If you’ve read my book, God Knows Your Story, then you know that it was in the fifth grade when my identity suffered its greatest blow. At one of my early men’s Pure Heart Weekends there was another man whose life went off the rails also in the fifth grade. And in the last two months I have encountered two different women who have had something devastating happen to their hearts, also in the fifth grade! Their stories are identical to tell, but I will change their names to protect their identities.
Both “Sarah” and “Renea” had the same thing happen to them. They both were betrayed and rejected by their gaggle of peers, and both gaggles of peers created a little “book.” Both books bore the title, “I Hate Sarah Club” and the “I Hate Renea Club.” Both girls saw the books. Both girls watched as their friends were coerced into signing the book, and both girls were humiliated deeply by the episode.
Can you imagine the pain? The deep pain in the pit of the stomach, the signal that shame like a demon has flown into you heart.
One of these women has counseled with me, and the other was at a Pure Heart Weekend. For both, this event was the top memory of pain in the heart. In fact, both had also experienced some sexual hurt in life, but it was this fifth grade humiliation that scored at the top of their pain inventory. So, what did we do for healing?
I led the same healing experience with both women. I handed her a blank piece of paper and asked her to re-draw the “scene of the crime.” I had her draw out a stick-figure-picture of what the classroom looked like, how the desks were set, and where the girls were standing, including where she was standing. We talked about the scene. I wanted her to feel all the agony, again, as best she could.
Then we began to pray and talk in the presence of the Lord Jesus. I had her describe the room. Could she see the color of the tiles on the floor? (Yes.) Could she remember what she was wearing that day? (Yes) Could she see the book on the mean girl’s desk? (Yes, I can even see their names written there.)
Then I told her, as she had her eyes prayerfully closed, to look around . . . look around the classroom to see if you are truly all alone . . . I wonder if Jesus was there; since you were chosen before the foundations of the world (Eph 1:4), then that means you were already on His heart, and He might have been waiting for you in that classroom.
Both women had the same experience. They looked with the eyes of their heart . . . and then they said, “He’s there . . . I see Jesus there in the room . . .”
What’s He doing?
He’s just standing there, looking at me.
Do you want to go get in His arms?
Yes.
In the presence of the Lord Jesus, both of these women met Him in the memory of their pain. In the pain, the Lord gave comfort and solace. Then He removed the bitter shame, and any self-judgment that the woman had “agreed with” in her heart. The Lord came to them in their old painful memory, and He gave them a new memory . . . the memory of His Healing Presence in that old classroom. Within the old, hurtful memory, the Lord “added more” to the story, and He gave them a “new memory” to hold in their hearts.
You can do this at home. You, too, can go back to an old memory and invite the healing presence of the Lord Jesus into that memory. I did it every morning for about a month, back in 1998, when I started my own healing journey. God lives in the eternal “Now,” so He can come to your old memory in your mind as if it were now. For it is, with Him.
If you have an old pain from the fifth grade, don’t let it shame you, judge you, or condemn you. Bring that old memory into the presence of Christ, and let Him heal it, renew it, and let Him write His love for you upon your heart.
Carter