This is a very good Friday post for the upcoming holiday season. My apologies. But today I got to listen to a testimony. Part of the testimony was them reading about the crucifixion and torture of Christ. A graphic medical account of what happened to Him finally drove home for him that Christ REALLY loved him. As a Lutheran I was baptized into my faith as an infant. I later owned this faith. I was made a Lutheran that day. I have always believed what I was taught. I have never not considered myself a Christian. God created the world, we messed it up, Christ came and died and rose again… He died.
Easter services were hard for me. Staring at our churches large crosses displayed covered in Easter lilies. One black Friday we were encouraged to write our sins on a rock and carry it around all day. At the end of the day we were supposed to put it at the foot of the cross. I refused. I kept it hidden in my pocket. I loved Christ for who He was. I didn’t need or even want anything from Him. I didn’t ask Him to die for me. I would have gone to hell to have saved Him. I understood what I had done, I understood what He had done and I didn’t accept it. I didn’t want my sin removed. I wanted to accept punishment. The guilt of Him… the perfect white lamb being slain for me… was crushing!
I knew that I could do nothing to have changed what happened 2000 year ago. It sucked. It felt like everything I did was against God. All the life I had was at Jesus’ expense. Each breath I drew in was one I wish Jesus had had instead of me. I wept at the sight of a cross. Communion killed me “His blood shed for you..” The pastor may have well have said “Jesus Christ slain and tortured for you.” I don’t know if I was saved. I loved Christ, I didn’t accept His love for me back. My life was not a fair trade for His. It wasn’t right. I wanted to grow up to be a martyr. Somehow in my imagination being crucified upside down, being eaten by lions or imprisonment would make it okay and say “Okay Jesus, maybe… maybe it is okay for me to let you die for me now.” If I died for Him we would be square.
If you know me at all you know the self hate I suffered with this. I wanted to know I was loved. I only saw bullies, a mom asleep and a dad at work. I didn’t hear I love you or I am proud of you. I heard “You have Major Depression” “You have Seasonal Depression,” “You have ADHD” and “You have Trichatillamania.” They may as well have said you are broken, you are unloveable and you need fixed. I hated myself and there were names for the reasons why. Not only was my existence a sin, I was a terrible human being. One who was bad at school, couldn’t clean her room and whose parents largely ignored her when they got home from work. Or at least that is how it felt. Now that I am older I understand how hard it is to give love in a way that people will receive it. I know that they were trying. But I wasn’t getting that. I was mad. I didn’t want life. Not eternal life, not human life. I wasn’t worthy of human love and I certainly wasn’t worthy of perfect love.
I didn’t understand. No one pulled me aside and explained that what Jesus did on the cross made me a new person. One is has incredible worth. I wasn’t defined by my ratted hair, skinned knees, bad grades or control issues. I was free. I was who God made me to be. I was in Christ and there was no sin or condemnation in me. I was in Christ and there are no defects in Christ. I was free. I guess memorizing John 3:16 won’t always give you that. I got that He loved us. I got that. I also got that we killed Him. But Jesus doesn’t see me as his murderer. Even when I was angry at Him. Even when I prayed every night that a loving God wouldn’t wake me up. Ever. He would let me stop existing.
I didn’t want to go to school. At school my understanding of who I was seeped into all my relationships. I was convinced to serve Christ I had to be the least. This wasn’t hard. I felt like the least. In my family, at home, in the whole world even. So it was easy to put others first. I was nothing. Maybe if I served and gave all I had (like a martyr) I would at least do some good with my worthless life. I said yes to things I should have said no to. Just because what others wanted was always greater than my happiness. I am so thankful that I didn’t get into worse trouble than I did. God is good. Always. But treating myself like dirt in efforts to make others happier didn’t make me hate myself any less. It felt worse.
