"Sometimes It's Just Gonna Be Me and Him"

"Have learned that even the wellest meaning can't be in crisis mode 24/7...even if you are. Sucks to know that. It's a harsh reality. But when no one else can that's when I've had to remember that God can. Sometimes He uses people. Sometimes it's just gonna be me and Him."

Yes, sometimes it is just going to be Him and me, and frankly, sometimes those seem to be the absolute hardest times. You would think He could send someone at the absolute hardest times, wouldn’t you?

Except, sometimes in the absolute hardest times what I really need is just Him.

There is a level of honesty I can reach with Him when it is just the two of us that I don’t reach when people are around. I can say what I want to and not have to wrap it in acceptable language. I can feel whatever I really feel and not have to worry that others are uncomfortable. I can be core-honest with Him when I can’t with others.

You know how sometimes when it’s just you and God and you hurt worse than you could ever imagine and it feels like your heart is being ripped out of your chest? Well, that is pretty accurate for what is going on.

When I’m alone with God, it gives Him the chance to reach deep, way deep, deeper than my human consciousness may want to go to touch the thing that is hurting me the most. He doesn’t waste time with symptoms. He doesn’t play hide and seek. He goes right to the heart of the wound.

The Bible says the Spirit leads me into all truth (John 16:13). It also says I will know the truth and the truth will set me free (John 8:32). I will never be healed without the truth of what happened and my interpretation of it. I have to acknowledge what happened first. Then I have to acknowledge how I feel about it and how it defined me mentally and emotionally. Then I have to let God redefine me and live in HIS definition.

There is no person who can do that for me.

Plus, for those of us who stand strong no matter what slams them, for those who have learned to perform, for those who have learned to breathe anyway, for those who have become experts at keeping the stuff that might weaken us locked away…we need someone to find us. We need someone to walk into the soul-cellar and find the Pandora’s box that we keep hidden so no one else sees it. That is what being alone just God and me allows.

I often refer to the things that keep us imprisoned as ‘monsters’. When I’m alone with God, He pulls me to a place of honesty about the monsters that I cannot reach with a person.

And, yes, it does feel like the absolute worst I’ve gone through because at that moment I am at monster pain ground zero. This is the epicenter of the anguish.

The Bible says the Jesus is the Mighty Counselor and Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). No counselor is going to have a soul deep session with a patient in a food court in the mall. There is no way a person can be honest about deep soul hurts in that setting. Instead, the counselor offers a private place that is safe and serves as a refuge. Jesus does the same thing.

 

He gets me alone in a place where I feel safe, usually my bedroom, and He listens to me cry and scream and talk and hurt. While I'm pouring all this out, because remember out of the heart the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34), the Lord digs out the deep things of the heart, the stuff in my soul-cellar that I had either hidden so well I had forgotten about it or I didn’t realize how much or in what way it affected me.

As I said, these are excruciating times. I always hated that worst-pain-ever –and-God-is-the-only-one-who-showed-up times, but they are necessary for healing.

 

And I am learning instead of screaming about how much it hurts and how bad I hate it, what honestly helps is to ask, “What do you need me to see? What do you want to expose? How do I work with you for the healing?”

It still hurts like hell, but by asking Him to show me the “monster”, I’m opening the door for Him to show me how to defeat it, and that allows me to get beyond it. As horribly nightmarish as it may feel, facing the monster is part of getting through the pain. Until I am willing to face the monster, I’m not going through, I’m stuck in, and the pain never gets better.

I thank God for every person He has sent into my life who has helped with the healing in the last 2 ½ years. They have been valiant warriors who have fought with me and over me, and I don’t know how we would have come through without them. Honestly, I think we couldn’t have. I believe they were essential, which is why God put them there.

However, some monsters can’t be fought by even the fiercest warrior friend. In fact, those warrior friends can actually try so hard to protect me and make me feel better, they actually hinder the healing because they don’t let me fight the monsters I need to fight or I’m afraid to be really honest about the monsters that are out there. Sometimes it is necessary for those friends to step off the battlefield and let me face the real monsters that are keeping me in prison.

Those "just God and me" moments aren't God's carelessness or His thoughtlessly not providing someone to be there with me. It is part of His necessary plan to get me alone so He can deal with monsters I can't deal with any other way. I'm learning to consciously know when God is all I have, it isn't just that He is all I need. It's that I specifically need Him only.