The walls that built my prison

I sat down last night with one of my closest friends to catch up on life. We ended up talking about our struggles and soon realized that our current struggles are much the same. I was comforted to hear that a friend is sharing the same trail and I was encouraged to hear the pursuit to overcome it. I realized that I needed to share publicly this trial, because many others are likely going through the same thing.

My walls, the walls I built to protect myself have become a prison, complete with iron gates and I forgot to make a key.

The last year of my life, as I have said before, has been very difficult. I've been hurt by a lot of people, in a lot of different ways and all of them, every single one, was a brother or sister in Christ. The wounds cut deep, even taking me back to earlier hurts. As a result, I closed up. I stopped letting people into my heart. I started to think my way through my relationship, instead of feeling it. I started to operate in a reason manner, rather than emotional. In essence, I stopped feeling entirely, in the contexts of relationship.

Now, this, of course, was not intentional, but rather an unconscious survival mode. Nevertheless, this is where I stand now. I have unknowingly created walls to protect myself and these walls have trapped me in, making authentic relationship nearly impossible. How do you get out when you don't know how you got in?

I was praying and looking through my journal and I started to realize something.

The last year has been a tough, tough road. I stepped on rocks and sticks that cut into my flesh and left wounds. The miles that I put on, even on soft soil, would wear the skin right off. The road now is gentle grass covered path, but my raw and wounded feet know no different. Still every step is against a wound. I realized in that moment that like this my feet will never heal. I need to stop walking. I need to sit down, clean out the dirt and allow the skin to grow over and cover the wounds. There may be scars in the end, but I will be well to walk once more.

A broken heart can only offer broken love.

I hope that someone is encouraged by this. Please know that there's a lot of other people out there struggling through this, not just you. Be still. Take time to allow God to heal those wounds. Ease into new relationships, new friendships, even old friendships that are being made new. There's no rush to let people in. Your heart is still raw. Let it heal.