The Expression of Suppression

I have a pretty great testimony, it’s full of radical and momentous change, a climax and a clear turning point, a prayer and a new life. Whenever I share it, I make sure to mention that “when my parents got divorced, I thought everything was going to be perfect because my dad wasn’t in the picture anymore.” Oh, how very wrong I was. I explain how I was the same hopeless, depressed, angry, and lonely kid that I was before; it just looked different.

Well, history tends to repeat itself; I’ve made the same mistake twice, I think. My life was radically changed when Jesus walked into my life. I wasn’t angry or hateful, I was no longer depressed, and I stopped using drugs, alcohol, and porn. I assumed that now that I was a new person, raised with Christ, and had a clean slate (see Colossians 2:9-15), my old life had nothing to do with my new life. Now, I’m not a prosperity, health-and-wealth Christian, not by any means! But maybe, deep down, I thought everything was going to be perfect.

I’m experiencing singleness again, meeting with a therapist, and reading a lot (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Intimate Worlds: How They Thrive and Why They Fail). As I look at my life, things are very clearly not perfect. Depression, anger, emotional abuse, isolation, and emotional dependency have bloomed in my life like nasty weeds waiting for the perfect storm. Turns out that the expression of suppression is sin and death (James 1:12-15).

Before I started writing this, I took a test in the back of Intimate Worlds that diagnoses the health of your family system. The results were at once painful and validating. Yet, growing up, I never would have considered the idea that we were anything but normal. It’s taken five years as a Christian to learn that I came from a severely abusive, dysfunctional family. It’s taken me five years to realize, by God’s grace, that my life didn’t begin and my testimony didn’t end at the moment I accepted Christ.

My life is God’s temple, under construction. Jesus is be the cornerstone, but the 2x4s, the I-beams, even the shingles, are stories, memories, fresh wounds and healed scars. Every day, I get to make new memories and experience new wounds (or old ones!).

My testimony is what God is building out of all this rubble. Man, re-construction didn’t even begin until God came and asked if he could make his home here! It won’t be ready for the grand opening for a while, but I’m so glad to show off what he’s planning on—maybe that’s the most exciting part.

Pain is real, and so are those wounds and scars. But don’t pretend like they don’t hurt, or even worse, that they’re not there, like I did. Don’t suppress them, cause the expression of suppression turns out to be depression and transgression. Share them with God, and with others, too. Let God make something wonderful out of it.