A Quiet Whisper

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” – Nelson Mandela

So is the same with me. I returned home this last week, and it hasn’t exactly been the most restful, peaceful setting that one would hope for. Tensions that have been lying dormant for a while were stoked up, some flaring into fights or confrontations, others dimming out to a smolder. Above all of these, however, I’ve really had to face some demons in my past. And I mean that more literally than I want to.

Which is the very heart of the problem. Those four words: “I don’t want to.” I don’t want to face these things. I don’t want to. My heart, my head are pleading with me to run, to run away again. It’s easier to just deny these things, right? Pretend like everything is fine, that I don’t hurt anymore. That my heart is still whole and not clumsily patched together with broken stitches. I want to believe that I’ll be able to hand that heart away to people again, and have them respect it and hold onto it, and not hand it back to me because they can’t deal with it. I want to run away and pretend like it’s all fine. Bottle it all up again. It’s what I’ve always done, it’s how I deal with the stuff of life. But there’s also a chunk of me, a small quiet whisper saying that it’s not right.

My friend says that somewhere deep inside of me, there’s a terrified little girl. And I’ve reached the point where I hardly know her. I stopped writing, I stopped introspecting. I didn’t want to know how I felt, because I was afraid of it.

And right now? Right now I feel unsettled. I want to go back to my apartment, where I feel safe. I guess it hasn’t been the best few days. I went from a horrible week to one filled with anxiety and hurt. It’s strange to think that just a week and a half ago, I was crumpled on the floor of my janitor’s closet, bawling my eyes out and crying to God. I was angry. I was hurt. I wanted Him to know that I felt unlovable, unwanted. I wanted Him to know the depths of my pain. At some point it occurred to me that I was crying about feeling left out and unwanted to the very person who was so unwanted that the people around him decided to kill him.

That small whisper wants me to be brave, to face the wounds that I have deep within me. People have told me I’m brave. I guess I could never believe it, because it was usually a front that I put on to protect myself. Vulnerability isn’t my strong suit. I’d rather help others and deny my pain. But that isn’t going to help anyone, including myself. So now, I’m trying to find that girl. Trying to figure her out. Yes, my head is fighting me every step of the way, and I still don’t feel great. Quite the contrary, I’m slightly nauseous, because I know where introspecting is going to lead me. And I’ll admit it: I’m scared.

But there was another guy who listened to a quiet whisper. It came after blowing winds, an earthquake, and a fire. The LORD was in none of those, but when Elijah heard the whisper, he wrapped his face and came out from his hiding place, and he listened to the whisper of the LORD. It wanted him to do some scary stuff, but it also reassured him that what he had done was not in vain. The whisper was always going to be there to guide him.