Inner Healing part 3

The following is from a guided meditation into inner healing.  It takes place in my imagination and goes where I am surprised.  I thought I would have to work on my feelings about the church in Faribault that I had to work on earlier, but see where Jesus took me...

I walk to the creek side and sit on the large stones that form its bank. My back is to my Grandparent’s farmhouse and barn. Jesus comes and sits with me. I feel his body, his arm against my shoulder. He laughs and I push him.

I tell him that I feel he has shown me something at the core of me that I feel like an annoyance to others. I tell him that the members of my cohort have affirmed that I am not, that it is a lie. They asked me where that idea came from. I don’t know. I ask Jesus to Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24).


He asks me to come with him. We walk down along the creek, back toward the copse of trees behind the pastureland. We lay our backs on a blanket there and look into the sky. His arm his hooked through mine. Then he shows me the summer we were there as kids, riding bikes around the track we had made. The picnic we had with our parents at the giant spool. I feel safe and secure there. I turn to him and ask, “when did I first feel like an annoyance? Was I this young?”

I remember the year before when we first moved to Faribault and the bully that slammed my head into the wall daily. I remembered the next spring when I started fifth grade in Northfield and how my first day the kids already had me pegged as a nerd. I remember how they tried to push me into the girls’ bathroom. I remembered even earlier in Grand Rapids having a hard time making friends. I thought of the two best friends I had, Dusty and Andy and one of the few days we were all hanging out together riding our bikes, and they ditched me.

Tears began to run down my face. I sobbed even now as a grown man. “Why,” I ask him, “Why did they do those things to me? What was so wrong about me that they didn’t want to be near me?”

Still he is by my side. I ask him where he was when I felt so hurt. He showed an image of him riding on the pegs extending from the back of my bike as my friends ride off. He is with me. I see him also hanging on to the doorposts of the girls bathroom, his body behind mine as the boys try to push me in. He is with me. I see him at my side, in me, around me, always.

“But why, Jesus, why would they do this to me? Why didn’t they give me a chance? I feel like I didn’t deserve a fair chance, that I was an annoying nerd."

Then I find myself in the dim gym of my elementary school in Grand Rapids. It is my last day, the day of the Christmas party, and I am saying goodbye to my friends. Then a new girl is introduced. It is my last day, it is her first day, and I, in my woundedness, turn to the guys and poke a jab at her. “I am leaving and look what you get in my place.” They laugh at my cruelty, and for a few moments I felt like I was one of them.

“Oh Jesus,” I cry, “They were just hurt and wounded children. They were just children.” I invited them all to that safe place, by the copse of trees, to be with me and Jesus. With them there, as children, Dusty, Andy, the bullies, Adam, Brian, my fifth grade classmates, I tell Jesus what their wounds have meant for me. I tell them that I have been self conscious, I have been afraid of calling anyone, afraid of starting relationships with people afraid of what their first thoughts would be, afraid. “But, Jesus,” I say, “look at them, they are just children. They hurt me from their hurts. Take them in your arms. Love them. I forgive them.”

I walk away, leaving them in his care. He rejoins me so that I don’t have to be alone. He holds me and speaks a word of healing. Ephphatha, be opened. Be free.