BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

I'm writing in response to the Five Minute Friday prompt word, BEHIND.  

I’ve discovered that Christians are very good at hiding their pain behind closed doors, behind Sunday-morning masks, behind serving, behind ‘acceptable’ addictions, behind theology and church protocols, behind denominations, behind education, behind gender-based roles, even behind their ‘faith’. 

We’ve been taught to bury our emotions and our problems because faith and facts have to come first.   So, we hide our emotions, even from ourselves, and just muscle through, while our minds and our bodies suffer.  And eventually we crash, whether it’s physically with some form of chronic disease or sudden health crisis, or mentally and emotionally in some kind of burnout or breakdown.  And as a church we are quite used to being chronically unwell and we medicate it in one way or another.    We even allow for the odd breakdown in people who otherwise seem to be doing okay. 

I heard recently about a dear woman, sister to one of my elderly friends, who has been in a mentally and emotionally abusive marriage for decades, being admitted yet again to the local psych ward.  They were asking for prayer for her.   They commented on how noble it was of her to ‘suffer for the Lord’, amidst a fresh diagnosis of schizophrenia.   From what I know, this is a woman who has not been allowed to be honest about her emotions because she has had to ‘suffer well’.   Behind closed doors she is living a nightmare, under the title ‘Christian marriage’.   But he doesn’t hit her, so that means he’s not abusive, right?   Wrong!  Her wounds are invisible, but not to Him who sees behind everything.     

I wonder what she knows of Him who is with her behind those closed doors, behind the façade, behind the picture-perfect Christian marriage, behind all her coping mechanisms that sometimes just don’t work, and she ends up in care, yet again.   I wonder if her view of Him, her beliefs about Him, and herself, are skewed by the ‘Christian’ man who reflects value back to her, by the church’s teaching, by her family’s expectations, by her own expectations of herself to give more, be more, try harder, cope better, etc.   

I know my view of Him was skewed by all of that, spoken and unspoken.   I even taught people that stuff myself, all the while resenting Him for asking so much of me, and so little of him, and for ignoring me for the sake of the ‘marriage’.     

What I have learned about God’s design for marriage, about covenant, about grace, about how God has designed His daughters, and how He sees His daughters, behind all the facades, behind the closed doors, behind all the expectations, has blown my mind and healed my heart.  

I could say a lot more about all of that, but I think it’s best expressed in poetry, which I’ve written in a separate blog post. 

If it sounds bitter, it isn’t meant to.   I’m learning more and more the value of lamenting our way through the pain, instead of burying it behind our usual Christian positive faith messages.  The psalmists lamented well.   They didn’t deny, they processed and released and healed and got His perspective and moved forward, bit by bit.   We need to allow ourselves and others to do the same.  

“Where is your God?”

When I remember these things,
I pour out my soul within me   …………………………

Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him
For the help of His countenance.   Psalm 42: 3-5

You are not hidden
There's never been a moment you were forgotten
You are not hopeless
Though you have been broken, your innocence stolen

I hear you whisper underneath your breath
I hear your SOS, your SOS

I will send out an army to find you
In the middle of the darkest night
It's true, I will rescue you

There is no distance
That cannot be covered over and over
You're not defenceless
I'll be your shelter, I'll be your armour