Allowing My Past to Catch up to Me
On last week’s podcast and today’s at The God Journey, Kyle and I talk about dealing with the long-term effects of unresolved childhood trauma. On my recent trip to North Carolina, a good friend of mine, Dana Andrechyn, shared with me a poem she wrote that captures so well what it is like to run from the pain of the past and then finally find just the right time and space for Jesus to bring healing to your broken heart.
I love this poem. We talk about it more on today’s podcast. I also wanted to print it here for those that wanted a copy.
The post Allowing My Past to Catch up to Me first appeared on Lifestream | Wayne Jacobsen.
Allowing My Past to Catch Up to Me
To be out on the open water at sunset
facing backward, shore fading
like the past that I left behind,
we set our present course
into the beauty of the end of the day…
Our speed is slow and gentle enough
to allow my past to catch up to me
its drama unfolding as if it were yesterday—
and instead of looking away, I fixed my gaze there.
(for so long I have just wanted to leave it buried.
but the grave can’t hold living things.)
Set in the midst of the beauty of the setting sun,
and its safe embrace, a softness rises in me
laced with tears, washing my face, my soul
as I remembered the girl I left behind so long ago.
Left her standing there, hands full
of hunger, ache, resentment, shame, loneliness—
hidden from all eyes, especially mine.
To forget her would heal me, I thought,
but the neglect of my own little soul was
just another arrow of abandonment,
piercing my present and my hunger.
But here, now, in this beauty I scoop her up
onto the seat next to me—wrapping my arms around her,
giving her the gift of her voice—her pain, her anger, her tears.
Feeling her youth and the shattering of her innocence.
Remembering how we had to survive by fortressing,
with grit and hardness—armoring up.
We were never thrown a life-line
as we tried to keep our head above water
as best we could.
Today, I pulled her out of those waters
into the lap of my soul and I mothered her.
Saw her. Held her. Held me.
Disarmed.
Dana Andrechyn, July 2020
© Copyright 2022 by Dana Andrechyn.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