I don’t remember how I started cutting. I think I might have gotten the idea from Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. I stole razors from my dad’s shop and borrowed exacto knives from the art room. I took wire from binders in my notebook to skin and borrowed steak knives when those are not an option. I used erasers to give myself burns on youth trips. I felt better… sorta. Short term at least. I felt something. Pain is something. I think I also felt a relief that I was getting what I felt I deserved. That is was fitting. I controlled the pain. The empty feeling after. I had relief. I had an outlet for all my anger and self hate. I was guilty. What love I was capable of seeing from my friends and family I didn’t want.
I think I accepted love from my family and my heavenly father when no one was even talking about Him. I wasn’t in church, I wasn’t reading about Him and I wasn’t being told by a friend. I felt a new pain… it was called compassion. I didn’t understand compassion. I always imagined Jesus’s blood dripping down Golgotha and spelling “Your Fault.” Jesus loved me. He was happy to do what pained Him. Like my parents were more than willing to drive hours every day to see me and put thier lives on hold. When I looked at my parents crying in my mental ward I felt compassion. I was hurting them and they thought I was worth it anyways. I understood their sacrifices for me and I didn’t see their faults. When we focus on our shortcomings that is often how we see other people. I got it. Jesus thought I was worth it. Yes He suffered, but He was glad to. God was glad to bless me. He wanted to. Just like my parents wanted to bless me with a full life so did Jesus. At any cost.
I thought my parents looked at me the same way I thought Christ looked at me. I saw Christ on the cross, thorn crown and tortured doing the things he did because He had to. It was against His nature or something not to die for us. Never had I imagined that my parents might have thought that I amounted to anything. Never had I thought that maybe Jesus saw something worthwhile. Maybe I was more than what I thought of myself. Maybe I was more than a flunkie, self-harming, self-hating, awkward, depressed, friendless, loser. Maybe… maybe there was something new and exciting in me waiting to be embraced and known by me.
I am worth it. I don’t believe God make mistakes. I don’t believe He can be wrong. I don’t know how long it took to seep in after my first feel of compassion. It was no mistake that He died for me. If His plan is that I am worth it than I am. Period. I am still learning. I still sometimes can’t see my new identity. I still sometimes focus on the sin I used to be defined by. Jesus opens my eyes to sin to free me. It was Satan who made my focus on my old self in a way that just made me sit in my dead parts. Satan uses self reflection to lead us to despair and hopelessness. Satan wants to convince me I am a sinner. A loser. A nobody. Jesus wants me to see that I am a saint, someone worth dying for and as His child. When I look to Calvary and the malice, horror and violence that Christ endured I still tremble. I likely always will. Lutheran’s love focusing on the crucifixion and I always will. I hate people to skip to the joy of the resurrection and never feel that genuine grief for what our Lord endured. I cry because of the gravity of what He did. He didn’t have to. But He did. I weep because my Lord felt extreme pain, that He had to feel rejection, that He had to suffer so. I now pair it with the joy and love Christ also showed on that day and my new identity.
I know love. I accept it. I haven’t always. I only understood it once.
I still think the confession in the small Catechism Martin Luther wrote that appeared in the Catechism five years after his death is true. This is the 1986 translation.
We pray in this petition that our Father in heaven would not look upon our sins, nor deny such petitions on account of them; for we are worthy of none of the things for which we pray, neither have we deserved them; but that He would grant them all to us by grace; for we daily sin much, and indeed deserve nothing but punishment. So will we verily, on our part, also heartily forgive and also readily do good to those who sin against us.
I think that passage used to sum up my entire understanding of God. I doubt I ever encountered this exact passage in my Catechism. I do know that I learned that from what I was taught. I later learned more about who I am “In Christ” in college and a bit in my later high school life. Jesus loves me for who I am. Not because He had to. He died for me because I am His friend. Just like I would lay down my life for my friends. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
The old me is real. She exist. But she is a temporary shadow, an imaginary stain on who I am. I didn’t deserve what Christ did. But I am worth it.. because I am His and my story is of the redemption I have in Him. As a saint I lament, I repent and I tremble at Calvary. I do not resent what Christ accomplished in me.
On This Side. 