When I think of my childhood, it’s full of memories of me telling stories. I often wrote them down, I sometimes told them out loud, and they always meandered through my mind.

If you find yourself negotiating, “Lord, You can have it all, except this one thing?” you are not alone. Quite the contrary, so many brave sisters have approached me, one by one, in strictest confidence, trembling and asking the question they dread the answer to, the one question they can’t shake:

Like weary passengers on a ship after a long, grueling voyage, we can spot the shore of 2021 from here. In the throes of 2020’s shakings, many of us yearn for exit routes as we cast hopes like anchors into the foreign land of the new year.

No platitudes satisfy after a storm

No Hallmark cards for devastation

No words truly hold a heart freshly torn

It all feels like empty placation

“Set the timer for 60 minutes and do not stop till the timer goes off. Ask God to give you a glimpse of what the Lamb of God endured for you in order to take away your sin.” Such are the directions in my Bible study, and a mixture of excitement and anxiety quickens my pulse.

Maybe it’s your spouse. Maybe your lifelong friend. Or your parent or your child, your coworker, your boss — but there’s this one area where you find yourself trapped in a loop of unresolved tension…

Empty-handed I come to these healing waters. It’s been a long, strenuous journey. At first, familiar adrenaline energized my gait and disguised the exhaustion, but gradually, the pace began to sag till I arrived here in a slump.

On her childhood playground she watches the other children play. An impenetrable wall separates her from them, but she doesn’t know why. In her eyes they are one huddled organism, an exoskeleton with its armored back against her.

I exercise just enough to satisfy my doctor at my yearly visits. But when I do, I prefer a ballet barre, because I’ve always loved a good plié. When I focus on leaning into it with the right technique, something inside me shifts.

That area we go to great lengths to avoid – that’s where He now takes me. I didn’t just casually leave it, I slammed the door to all my ferocious fears and bolted as far and fast as I could… No need to go back to those sinister shadows where old rejection and loneliness roam like tyrant trolls.

Never again will the waves of destruction rip me into their swirling tides of terror. Chaos. Fear. Confusion.

Alone.

Unlike their Colgate-whitened pictures on postcards, the Mediterranean sands of Malaga are dark. Earthy. Scattered shells and rocks give a much rougher impression to the eye than the softness that greets the hand.

Above the clouds the restraints fall away. Gravity seems less oppressive, and I can feel again the kind of air my lungs were meant to breathe, albeit this is actually the cabin-pressured airplane environment. I can see differently from here.

Not that I had slept much, but waking up in the little classroom in the church that housed our missions team, I began to feel joy- bubbles surge through me. Surrounding me on their little air mattresses, my girlfriends on the team began to stir, and in each one’s face, a knowing grin began to dawn: We would have a wedding tonight, and I would be the bride.

4 AM. Torn by the timeless tyranny of night fears. This and that, distorted to nightmare proportions, claw my soul to some drowsy semi-awake awareness that my head is throbbing and my body shaking. Deep sigh.

Before I awake, I feel the longings stir in my soul… just to be a cat in the sun, stretched out in God’s warmth, lazy in the most luxurious way. Ahhhhhh, purring, I feel the promise of Sabbath caress my tired mind, as I gradually emerge from the night.

I was nine when we moved to the village. A winding creek weaving through it parallel to the one main street where mom and pop stores and picturesque farmhouses scattered among modern family homes completed the illusion of a Hallmark movie ambiance.

What do you do when pain charges through your system so savagely that you lose control? Convulsions from the shock rip through you worse than an epileptic episode, and you find yourself biting your tongue or your lip and don’t even notice the bloody damage.

I didn’t plan to be raped that night. Staying home for once from the Copenhagen nightlife to prepare for a test the next day, I was reacquainting myself with a solitude I realized I had missed. Gently flickering candles and a hot shower caressed my senses, as I was exhaling into the unfamiliar quiet. My guard was down.

“You smell good,” someone whispers, as we both move from hug to hug in the group gathering around the coffee and snacks table. It’s Tuesday night, and defying the tropical downpour outside, we pour into this oasis, thirsty for the kind of warm community that makes the soul feel seen and safe.