Many of us remember a tragedy and its specific details; where we were and what took place.  Those “moments”, those wounds could have been the beginning of our scattered souls, where we doubted the Shepherd and thought He left us unprotected from the preying wolves.

“For this is what The Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search and find my sheep.  I will be like a shepherd looking for His scattered flock.  I will find my sheep and rescue them from all the places to which they were scattered on that dark and cloudy day.”  Ezekiel 34:11-12

What does the three-year old think who has a father cross a physical boundary through sexualized play?  As she grows older the questions of why get answered with pat remarks from adults who have lost sight of their own healing in exchange for rigid perfectionism as their way of gaining back what was stolen from them.  What that little girl can’t understand, she simply abandons like the day her mother walked out, leaving her with him.  “Who is going to protect me now”, she speaks into the night where her insomnia mandates hypervigilance should another earthquake shake the ground with a bedroom intrusion.  “Some Shepherd”, she thought.  How can a Savior forget about protecting the child He always taught was free to come close to Him?  She didn’t trust her earthly father who showed sides of himself that confused and terrorized her. She was lost and knew it, a wandering sheep without a guide, how could she look to a Heavenly Father for answers if He was invisible?

Grown-ups along the way described “touching” as no big deal, it wasn’t molestation.  I had a keen sense of adults who denied the emotions of us kids, who told us to keep quiet, ignore others and get over it.  I assume that is why Daddy God gave our little brains the ability to block out what our bodies remembered and carry on so that the grown-ups wouldn’t be bothered.  Yet that memory changed the direction of my life and became the set up for every other violation of my trust to build upon the lie that I was bad, unworthy and at fault for causing another person to hurt me.  It made it that much harder for me to seek the Shepherd.

The memory that rocked me the most occurred after I had already repressed those bad touches.  I can place myself back in that memory where my mom told me to change my baby sisters diaper.  I was five and scared to death that I might touch her in a bad way.  I didn’t have words to describe the fear and I didn’t correlate what happened to me, as becoming a warning to not repeat it because I had shoved it deep within my soul.  I knew the consequences though, mom would grab me and yell at me and I would feel rejected by her, blamed and shamed, but at least I wouldn’t place that burden of sorrow on one of the Shepherds innocent flock.  I reveered my sister as a child of the Savior whom I felt so distanced from, and I couldn’t bear that responsibility of separation on my shoulders. My second memory of taking a bath surfaced.  It was painful and I couldn’t dare let mom wash me “down there”, especially with soap because the burning would cause me to scream.

So I buried my mental and physical pain and controlled my life in the smallest of ways, by staying quiet and suffering alone.  Those memories were like pieces of a puzzle throughout my teens, always lending insight to my many medical mountains to hurdle.  The auto-immune, anxiety, depressive psycho-somatic ones that determined I was anorexic by age twelve without conclusive tests from the doctors as to why.  And so it continued into adult life where I found no evidence that children could be protected from oppressive confusion that made them sick.   I knew that I was exhausted from raising my sisters and that I had no gumption or power to stand up against the presence everyone felt when Dad walked into the room.  He made us subordinates somehow, kids only to be spoken to, not heard.  As an adult, hearing him speak of his grandkids “not even being able to remember something because of their age”, sent me right back to that original dark and cloudy day in my sister’s room when I was paralyzed in fear of touching her.

At the beginning of my early thirties my memories of the dark, dismal day started to resurface because my mind could not shove them from being repressed anymore. Going to the doctor’s office again for the chronic female pain and belief that bearing a child would expound pain eternally, I cried in a nurses arms.  She got close to my face and asked me if I was ever touched as a little girl?  I had no words.   I could not believe that this professional acknowledged my memories that I was still in shock over remembering, how did she know?

Through tears I said, “But it was only touching, how could that have changed the course of my life, why am i still suffering now, it isn’t even abuse.”  There it was, the lie exposed, “It wasn’t even abuse.”  I was re-living all that my brain couldn’t suppress anymore.  I saw multiple memories flash in my mind’s eye as she held me and let the little girl grieve her stolen innocence, I felt loved instead of lost, scattered and stuck in the dark places that distanced me from Jesus, my Shepherd.

This nurse spoke nothing about faith but was used to answer the struggles I had with my own.  My chronic pain from childhood was indicative of body memories held at the cellular level because my little brain couldn’t cope with the trauma.  She described my symptoms as being PTSD and repressed memories manifesting what my body could no longer deny.  She was the first, authoritative comfort that I had met in my life up until that point who defined the abuse so I could begin healing from it.

As I read the scripture in Ezekiel 34 today many years later,  I find myself angry again, feeling unprotected and still having to strategize, walk on egg shells and seek remedies to health issues that I need rescuing from.  Where are you Daddy?  Why is my mind still holding these body stresses, where are you in the midst of my pain?

I was taken to the memory in the bathtub during my prayers of accusation toward Jesus.  On that dark day in the tub alone, I was furious because my private parts burned and I was deemed out of control by my mom.  I sat in the water hoping to subdue the irritation and pain.  I was crying, sad and hopeless.

“What do you have to say for yourself Jesus, some Shepherd you were”.  Then I saw Jesus get into the tub with me.  I had my spongy letters stuck to the tub wall and stopped staring at them to crawl into His lap.  My naked little body was heaving under the turbulent wails of mourning and I needed his embrace like my life depended on it, and it did.

I told Him sitting in my adult body, looking back at me as a child in my memory, that “I needed you to protect me, why didn’t you protect me?”  Then Jesus answered, “I’m in this together with you.”  I realized we were both in the tub and that His embrace was what I had been longing for my whole life, even up to this moment.  He had met me where I was at, where I needed Him the most, re-establishing trust during my broken years.

When I allowed myself to sit in the memory with My Shepherd holding me, the trauma of its contents, faded.  In exchange I felt the guidance and power of a trustworthy Savior to carry my pain of the past.  When I saw Jesus in both the bathtub incident and the avoidance of touching my sister, I was able to breathe and come out of the memories to address my present.  I had assurance that all of my days were known by My Daddy in heaven, guided by My Shepherd Jesus into the healing arms of Holy Spirit.  Every ailment must submit to the truth that declares my healing and wholeness and with the sting of the past removed, I can move forward another day in hopes that the dismal ones have lost their power.