, and I find an element of comfort in that. Maybe when you're reading this, you will be experiencing your own nuclear bomb, and these words can give you some comfort. I have no idea. All I can say is what I keep saying to myself: run to Jesus. Run with all that you have. He is the only safe place you will ever find, and He will never hurt you.
