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S6 224. God Builds in the Ruins · Millennial Mustard Seed

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  God builds in ruins. There's a kind of betrayal so
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  subtle it looks like love. But it is not love.
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  It's stepping into the place of Christ, making myself the
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  sacrifice so someone else wouldn't have to break.
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  I thought if I absorbed the blows, softened the weapons,
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  swallowed the shrapnel, maybe then I would be safe.
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  Maybe then I would be loved if I didn't realize the breaking was
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  never mine to prevent. It was theirs.
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  And sometimes breaking is it's mercy.
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  I stood there bleeding and I called it loyalty.
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  I cut pieces off myself to keep the peace.
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  I called it faith, but it was just self betrayal.
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  It is the slow erasure of voice, of hope, of need in the name of
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  survival. And what kind of relationship
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  demands that? Only one already haunted by the
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  ghosts of ungrieved sorrow, the poltergeists of war, the Spooks
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  of silent rooms and shattered trust, it whispers.
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  Maybe if I'm small enough, soft enough, silent enough, I will be
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  loved enough to stay alive. But safety isn't silent.
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  Safety is the kind of love that leaves room to speak, even when
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  I'm wrong. Even when I'm messy, even when
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  my words come out cracked and bleeding.
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  Safety is mercy, not fear. There's another kind of
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  betrayal, too. It looks like power.
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  It roars like strength, and it's just the erasure of someone
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  else, the refusal to hear, the refusal to bend, the refusal to
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  carry any weight but your own. It thunders.
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  I must demand enough, control enough, and crush enough.
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  Then I will be strong enough to stay safe.
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  But that's not power, not the kind Christ showed.
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  Real power walks on water and rescues the drowning.
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  Real power raises the dead. Real power lays itself down and
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  picks up life again. Both betrayals are rooted in
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  fear. Both are hollow.
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  Both leave a void where love, just it, can't live.
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  And I see it now how often I traded pieces of myself to keep
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  the fragile, the fragile peace. How often I called it loyalty
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  when it was really loss. How often I gaslit myself into
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  believing that all suffering was holy, even when it just, it just
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  wasn't. I spent years trying to hold the
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  ruins together, cutting myself open to patch the cracks.
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  When blood wasn't enough, I used tears, and when tears weren't
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  enough, I used skin. And when skin wasn't enough to
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  hold it together, I offered up my bones.
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  And that was that was where I broke.
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  And for what? A house built on grief.
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  A temple for ghosts. But even as everything
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  collapses, God builds. Not after the wreckage.
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  In the wreckage he builds with hands I can't even see.
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  I feel it. He builds on ground I forgot
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  even existed, hope blooming through frozen earth, a future
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  breathing in the ashes of a past I tried so hard to keep from
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  burning. Maybe it's only when we break,
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  like really break, that we're finally porous enough to let him
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  build without getting in his way.
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  I think about how easy it is to see the boundaries of my body,
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  like your arm is not my arm and my skin is not your skin, but
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  somehow in the unseen places, the heart, the soul, the ties we
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  call love, the lines, they just blur.
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  Where do I end and you begin? When love becomes a trauma bond,
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  we lose the ability to even tell.
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  And so I'm learning. Like the slow crack of ice in
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  winter, like the stubborn green of early spring.
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  I'm learning to see the signs, the red flags, but also the
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  green shoots, the truth rising in the thaw.
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  I'm learning that ambiguity is not the enemy, it's the soil
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  where discernment grows. And I'm learning that Christ is
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  not a narrow perch beneath my feet.
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  He is a wide and steady pasture, even when I can't see it, even
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  when it feels like I'm balancing on the head of a needle.
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  I don't have to make him bigger. I just have to let him show me
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  the land that was already mine. And I'm learning not to erase
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  myself for someone else's comfort, and not to erase
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  someone else for my survival. I'm learning to abide where he
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  builds, even as the old walls fall, even as the ground shakes,
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  even as the ruins smoke. I'm learning that in the middle
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  of the breaking there is already a new beginning.
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  Yeah.