Terrors into Teddy Bears
by Keith D Troop
10/25/11
I have done bad things. I have had bad things done to me. These things are some of the most horrific wounds that I will experience, though I’m sure that the future may yet over match. I’ve worn these wounds as scars that have affected my behaviors and perceptions across the course of my life. They have shaped my image of God and my image of self. Some of these wonderful gifts revisit me at the most inopportune moments causing me bowel wrenching, mind freezing terrors from which I may need days to recover.
Some things that I have seen keep me from seeking sleep and others have made me wish for the eternal sleep that my earthly mind may not be troubled with them anymore. In truth, there have been many times when the contemplation of remembering what has gone before has been enough to put either a gun or a bottle in my mouth. Fortunately, the bottle usually kept me too uncoordinated to work the gun.
The more that I guarded and protected these things, the more they festered in me. They began a process of moral and spiritual corruption in me that I became powerless to halt. Had not God intervened, I would have died from the activity of prior events, some of which were decades in my past.
I was wounded and scared and scarred and battered. My terrified self had lost ability to function under the weight of my own wounds and fears. They were mine and the more they became mine the more I became mine and the more I became mine the less I allowed God to have me. That spiral continued until I became deceived into thinking that I was entirely my own and in that place even my blessings became curses. Let alone those things that all men would see as curses in my life, those things became intolerable.
Praise be to God that one day He reminded me that I was not my own, that I had been bought with a price. Praise be to God that if I am not my own then neither are my blessings. Praise be to God that if my blessings are not my own, then neither are my curses. Praise be to God that if my curses are God’s then they are His to do with and to use both in my life and in the life of others.
So it was one day as I sat in place full of wounded souls, amidst the cries of pain and anguish I heard a wound that was familiar to me. I knew the same woundedness that this person felt. I knew the depth of the pain that they experienced. I had experienced it also, with all the rawness and hideous agony. But what to do with that in my own life? I still didn’t know the answer to that. So I moved close to the hurting person and shortly we began to speak.
After listening to them, I thought that maybe I should share with them my pain. How to do that was a mystery to me though. My pain was still so very painful. Should my wounds have been physical then I’m sure that I would have been the very epitome of gore. An x-rated image in what I perceived to be a g-rated world. To even speak of such a horror would feel like unleashing a fiend in a kindergarten. Like introducing Freddy Kruger among the Care Bears.
Still, to hear their wounds was to hear their isolation. To know their pain was to know their separation. If I could understand their feelings from their words, then perhaps I could ease their solitude with mine. If they felt a pain similar to mine then they most probably felt the horror of that pain just as I did.
Perhaps, just maybe, if I advanced some of my own horror, then their horror would seem less horrific. It was worth a try. So I dug into the dark recesses of my soul, where I kept the unspeakably hidden things of my life. There I grabbed a small handful of the offal that made up my experiences and slowly advanced it towards this other. It was there that the magic occurred. It was there that something beyond myself came forth.
As I reached forward this handful of gore and pain, it transformed on the way to this other person. It became something else in that moment of transfer. The rotten, disease-ridden, pieces of me that left my hand became shiny beautiful treasures as they were taken up by this other. Where horror landed, flowers sprung and bloomed and the emptiness within me flowed forth a well spring of comfort for this other. My tears became their smiles. My fears became their strengths. My sins showed forth their righteousness. My dead places became places of life for this other.
A bridge of horrific things was used to break the solitude for us both. By reaching forward with this terror from my soul, I became a hand this person could see. I became a light for them in the dark place. They reached back with the woundedness they had and together we comforted each other. By sharing our pains, God transformed them as they spent a moment in the heart of the other and then were returned to us. Now my terror had become a teddy-bear, not just for this other, but for me as well.
I am not my own, I have been bought with a price. I am God’s glorious inheritance. I am both His treasure and at the same time, a storehouse for His blessings. My error was in thinking that all the blessings He stored within me, would look like blessings while still in their wrapper. It was only when I unwrapped them, that I was able to see them as He sees them and understand them as He intended. It was my error to think that all the blessings He stored in me were there merely for me and my betterment.
