The Masked Betrayal of Time

Things will get better with time. Time heals all wounds. It just takes time. Just give me more time.

The subtle message came loud and clear throughout the years. A default answer to the human question of “How do I respond to painful circumstances outside my control?”  Time, the cure-all, the numbing solution to pain, trauma, and abuse.

And so I waited for the pain to disappear and the shame to dissolve into nothing. But it didn’t.

Maybe I just needed more time. Apparently ten years wasn’t enough. Neither was fifteen. Sixteen, seventeen, then twenty years went by. By then, things had only grown much worse like a ghastly wound hidden and left unattended, a crisis covered up and ignored. Twenty years of desperately trying to run and walk and fly like there was nothing wrong.

And all the while, these broken wings would not – could not – heal.

Over the years, patterns and connections became meaningful. Obedience resulted in love and attention. Disobedience resulted in consequences. Work resulted in income. Driving recklessly resulted in accidents. The beautiful details of creation pointed to a Creator. It was this subconscious “if/then” thought-processing that clued me in to the fact that I was a living contradiction.

The nightmares. My irrational fear of men. The awkwardness and loneliness. My acute awareness of sex even as a young child. The paralyzing fear of strangers. These things didn’t line up with my nearly-perfect childhood. My parents weren’t divorced. We attended church every Sunday rain or shine. I knew all the right answers in Sunday School. My family worked hard and didn’t do drugs or become alcoholics. There was always food on the table.

But compared to my peers, I always seemed to be a step behind. I longed to be normal and laugh without this paranoia of vulnerability. I longed to feel carefree and innocent – traits I seemed to be lacking.

Things will get better with time, they said.

She’ll grow out of it, they said.

But things didn’t get better. I didn’t grow out of it. Instead I waited in silence, ashamed of the broken person I’d become. Somehow the formula of being raised in a Christian home hadn’t been enough. By then, the monster within me had attempted escape a few times, and it was becoming harder and harder to anticipate its moves.  

That’s the unspoken agreement in believing time fixes things, you know. Investing years of life and bucket-loads of energy in maintaining an outward appearance that everything is okay even when it’s not, waiting for time to do its thing so that no one ever will ever discover the broken mess within. If I believed hard enough. If I waited long enough. If I pretended enough.

But it was never enough, and I was exhausted.

By now as a young woman, I saw the truth. Patterns of brokenness were all around me; evidence against the lie that time could cure whatever was wrong with my soul. Diseases destroyed things over time. Vegetables decayed over time. Cliffs eroded over time. Generations grew more corrupt over time. But I knew no other way to cope. I desperately wanted to believe that this wasn’t the end. I didn’t want to believe that I was doomed to brokenness for the rest of my life because of someone else’s selfish sin against me.

Throughout the Bible, God is revealed as a perfect and good Creator as well as the sovereign Ruler over events and circumstances. It was this same goodness and sovereignty that first drew me to Christ through salvation as a teenager. He saw my overwhelming burden of sin, and in His goodness He removed this burden through Jesus Christ. Because of God’s sovereignty over creation, here was Someone constant and unchanging in a world where everything had been flipped upside-down.

But somehow God didn’t factor into my shame. I knew Jesus died to pay for my sins and rose again to give my soul eternal life. But I never heard anything about how Jesus related to shame stemming from the sins of someone else. And because I never heard about it, I thought the Bible didn’t say anything about it. I thought God just didn’t care.

In the midst of hiding and wrestling and running from my past, I was hit blindside by several providential lightning bolts that forced me to face the truth. In the midst of it all, I discovered that God is not dependent on my thinking and choices – or even the choices of others in my life. Despite them, He is sovereignly orchestrating every detail of His children’s lives for their ultimate good and healing. According to Romans 8:28 (NASB), God is working all things together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. (emphasis mine)

It was as though a lightbulb flipped on. I saw the fingerprints of God redeeming every detail of my life by molding and shaping, drawing and breaking. Shame sought to drive me away from the light, but God persistently overpowered it. Even in my darkest moments when I grasped at a handhold, Jesus Christ was holding me fast.

Now on the other side, I confess I am more broken than before. But there is no putrid infection of bitterness and shame like there was before. There is no zombie-like suppression of feeling. The brokenness God is doing in my life is from re-breaking the lame joint so that it can be healed according to the truth. I feel humbled and freed with new emotions, a fullness of joy never known before. Strangely enough, I’m more alive, and it’s all because of Jesus Christ.

As I walk this journey, I’m discovering I’m not alone in the reality of abuse and trauma. There are thousands of men, women, and children broken because of this reality. We have different stories, different situations. But our core brokenness is the same, and the Great Physician is the only One able and willing to heal.

I simply want to share confessions of what Jesus Christ has done for me in the midst of my brokenness.








Note: All Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible (NASB), unless otherwise noted.

Public Domain Photo Credit: 
Clock Mechanism - David Clark