She was standing at the door crying. She didn’t want to be alone there. She didn’t want her mom to leave. Her mom was safe. Her grandmother wasn’t.
Unable to process feelings with facts, Little Serena wrote the narrative for her life.
Nobody hears me. Nobody understands me. Nobody stays for me. I am going to have to do this alone. Again.
Most of my adult life I have separated Little Serena from Big Serena. I have compartmentalized seasons and eras by time and place not realizing that the narrative for the part I played was the same in every single one.
I am alone.
Not surprisingly, I am guarded with who gets access to my heart. After the church hurt I suffered a few years ago, I made a decision to not let it wall me off in isolation. Even though I regret that decision, I know it’s what God calls me to. He calls me community. He calls me to share burdens and blessings. He calls me to not be alone.
But it hurts.
I laid in bed last night with so many moments and memories flashing in my head like snippets of movies. Over and over, everyone one of them said, “You are alone.”
“They broke me,” I thought.
I wonder if this is the one I won’t recover from. Is this the break that changes me? Is this the wound that sends me into seclusion?
The intellectual part of me knows that isn’t healthy. The emotional part of me feels like it’s safer. The spiritual part of me sees its not who God made me to be.
I am communal in my core.
It’s my communal nature that makes church hurt hurt. I so deeply relate to my tribe that a fracture in it is a fracture in me. Leaving it is leaving me.
I stand like the little girl crying at the door. I don’t want to be there. I don’t want you to leave. I don’t want to be alone but because it hurts I run and hide.
So how do I reconcile all this?
How do I heal the hurt and restore my place in the family of God?
I have to rewrite the story. I need a new narrative that isn’t based off Little’s Serena’s perception and hurt.
The new story is going to be a good one. It’s going to have the happiest of endings because even when I don’t believe it or feel it, I am not alone and I never have been.
Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10
