Everyone was there. She was much loved. She had actually won “Miss Congeniality” at the Miss America pageant, so she had a natural ability to make friends. She endeared herself to many people; many had come to pay their respects and to mourn her passing.
Family and friends has gathered to remember the life of Georgina MacLean. She was far too young to die. A mother in her early forties, her children were 20, 19 and 9 years old. I was the 9 year old. I didn’t understand what was going on. All I knew was that the person I loved most in the entire world, was now gone and never coming back.
Everyone was at her funeral, everyone that is, except me. In an attempt to shield me from the grief of this tragedy my father thought it best I not attend the service. Why? Perhaps out of fear that my emotions would coming busting out in such a force that none of us would know how to deal with it? Perhaps something else? All I know was that while my entire family was united in grief, I was at the neighbour’s.
I remember jumping off my neighbour’s Volkswagen van onto stacks of tire tubes – oblivious to the life altering events engulfing me and my family. I knew they were somewhere together, but I was not with them – I was alone.
Somehow in the midst of the valiant attempt to shield me from grief, sorrow and despair, they all found their target anyway: they all found my heart. And in the midst of this wounding, in the midst of the aloneness, a simple diabolical lie of the enemy was planted in my tender heart:
“You don’t belong.”
That’s right, I don’t belong. How can I belong? Everyone I know and love in the entire world is together somewhere, doing something that somehow involves my mom, or at least her memory, but I am not there.
I don’t belong.
And so I grew up believing at the depth of my being that I did not belong. No matter where I was, no matter what group, team, class, club, company, or church I belonged to, I didn’t really belong. I was always a little separate, a little different.
It wasn’t until decades later that the Lord helped me recognize this lie of the enemy – this Spiritual Strangler Fig – that had taken root in my heart and was strangling the life out of me. I had dealt with many lies of the enemy over the years and fought into freedom, but this one stayed hidden. It wasn’t until this past summer that God by His great goodness and good greatness helped me to unpack this memory.
As I began to recognize what the enemy had sowed into my heart over 40 years ago I walked through the 5 Tools of Truth to get free: Repent – Renounce – Rebuke – Receive – Rejoice.
And then I asked the Lord if He could show me where He was in the midst of all of this. I began to relive the picture in my mind’s eye of me jumping off the van onto the tire tubes, but this time I bounced into the arms of Jesus – where he held me tight, and I heard the words of Brian Doerksen’s song Arms of Love:
“I sing a simple song of love
To my Savior, to my Jesus.
I’m grateful for the things you’ve done
My loving Savior, my precious Jesus.
My heart is glad that you’ve called me your own,
There’s no place I’d rather be
Than in your arms of love
In your arms of love
Holding me still
Holding me near
In your arms of love”
And now, I am free.
The lies of the enemy are sent to destroy who you have been created to be. No matter what wounds you have endured, and the accompanying lies that have been sown into your heart, you can be set free and healed. However, you have to be willing to do some emotional heavy lifting.
The Lord has more life for you, but you need to fight for it. Your freedom is worth your effort.
You belong to Him.
1 Thessalonians 5:5-8
“You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.”
John 15:19
“If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”
2 Corinthians 10:3-5
“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”