On September 3, 1928, Alexander Fleming returned to his laboratory after an August vacation to discover some mould growing in a petri dish. He would later rename his “mould juice” penicillin in March of 1929. His accidental discovery would benefit millions around the world not even a half century later with the mass production of penicillin and other fungi antibiotics. It’s an understatement to say that this discovery was beneficial to mankind in the treatment of bacterial infections and preventing the spread of disease. However, there also came about a very negative side effect of this wonder drug: the overuse and misuse of antibiotics that caused antibiotic resistance. The cause of this resistance is simple: too often antibiotics are given for viral, not bacterial, infections thus killing good/ beneficial or at least harmless bacteria while developing antibiotic-resistant properties in harmless bacteria that can be shared with other, more harmful bacteria. (Information obtained from The Mayo Clinic website and Wikipedia)
All too often in our own lives we are taking mass amounts of “penicillin” to treat the viral infections of our souls. The penicillin may be sex, drugs, alcohol, bitterness, anger, work, play, even being over-dosed in church activities. We take this drug in order to mask, drown and cover our deep rooted hurts. Often times as Christians we tend to hide behind scripture as an excuse not to experience the pain we are in. We proclaim that we are abiding “under the shadow of the almighty” and “dwelling in His secret place.”
But God longs to expose your pain in that secret place. Yep. Expose it.
“Why on earth would He want to expose my pain?”
Many of us have hurts that may have been around for decades that we keep shoving deeper into the recesses of our being. You can hide those hurts from everyone you choose to hide them from, including yourself, but you can’t hide them from God. He knows your pain. He also knows that the only way to get rid of it is to expose it for what it is. This process is indeed painful, but most undoubtedly worth it. God knows your pain, He exposes it, and then does something remarkable with it, He destroys it. But He can’t destroy it until you let Him expose it.
I know all too well how true these things are. It’s only been recently that God has exposed my hurts, pain I’ve kept hidden from myself for nearly 30 years. Pain I scarcely knew existed until just two weeks ago. And let me tell you, this exposure stung, a lot.
My winter project for this year was scrap-booking. I have about 15 years worth of photos of my first 3 kids, plus I have another child to start scrap-booking for, and add on top of that, my childhood scrapbook was falling apart. So, I started with that one. The years went from 1970, the year my parents got married, to 1995, the year I graduated from high school. It took several days to re-do, but it was worth it. Eager to show my husband my “new & old” photo album, we sat that evening after dinner and began to stroll through memory lane. First came my parents’ marriage. Then the birth of my oldest brother. And then… well, then we got to the pictures of my second oldest brother, Jeremiah. He was a happy little boy, jumping in leaves, riding the little cars at Kennywood, sitting on mommy and daddy’s lap.
But I knew the truth behind that seemingly happy little boy. He got kicked out of kindergarten for throwing a chair at a teacher. He was then sent to “special classes.” He improved some when sent to a private Christian school, but then spiraled out of control when our parents divorced. He ended up spending the rest of his childhood in and out of places like Hawthorn, Bradley Center, Southwood, and Mayview State Hospital drugged with anything from Haldol to Lithium. His diagnosis: Tourettes Syndrome. Without a psychologist telling him he had this mental disorder, one would believe he was struggling within his emotions to deal with inner turmoil caused by external factors. In the end his diagnosis lead to his detriment. He is now serving life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 136 years. I need not describe what he did to be awarded such a sentence, but only that his circumstances did not afford him rational thought, feelings of worth and value, and the knowing that he was loved unconditionally.
I now wonder if that is why I chose the career path I did. As a TSS (Therapeutic Staff Support), I helped kids struggling with their behavior and emotions be able to maintain functionality in the home and classroom setting. I worked with children much like my brother. In fact, one little boy displayed such similar behavior it was almost scary. The first time I met him he tried to stab me with scissors. He was only in kindergarten and dealing with his parents’ very ugly divorce. But this was 2011, not 1975. They don’t send little kids away from their families to state institutions nowadays. NO, they bring in specialists, teams of them, to do everything they can to keep these little ones in a normal, productive environment.
That night I poured out of me thirty years of neglected pain, expressing vehemently that I wish I could go back and fix it, knowing that I couldn’t. I didn’t want to fix it for me, but for my brother, the happy little boy in those old photos. Why couldn’t he have had a better chance in life? Why did he have to be so tormented in his own experiences? Why were children sent to mental institutions to be medicated on drugs akin to cocaine? Why weren’t there TSS jobs back then instead?
Maybe being a TSS was my subconscious way of fixing it. Maybe if Jeremiah had a TSS he wouldn’t be in prison.
Rob sat attentively listening to me vent years of pain, asking me if I’m ever going to be able to let it go. “Yes,” I replied, “I feel this is just the beginning of the healing process. I know in time, if I let myself feel the pain instead of deny it, or run from it, that God would do an amazing thing. But I still wonder why God even allows us to exist knowing the heartache and pain we will be subjected to?” Rob’s reply was significant, “Yeah, I sometimes wonder with all the pain and suffering and horrible things, why God would proceed with His plan (creation) and also let Satan run rampant. But I think that the glory to come with it far outweighs the present sufferings that it won’t even be comparable. Look at Aurora. Would you still have her knowing she’d go through suffering but in the end, in eternity, she’d experience so much goodness that the suffering was worth it?”
God’s knows the end to this story, and He knows our suffering, my brother’s suffering, was worth living on this side of eternity in the face of spending eternity in His glory.
It was confirmed to me just six days later that it was God exposing my pain in order to destroy it. I sat in the back pew of The Father’s Heart on a Friday evening listening to Pastor Henry. He spoke on these exact things! I can’t even describe the relativity of his message to what I was going through. God confirmed in me that it was o.k. to feel the pain. That I wasn’t any less of a Christian just because I had past hurts to deal with. That God was indeed exposing them in order to destroy them.
I looked at my daughter during the sermon and whispered, “Pain demands to be felt.” She knew exactly what I was referring to. We had both read the book The Fault in Our Stars about a year ago about two teenagers dealing with cancer. They met at a support group and the young man in the story often said, “Pain demands to be felt.”
At that, my son whispered, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”
Yes, that’s exactly what was happening to me. The pain I was experiencing was indeed weakness, an emotional viral infection, leaving my soul.
After the service ended, Pastor Henry invited those who wanted to be set free from their pain to come up for prayer. I sat there for a few minutes debating whether or not to go up. Not because I was any kind of embarrassed of what others might think, but because I wasn’t done feeling the pain. It was still in the “exposure” stage. But let me tell you the freedom I gained walking to the altar for prayer that night. Just saying the words, “I wish I could go back and fix it,” was healing in and of itself. A kind gentleman prayed for me, asking God to help me see the brightness of my future, for comfort and peace for my brother, and to receive forgiveness for myself.
Remember, God knows your pain. He knows about that deep rooted infection inside us that we keep taking antibiotics for without ever being cured. He wants to expose that pain so He can destroy it. Receive His healing today and begin to experience His unfiltered joy!
“The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, that flow out of valleys and hills.” Deuteronomy 8:7 NKJV
In His Service,
Rebecca Hamilton, Founder/ Executive Director
For Every Great Battle, There is a Great Victory!!